From succession to scale
Arete buys a controlling stake in one Singapore business whose owner is ready to step back, and an operator moves in to run it. Not a manager we appoint. Not a fund with a three-year clock.
What we are
Arete Corporate Advisory is a Singapore search fund. The model above is four decades old in the United States and common across Europe. It is close to unknown here, which is precisely the opportunity.
We are searching for our first acquisition. We say so plainly, because you will find out anyway and because the alternative is a company pretending to a history it does not have. What we bring instead of a portfolio is a defined mandate, committed backing, and a bench of operators who have built, financed and exited businesses across Asia.
The bench, in numbers
The figures are not a boast. They are the reason nothing about a transaction of your size will be unfamiliar to us, and the reason you will not be anyone’s first attempt.
What we buy
Profitable, with a customer book that does not depend on any one relationship. Below the floor of institutional private equity in this region, and above the reach of most individual buyers.
Operations may extend across Southeast Asia and North Asia. The company and its people stay here.
A majority position, with flexibility on how and when the balance transfers. Sellers frequently retain a stake.
We are not assembling a portfolio to flip. There is no fund clock forcing a sale on a schedule.
If your business sits a little outside these lines, write anyway. The criteria describe where we look first, not a rule we apply without thinking.
Who you would be dealing with
Arete is led by a single operating principal, MBA, who will become full-time chief executive of the business we acquire.
He is not an investor appointing someone else to run your company, and he is not a committee that meets quarterly. He is the person who will be in the building on the Monday after you leave, and for years after that. Your staff will report to him. Your customers will meet him.
He does not arrive alone.
Former chief executive of a Singapore Mainboard-listed group and deputy chief executive of a Hong Kong-listed real estate investment platform. Listed-company leadership, capital raising, mergers and acquisitions, and shareholder exits.
Callable on capital structure, banking relationships, and the eventual exit path.
Co-founder of a regional manpower group operating across nine cities in Asia. Building and running people-intensive operating businesses, which is where most companies of this size actually break.
Callable on hiring, workforce structure, and the operational lift after completion.
Owner and president of a Japanese logistics and pharmaceutical group, operating as a principal rather than an adviser across North Asia for two decades.
Callable on the Japan channel, including customer introductions and supply relationships a Singapore company of this size cannot ordinarily reach.
Global mergers, acquisitions, initial public offerings and capital markets for a global conglomerate, across multiple continents and market cycles, in-house rather than as an outside adviser.
Callable on acquisition discipline, bolt-on transactions, and integration.
Why this bench
Real Operators. Each of them has been the person who decides.
Most people entering this market elsewhere are recent business school graduates with a search fund structure and no experience of running anything. It is a legitimate route. It is not the one we are relying on. Three of the four above have managed and run a company as an owner or a chief executive, where the decisions were theirs and the consequences landed on them rather than on a client. The fourth has spent nineteen years buying companies from inside one.
These four sit as an advisory board with governance rights over the acquisition. Names are withheld here because several hold current executive positions elsewhere, and are disclosed to you directly under confidentiality.
Why now
Singapore’s small and medium enterprises were largely built by founders who are now in their sixties and seventies. Survey work by Sun Life, PwC and KPMG points in the same direction: a substantial share have no succession plan, and a substantial share of the next generation has no intention of taking over.1
The uncomfortable part is what the market offers them. Private equity in Southeast Asia has moved decisively upmarket, with recent deal analysis showing average disclosed transaction sizes in the hundreds of millions of US dollars.2 A profitable company worth S$12Mn is not too small to matter. It is simply too small to be seen.
Which is why a business that took thirty years to build so often ends not in a sale but in a shutter, with the staff dispersed and the customer relationships gone. That is not a market failure we find interesting. It is one we find unnecessary.
1 Sun Life 2025; PwC and KPMG Singapore family business survey data. Full citations on the thesis page.
2 Bain & Company and EY Southeast Asia private equity data, 2026.
The difference
Not a criticism of anyone. A buyer who has to sell the company again in three years is behaving rationally. We are not that buyer, and the consequences show up in six places.
Two ways in
You do not need a valuation, an information memorandum, or a decision. Most of the owners we speak to are two or three years away from doing anything at all, and those are the conversations we value most.
If you are a broker, accountant, lawyer or banker with a succession mandate, we are a straightforward counterparty: a defined mandate, committed capital, and a principal who decides rather than escalates.
