Direct investments held for the long horizon — in heavy industry, downstream petroleum, machinery, real assets and the businesses adjacent to the practices the house already runs. We deploy proprietary capital. We do not raise from limited partners. Every position is held in the name of the house and decided by the founder personally.
The Investments arm operates by six standing principles. They are inherited from the second-generation Contex / Contimax era of the Schmidt family and refined by the third generation's three decades of operating responsibility across 150+ countries.
We hold for the time the asset deserves. We do not exit on a fund clock. Multi-decade holds are normal in this arm.
The house takes board seats where it owns. We do not rent management and walk away. The founder is reachable to the CEO of every direct holding.
No investment-committee theatre. The founder decides, with the discipline of someone whose name is on the building.
We hold where the house already operates. Energy near energy. Trading near trading. Machinery near manufacturing. The information-edge compounds.
A small number of meaningful positions. We would rather own a serious share of fewer businesses than minority slivers across many.
Every position is structured so the house can exit without distress. We never lock ourselves into a counterparty we cannot leave.
The house holds and has held principal positions across the industries it has operated. Specific holdings, valuations, and counterparties are disclosed only after KYC and under NDA — via the gated Deal Room. The categories below are the active sectoral surface.
Refinery shareholdings, bitumen distribution, asphalt production, specialty naphthenic oils. Precedent positions on three continents, including the third generation's role at the world's largest bitumen refining institution.
The family's traditional ground — representing and distributing the spine of the German heavy-equipment industry into emerging markets since the 1960s. Construction, asphalt, mining, and process-plant machinery.
Soviet/Russian aircraft maintenance footprints; certified turbo-prop training-aircraft and amphibian programmes from the third generation's first decade. Helicopter MRO operated under U.S. military charter in Afghanistan.
Siberian larch forestry, integrated mill operations, European-certified finger-jointed larch production, gold mining positions in Central Asia.
Industrial real estate, PPP infrastructure, crane-rental operations across the former Soviet Union, marine terminals and storage adjacent to the trading book.
Meat, poultry, seafood and fruit trade flows. Cold-chain logistics. HACCP/SPS-compliant supply lines from Latin America and Africa into the GCC and CIS.
Selective principal positions in distressed industrial assets where the house's restructuring practice can lead the recovery and the operating depth can hold the asset through the turn.
Positions adjacent to the Energy, Marine, Capital and AI desks — where the information-edge from the advisory practice meets capital from the principal arm. Strict information-walls observed; never traded.
The founder is the sole investment-decision authority. All material commitments are recorded in writing with the rationale, the assumptions, and the named counterparties.
Strict information separation between the Investments arm and the advisory practices. Advisory client information is never used for principal investment decisions, ever.
Every holding is reviewed annually against the house Constitution. Positions that no longer fit are wound down, regardless of profitability.
The Investments arm occasionally co-invests with a small group of family-office and UHNWI principals from the house's network. Co-investment is on a deal-by-deal basis, on transparent commercial terms, with no carry-on-carry. The Office of the Founder convenes co-investors when the file is ready, not when the calendar demands.