Hailed as a guardian angel of distressed companies or maligned as a locust plague on jobs, private equity is a controversial phenomenon in Germany. Last year private equity funds spent €3.6bn ($4.8bn) buying 970 German companies with 288,500 employees.

Investment was 20% up on 2005 and was "extremely strong" in the fourth quarter of last year, said the German Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. Leveraged buyouts were up by 40%.