Damon Buffini steps down from Permira

Damon Buffini, seen as the political face of private equity during the buyout boom, is stepping down from Permira, the European group he helped to build into a €20bn international firm over three decades.

Mr Buffini will continue as a senior adviser after stepping down from the partnership by the end of the year. He handed over the day to day running of the firm to co-managing partners Kurt Bjorklund and Tom Lister in 2007. Mr Buffini will also remain a board member of Hugo Boss, the fashion house in which Permira retains a 32 per cent stake.

During 12 years at the helm as managing partner and then chairman of Permira, Mr Buffini expanded the firm's assets from €500m in 1997 to four buyout funds totalling €20bn in 2010. Under Mr Bjorklund and Mr Lister, Permira closed its fifth fund last year at over €5bn.

"With a strong management team, a €5.3bn global fund to invest and the continued good performance of our portfolio companies, Permira is in great shape today and the time is right for me to do something new," he said.

The Leicester council estate-born Mr Buffini also serves as the founder of the Social Business Trust, a social enterprise fund, and as a governor of the Wellcome Trust. It was also announced on Tuesday that he will become a non-executive director of golf's PGA European Tour.

A string of pre-crisis buyouts in the UK including the AA and Bird's Eye brought Permira and Mr Buffini into conflict with the GMB, Britain's third-biggest trade union, over job cuts and what the union called private equity's "blatant asset-stripping".

After one GMB stunt in which the union paraded an Arabian camel past Mr Buffini's place of worship in 2006 - in a reference to the biblical passage by Jesus saying it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the wealthy to get to heaven - he met face to face with union representatives.

There is little love lost a decade on. "While Damon Buffini steps down from Permira as a very wealthy man, it is workers and customers at AA who are required to service the debt mountain he saddled it with," said Paul Maloney, GMB regional secretary.

Mr Buffini also entered industry legend in 2009 for making Permira partners eat burgers at a restaurant after overhearing complaints about the Michelin-starred food.

Hired by Jon Moulton in 1988 to join Schroders Venture UK - the firm that became Permira a decade later - Mr Buffini entered private equity the same year the $25bn buyout of RJR Nabisco in the US brought the industry into the public eye for the first time.

Fundraising levels were then counted in the millions rather than billions of dollars. As of the end of last year, Permira had already invested €1.6bn of the €5.3bn in its new fund.

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