About

Prior to his in-house career, Dr Markus A. Federle was a highly successful private practice lawyer, with his most recent role in this category being as partner and head of private equity Germany for Wall Street’s Dewey Ballantine. He credits his move from this conventional career path to a less commonplace one as co-founder and partner of special situations investment firm ESO Capital as having intensely sharpened his commercial instincts: ‘Moving to the principal side and becoming an entrepreneur is an eye opening experience as you progress from an advisor to an active risk manager and taker. The change in perspective is a radical one and makes you appreciate the difficulty of balancing and aligning legal and business needs’. In place at Samena Capital Group since 2013, he recalls having to build the company’s legal function from scratch. ‘First and foremost’, he explains, ‘this meant prioritising the issues that needed to be addressed and finding the time in the day-to-day work to think strategically about the development of the department. It also meant finding the right people whose expertise, work ethos and demeanour would be a good fit for the organisation and my way of working’. He has enjoyed a fantastic record of completed transactions with the company as well. ‘I have been deeply involved in all transactions of the Samena management funds since my joining of the firm in 2013. My involvement covers all stages of a transaction from sourcing (NDA) through to term sheet and execution stages’. In the last three years, Dr Federle has completed a number of notable investments in companies around the world, particularly in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.