While the size of buyout funds has grown rapidly over the past decade, the size of investment teams that spend the money has not expanded at the same rate. Many of Europe’s leading firms maintain staff levels in the low hundreds across their entire businesses.

One buyout manager said: "The level of complexity involved in putting $200m to work is not all that dissimilar from $100m. Where a manager is relying largely on financial engineering to generate returns, smaller teams may be justified."