SüdBG

SüdBG

Süd Beteiligungen GmbH (SüdBG) provides equity capital to mid-market companies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The firm was formed out of the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), and its team includes professionals who transferred from LBBW's direct investment and venture capital arms. Gunter Max has been the managing director and spokesperson since 2001, and in 2024 the firm added Christian Gehrlein, a former managing director at Freitag & Co, as a second managing director to drive new acquisitions. SüdBG structures equity solutions for buyouts, growth financing, succession, and spin-off situations. Its deal teams have completed transactions in the automotive supply, machinery, services, and metal-processing industries. While individual portfolio company names are not catalogued on its public site, a disclosed recent exit is Janoschka AG. The firm deploys capital across the DACH region and scouts for deals through its parent LBBW's corporate banking relationships. The investment team includes six investment directors and several senior investment managers, supported by middle-office and compliance functions — roughly 18 professionals in total. The firm is headquartered in Stuttgart. Its parent entity, LBBW, maintains a separate venture capital subsidiary, LBBW Venture Capital GmbH, with which SüdBG shares back-office staff. In early 2024, Christian Gehrlein joined as managing director, reflecting a push to increase deal origination. SüdBG is not an independent partnership — it is a subsidiary of Germany's largest state bank, which acts as a permanent capital vehicle and a proprietary deal-flow source. This bank-owned model gives it a balance sheet that is not subject to fund-life constraints, allowing it to hold equity positions through economic cycles without the pressure of a fixed exit timeline.