BC Partners

About BC Partners

BC Partners is a London private equity and private credit firm, formally BC Partners LLP of 40 Portman Square,^[1] which has invested since 1986 and manages about €35 billion of assets across its two strategies.^[2] The partnership registered today was incorporated in February 2016 and traded as BC Partners Advisors LLP until that August.^[1] Its registered controlling shareholder is BCPL Holdings Limited, notified in November 2021 as holding 75 per cent or more of the voting rights, and GLEIF names BC Partners Holdings Limited of St Peter Port, Guernsey, as the ultimate parent above it.^[3][4] The firm bought the German publisher Springer Science+Business Media in 2013 and folded it into Springer Nature two years later.^[5][6]

The firm began in 1986 as Baring Capital Investors Ltd, founded by Otto van der Wyck and formed by Barings to advise funds providing development capital for management buyouts; its principals completed a spin-out after the collapse of Barings in 1995, and van der Wyck left in 2001.^[5] BC Partners Holdings Limited, the Guernsey company above the group, was entered on that island's register in June 1995.^[7] Before BCPL Holdings Limited, the registered person with significant control of the partnership was BC Partners Advisors Holdings Limited, of the same London address, from July 2019 to November 2021.^[3]

In June 2013 the firm agreed to buy Springer Science+Business Media for about €3.3 billion, reported as $4.4 billion, taking the majority stake from EQT AB and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.^[5][6] In January 2015 BC Partners and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group announced that Springer would merge with Holtzbrinck's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan and Macmillan Education; the deal closed that May as Springer Nature, with BC Partners holding 47 per cent to Holtzbrinck's 53 per cent.^[6] Springer Nature's 2025 corporate governance statement says the funds behind that stake are advised by BC Partners LLP and that their general partner is owned and controlled by BC Partners Holdings Limited, and the voting-rights list in the 2025 group management report names BC Partners Holdings Limited, BC Partners Group Holdings Limited, CIE Management IX Limited and the Guernsey partnerships BC Partners Galileo (1) L.P. and BC Partners Galileo Holding L.P. among the indirect shareholders of Springer Nature.^[8][9] GLEIF gives BC Partners Holdings Limited as the direct parent of BC Partners Group Holdings Limited, so that second Guernsey company sits below it in the chain.^[10]