Standard manages its founding family’s shareholdings.

Core Holdings

Pharmaceuticals

Headed by scientists turned entrepreneurs Jean-Paul and Martine Clozel, Swiss company Idorsia was spun-off from Actelion with a pipeline of eleven compounds, of which four blockbuster materials in late-stage development. The biotech crash and a series of setbacks left it for dead in the eyes of investors, its outstanding assets and leadership notwithstanding. Montreal-based Knight Therapeutics, for its part, is engaged in the licensing business and structured as a carbon copy of Jonathan Goodman’s highly successful first venture, Paladin Labs, but on a greater scale and with a focus on Latin America.

Energy

Industrials

Groupe Guillin is a steadily growing packaging and food safety company controlled by the Guillin family. In the wake of the energy crisis in early 2022, it got tarred with the wrong brush as it faced a terrifying but temporary rise of input costs. In a like manner, run and tightly controlled by flemish entrepreneur Luc Tack—the turnaround artist of Picanol fame—Tessenderlo Chemie sports entrenched competitive positions in each of its subsidiaries and has plenty of leeway to grow in Europe and North America, yet it remains chronically undervalued on both its earning power and sum-of-the-parts basis.

Distrtibution

Software

Based in the Netherlands and partially spun out from Mark Leonard’s Constellation Software, which retains oversight and a controlling stake, Topicus intends to replicate its parent holding company’s extraordinarily successful approach to M&A within the European vertical market software sector—a fragmented landscape with scores of hidden champions and less private equity money chasing acquisitions.