On the patience required of institutions.
This is the inaugural letter of DGF Frères Capital. It is offered without ceremony, in the form the institution intends to keep: one letter each year, addressed to those who return.
The work of merchant banking in this period has reinforced an old observation. The matters that fail are rarely the matters that look risky. They are the matters that looked obvious — and were carried forward before they were ready.
We have spent the year preparing matters that, in other hands, would have been accelerated. Some progressed. Some did not. A meaningful number became eligible only after months of quiet work that produced no visible movement.
We have learned, again, that the most valuable thing an institution can do for a serious matter is to refuse to move it prematurely. That refusal — disciplined, patient, and accountable — is what merchant banking is.
— DGF Frères Capital