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hello and welcome to our presentation titled why 
is there a whale of silence the exploration of

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the search fund phenomenon recently the private 
equity phenomenon of search funds continues to

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gain further momentum within the industry 
and media current statistics indicate a

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record growth of search funds worldwide for 2019 
there are 286 cases involved into the procedure

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furthermore the number of search fund success 
stories within the media are increasing as well

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this leads us to our first question what is 
a search fund the model generally involves

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a young individual named the serger who convinces 
a group of investors to finance its quest to find

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a suitable firm with succession problems the aim 
of the searcher is to become the successor of the

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retiring ceo however despite the increasing 
number of search funds and media coverage

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research has paid very limited 
attention to this phenomenon

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there is no theoretical foundation to explain 
search funds and the underlying processes

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this led us to the formulation of our research 
questions we want to explore the phenomenon

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of search funds and clarify the question who 
interacts with whom and why within the model

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based on those investigations we want to explain 
which theoretical concepts can help to encode and

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establish search funds within theory to reach this 
target our data is derived from a series of 21

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in-depth and semi-structured interviews which 
were analyzed by using grounded theory mythology

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our findings indicate that extending the view 
of current pe reports we discovered and propose

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an eight-stage search fund process which 
contains the most relevant milestones shows

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the involved parties and the interactions 
of the parties within every process step

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this enabled us to draw connections to other 
theories of management based on our observations

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we contribute to the field of entrepreneurial 
opportunities principal agent and family firm

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succession first we reveal search funds 
to be a real entrepreneurial opportunity

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in which searchers function as entrepreneurs 
second and in contrast to traditional private

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equity transactions search funds are revealed to 
reduce agency conflict significantly leading to

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lower agency costs for the principal and third 
we reveal searches to have some characteristics

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with internal family succession candidates which 
challenges the perception of searchers as external

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candidates therefore searches are proposed to be 
an advantages hybrid succession mechanism which

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enriches the family firm succession literature we 
hope to see you at our presentation slot in june