CVC hires TPG’s second-in-command Todd Sisitsky as co-CEO
Private equity group brings on executive as part of succession plan for chief Rob Lucas
CVC Capital Partners has hired rival TPG’s second-highest-ranking executive Todd Sisitsky as co-chief executive of the Amsterdam-listed private equity group as it prepares for its current head Rob Lucas to step down.
Sisitsky will join CVC in the first quarter of 2028 and will become co-chief alongside Peter Rutland, the group’s president and head of financial services investments, the company said late on Tuesday, confirming an earlier FT report.
The pair will succeed Lucas, who has led CVC since its initial public offering in 2024. The company has been seeking potential CEOs as part of a long-planned succession, the FT reported last year.
Sisitsky will also become chair of the group’s partner board as part of the succession plan. CVC said the leadership moves reflected its “well-established approach to succession planning at the most senior levels of the firm”.
Lucas will remain with CVC after he steps down as chief executive and will remain a “key man” on many of its private equity funds, the buyout group said.
Sisitsky’s hiring will bring in an outsider to the group’s top ranks, a rare move for a company famed in private equity circles for its insular and competitive culture.
CVC was spun out of Citigroup in 1993 by seven co-founders who have stepped away from operational roles in recent years. The co-founders built a competitive culture in which partners whose deals are not completed are forced to return potential incentive pay, the FT has reported.
Sisitsky had been at the US-based TPG since 2003 and is one of the most prominent healthcare investors on Wall Street. He will join CVC as it diversifies beyond its roots in private equity after the acquisition of credit manager Marathon Asset Management, infrastructure investor DIF and secondaries investor Glendower Capital.
At TPG, Sisitsky helped lead some of the company’s most lucrative deals including its takeovers of healthcare groups such as Par Pharmaceuticals, Allogene and Iqvia. He rose quickly from the lead of a healthcare sector to president and head of its global private equity operations to become second-in-command behind TPG chief executive Jon Winkelried.
Rutland, a near two-decade veteran of CVC, has led some of its most lucrative recent deals such as its acquisition of Pension Insurance Corporation, which was sold for a multibillion-dollar gain to Apollo-backed Athora earlier this year.
TPG said in a filing earlier on Tuesday that Sisitsky would step down as president and board member, “effective immediately, and depart the firm”.
While CVC manages more than $200bn in assets across equity and credit strategies and is one of Europe’s leading private markets firms, it has struggled to catch up to larger rivals Blackstone, Apollo and KKR.
Its share price of just above €14 is at the same level as its IPO price and its market capitalisation is about $17bn, a fraction of the size of US giants.