Steve Koltes, one of the founding partners of CVC Capital Partners, said today that Europe had gone from a place that investors avoided like the plague to a region generating a sense of euphoria.

Speaking at the SuperReturn Internantional conference in Berlin, Koltes said that during the crisis "it was like the bubonic plague had returned to this continent". He added: "Americans were looking at Asia, the Asians were looking at the US and everyone was looking at Latin America. Nobody was looking at Europe."