Subscribe to unlock this article
Thanks for your support.
Founded in 2024 by Alain Brossé, Steven Coppens, and Christopher Tournis Gamble, Belgium-based Wad Capital, an ETA-style accelerator/incubator enabling outstanding entrepreneurs to buy and build exceptional businesses, is progressing well in 2025. Their first cohort of CEOs-in-residence, selected from over 750 entrepreneurial candidates, has already completed three initial acquisitions, marking the start of the firm’s growth phase. Groupe Jordan and Mignone (both based in Hainaut) and Alsec (Walloon Brabant) collectively employ 240 people.
“We are extremely proud of these first acquisitions,” says Steven Coppens, Managing Partner at Wad Capital. “They not only demonstrate the added value of the search fund model but, above all, the trust that entrepreneurs place in us to grow their life’s work. This is just the beginning. We see an enormous pipeline of high-quality companies ready for their next phase. We are primarily focusing on sectors where we expect significant innovation in the coming years: healthcare, driven by an aging population, as well as energy transition and digitalization.”
With nearly half of European SME leaders over 60, finding suitable successors is critical for business continuity and growth. To address this, Wad Capital is building a €100M fund to finance and support experienced CEOs in their search for, and acquisition of, SMEs that require revitalization or are undergoing succession. Backed by major Belgian and Dutch families, the fund is expected to reach its hard cap in March 2026. A new cohort of 10 CEOs-in-residence will be launched next year, following 7 in 2024 and 8 more in 2025.
Their data-driven approach leverages proprietary software to analyze 60,000 relevant companies annually. Their talent team engages with 1,500 of these companies and reviews 500 in detail, ultimately developing 30 high-potential investment cases. Wad Capital focuses on companies within 300 km of Brussels with €1–5M in EBITDA, operating in fragmented sectors with proven track records. Each CEO benefits from a structured board of five experts with complementary skills, providing collective guidance, fostering strategic growth, and driving innovation to ensure optimal positioning for success.
Wad Capital employs a disciplined and flexible approach tailored to each situation, combining proprietary capital (their fund holds a majority stake), partial seller reinvestment, and appropriate external financing, such as Wallonie Entreprendre, which participated in two of the three acquisitions. Typically, the new CEO acquires a 20% ownership stake in the company.
