With buyout firms sitting on record amounts of dry powder and concerns mounting about future returns this may not seem the best possible time to enter the US private equity business. Yet Benoît Durteste is undeterred.

“We believe there is a gap for us in private equity in the US,” says Durteste, chief executive of UK specialist asset manager Intermediate Capital Group. To exploit that gap, Durteste has just hired Morgan Stanley veteran Alan Jones to build a private equity team in North America.