Value creation is the first thing judges look for when determining Belgium’s best mid-cap private equity exit.
Every winner of the Best Mid Cap Private Equity Exit Award, so far, has had a different hold period. Fortino Capital Partners owned Sigma Conso for eighteen months before flipping it to Prophix. Sofindev held Companyweb for seven years. Smile Invest's stake in SmartSD ran longer still. What they do share, however, is how much value each PE firm packed into the time it had.
Preparations are now underway for the ninth annual M&A Awards Belgium, taking place on 26 November 2026 at Brussels' Palais 10, where the Best Mid Cap PE Exit Award returns to recognise exactly this kind of dealmaking. The category – developed in collaboration with Knowledge Partner Vlerick Business School – is deliberately structure-agnostic: any deal in which the seller is a PE firm or family investor qualifies (provided the deal value falls between €25 million and €250 million) and whoever is on the other side of the table doesn’t matter either. Furthermore, both minority and majority stakes are considered.
Sofindev, for instance, took only a minority stake in Companyweb back in 2018, leaving founders Ilse Getteman and Patrick De Smet in place as managing directors. In doing this, the firm positioned itself less as an owner of the day-to-day operations and more as a strategic sounding board, challenging decisions and opening up its network. Jury member Professor Sophie Manigart commended the company’s transformation into a scalable SaaS platform with strong recurring revenues and a modernised tech backbone when naming the winner at the 2025 M&A Awards Belgium.
2024 winner, Smile Invest, has a similar approach with the owners they back, except it invests through an evergreen vehicle rather than a fixed-life fund, so it's never forced to sell on a fundraising clock. That gave it room to consolidate SmartSD into a single digital-first distribution platform across the Benelux and France – pushing sales up roughly 20 percent a year and nearly tripling EBITDA to around €21 million on €140 million in revenue – before choosing to exit to Cobepa on its own terms, at an 8x MOIC and an IRR near 49 percent.
Additionally, Fortino Capital Partners had owned Sigma Conso for only 18 months before Prophix made an unsolicited offer in 2022, proving that with the right strategy, you don’t need years of intervention to earn a deserving exit.
The common thread across most of the previous winners is PE capital paired with a specific growth lever (buy-and-build, a business-model shift, or both) deployed alongside founders who stay in the business rather than being replaced by it.
Requirements and qualifying criteria
This year’s list of candidates for the category is growing quickly, with exits from Gimv, Verlinvest, Ardian, Vortex Capital Partners, EQT, GBL, Creafund, Green Park Investments, KeBek, Bencis Capital Partners and Strada Partners, alongside new deals from previous winners, Fortino Capital Partners and Smile Invest (who celebrated the completion of seven successful exits this year).
Deals are assessed against five dimensions:
- Deal rationale – the strategy and vision behind the transaction and whether it fits a larger buy-and-build or growth trajectory;
- Value creation – revenue and EBITDA growth over the hold period, realised return on exit and track record of innovation;
- Impact for stakeholders – effects on management, employees, clients and society, including ESG;
- Deal process – skilled execution, a smooth and timely process, financing structure, and how deal complexity was overcome; and
- The entrepreneurs and management behind the company – track record, leadership and the culture they built.
Deals need at least one Belgian component (buyer, seller or target) and must be published in dealmakerdata.be before 1 October 2026. The review period runs from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026, with completion required by 31 December 2026 for deals submitted late in that window. A deal can only be nominated in one category, and the jury alone determines nominees and winner, with members recusing themselves from any deal involving their own employer.
For more information about the framework and procedure for judging, visit www.manda.be/awards/ma-awards-2026-regulations/
If your firm structured, backed or advised a mid-cap exit this year, nominate your deal before the deadline to guarantee consideration and join your peers at Palais 10 to celebrate the very best of Belgian M&A. Or book a table to be there when the winner is announced.
