Terra Firma
In 2002, Hands founded Terra Firma Capital Partners, as a spinout from Nomura, which he had built into one of the largest private equity investors in Europe. Terra Firma debuted with a €2 billion private equity fund, immediately making the young firm one of the larger private equity players in Europe.
The firm's early investments, while still a division of Nomura, focused on housing (Annington Homes), leasing companies and pubs. Since 2002, the firm has made major investments in the waste management (Waste Recycling Group), energy (BGCL, East Surrey Holdings, Phoenix Natural Gas, aircraft leasing (AWAS), cinema (Odeon Cinemas/UCI) and music sectors (EMI). TFCP has also made significant investments in German residential housing (Deutsche Annington) and motorway services (Tank & Rast).
Terra Firma is now also one of the world’s leading private equity investors in renewable energy. Its investments include the UK based independent pure green energy business (Infinis), a US wind energy business (EverPower) and an Italian solar energy business (RTR).
Hands and Terra Firma are also known for the failed investment in British music company EMI, which was later taken over by Citigroup, the main lender in the investment. Citigroup took ownership of EMI Group from Terra Firma on 1 February 2011, wiping out the firm's investments and writing off £2.2 billion of debt. Despite implementing an operational turnaround, Terra Firma was reported to have lost $2.5 billion in the EMI transaction, representing roughly one-third of Terra Firma's investor's capital as well as more than 60% of Hands' personal net worth. Hands had spent much of 2010 engaged in litigation with Citigroup, claiming the bank engaged in fraud during its auction of EMI in 2007. The lawsuit went to trial in New York in late 2010 and resulted in a jury finding in favor of Citigroup and against Terra Firma and Guy Hands. Hands acknowledged that the EMI deal had been a mistake when he said, "If we hadn’t done that, we’d have 90% of our funds still to invest and we’d look like complete geniuses. Instead, having written off well over a billion, we look like chumps."
Famous quotes related to terra firma:
“Oh, give me again the rover’s life—the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“In the event of an oxygen shortage on airplanes, mothers of young children are always reminded to put on their own oxygen mask first, to better assist the children with theirs. The same tactic is necessary on terra firma. There’s no way of sustaining our children if we don’t first rescue ourselves. I don’t call that selfish behavior. I call it love.”
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
“A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land. They must not yield wheat and potatoes, but must themselves be the unconstrained and natural harvest of their author’s lives.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)