Value creation for funds: the operational direction that protects and multiplies a portfolio company's value

For a decade private equity made its return mainly on financial leverage and the entry multiple: you bought at a price, loaded debt, the market expanded multiples, and at exit the return was largely a matter of capital structure rather than of the company itself. That season is over. The private equity analyses of 2026 (McKinsey, EY, FTI) agree on a single point that redraws the craft: operational value creation has replaced financial engineering as the primary driver of returns. The thesis of this article is direct: in 2026 the return is not made at the closing, it is made afterwards, in execution on the portfolio company, and what protects and multiplies a fund's capital is not leverage but governed value creation.

Define the terms. Operational value creation means raising the value of the business by acting on its real fundamentals (margin, organic growth, quality of revenue, working-capital efficiency, robustness of process) and not on capital structure alone. It is value that stays in the company regardless of the market multiple. The operating partner is the figure who brings this direction inside the portfolio company: not the investment analyst, but the executor with genuine functional expertise who works alongside management to make the plan happen. The 100-day plan is the window in which the value agenda is set right after acquisition: diagnosis, redesign of governance and control, and the translation of the investment thesis into a tracked plan with ownership and deadlines. Three simple notions, but it is their discipline, not their definition, that separates the funds that create value from those that merely claim it.

What the market says. The strongest signal of 2026 is where funds are putting their resources. They are doubling down on operating talent: operating partners with real expertise in AI integration, commercial acceleration, pricing, supply chain and human capital are now essential, and competition for that talent is escalating, with higher compensation, more aggressive recruiting and the movement of entire functional teams. In the mid-market, sector specialisation is the primary differentiator: genuine domain expertise sources deals earlier, diligences faster and adds more value post-acquisition than generalists. On the technology front, more than half of mid-market PE portfolio companies have active AI initiatives, and firms deploying AI to drive margin improvement differentiate themselves in fundraising and at exit. Above all, a new constraint: LP patience is now finite, and the gap between firms that demonstrate value creation and those that merely claim it keeps widening (the private equity analyses of 2026 (McKinsey, EY, FTI)). This is not a change of fashion: it is a change in the nature of return.

The framework: the portfolio-company value-creation playbook. Operational direction cannot be improvised; it follows a precise sequence, and that is the method we propose. First, the 100-day plan: a fast, honest diagnosis of the real company, the redesign of governance and control so there is a cockpit that sees the right numbers at the right time, and the conversion of the value thesis into an operating plan with owners, milestones and metrics. Second, the operational and commercial levers: pricing, where the most accessible margin often hides; go-to-market, to grow where demand actually pays; supply chain, to strip out fragility and cost; cost-to-serve, to see which customers and which products create value and which erode it. Third, AI deployed where it moves margin: not as a showcase project, but applied to the lines of the income statement where it produces measurable effect. Fourth, and decisive, the discipline of demonstrated results: KPIs defined from day one and a value bridge measured from entry to exit, where every point of margin and growth is attributed to the lever that produced it. Value proven with numbers, not asserted. It is the difference between an exit story and an exit fact.

What it means, and the pitfalls. For a fund this means alpha is generated in the engine room of the portfolio company, not in the leveraged-buyout model. But the ground is full of traps. The first is the 100-day plan as ritual: an opening deck filed away and never tracked, while the window in which a value culture is set quietly closes. The second is the operating partner as a title without real grip, a figurehead who never truly enters the operation and never answers for the numbers. The third is AI by announcement: initiatives that exist for the fundraising slide but never touch margin, and which do not escape an experienced LP. The fourth, and the most costly, is confusing claimed value with demonstrated value: without a bridge measured from entry to exit, in a market where multiples no longer expand on their own, a fund reaches exit with a narrative and no proof. With LP patience now finite, that is precisely the gap that decides the next fundraise.

How Krymax steps in. We work alongside funds and investors with executive direction on the portfolio company, inside a perimeter defined from day one: what enters the mandate, where management's responsibility ends and ours begins, which results must exist at exit that do not exist today. We build and execute the 100-day plan (diagnosis, governance and control redesign, the value thesis turned into a tracked plan) and we pull the operational and commercial levers (pricing, go-to-market, supply chain, cost-to-serve) where they actually move margin, with AI applied only where it produces measurable effect. We work to verifiable KPIs and milestones, with a value bridge legible in the boardroom from entry to exit, and we deliver output the board can use and an investor can read. Where needed, we take an operating-partner, fractional or interim role to lead execution from within, with Swiss rigour, confidentiality and accountability for the numbers. The principle is firm: value must stay in the company. When the mandate ends, what remains is consolidated margin, governance that holds and a management team able to keep the course, not a dependency on the adviser.

In 2026 the return is made after the closing, in execution. Leverage amplifies a result, it does not create one; what protects and multiplies a fund's capital is governed value creation on the portfolio company. That is exactly where we work.