Germany’s Bafin Says Private-Equity Should Invest Longer

Private-equity firms that focus on buying closed life insurance funds should invest for the long term to bolster the industry if they are to be tolerated, Germany’s financial regulator said.

Bafin would accept buyout firms that “don’t act in too rough a way and don’t try to push through overly short investment horizons to run away after three or four years,” Felix Hufeld, Bafin’s head of insurance supervision, said at a conference organized by Handelsblatt newspaper in Munich today. “Should that happen, we would stop talking about run-off as an option for Germany for the next 25 years.”