Frank Schaum
Partner
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- Full Name
- Dr. Frank Schaum
- Title
- Former Managing Director (Geschäftsführer), IKB Invest GmbH; currently advisory board member (Beiratsmitglied), PEAC Finance
- Firm
- IKB Invest GmbH (subsidiary of IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG)
- Firm Type
- Institutional bank-affiliated equity/growth-capital and mezzanine investor for the German Mittelstand — not an angel investor (see note below)
- Investment Stage
- Growth capital / expansion and quasi-equity (mezzanine) financing for established mid-sized companies (not seed)
- Sector Focus
- Sector-agnostic mid-market (Mittelstand); financing tied to growth, succession, and balance-sheet strengthening
- Geographic Focus
- DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), primarily Germany
- Location
- Duisburg / Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Background
Dr. Frank Schaum is a Düsseldorf-/Duisburg-based investment professional who spent most of his career in bank-affiliated private equity and mid-market financing. He served as Managing Director (Geschäftsführer) of IKB Invest GmbH — the equity-financing arm of IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG — from January 2011 until September 2019, when the commercial register (HRB 22389, Düsseldorf) records Dr. Jörn Heidrich succeeding him. At IKB Invest he was responsible for the existing investment portfolio and for equity and quasi-equity (mezzanine) financing of medium-sized companies from the DACH region, alongside IKB AG credit products including subsidized/promotional (Förder-) lending.
Before joining IKB, Schaum worked in the investment business of DEG – Deutsche Entwicklungs- und Investitionsgesellschaft GmbH (a KfW-group development-finance institution) in Cologne. Profiles at the time credited him with more than seven years of experience in the investment business. He studied economics and political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen and at Université Paris-Dauphine, and holds a doctorate (Dr.).
Today Schaum is listed as an advisory board member (Beiratsmitglied) at PEAC Finance (PEAC Solutions), a European asset- and equipment-finance/leasing group, applying his experience in private equity, portfolio management, and capital markets. His continued IKB email address suggests an ongoing affiliation with the IKB group.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Invests through an institutional, bank-affiliated vehicle (IKB Invest GmbH), not personal angel capital.
- Provides equity and quasi-equity / mezzanine financing to established, profitable mid-sized (Mittelstand) companies — for growth, expansion, succession, and balance-sheet strengthening — rather than early-stage venture bets.
- Geographic focus on the DACH region, primarily Germany.
- Generally sector-agnostic, in line with IKB's broad Mittelstand lending and equity franchise.
- Membership of the German Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVK) via IKB Invest signals a mainstream mid-market PE mandate.
- *(Specific check-size ranges and revenue thresholds are held in gated databases and could not be independently verified; they are omitted rather than guessed.)*
Notable Investments
- Individual, name-attributable portfolio companies for Frank Schaum could not be reliably verified from public sources. IKB's equity activity ran through IKB Invest GmbH and its predecessor IKB Private Equity GmbH, which historically supplied growth and mezzanine capital to German Mittelstand companies. No specific deal is listed here because none could be confirmed as directly attributable to him without risk of fabrication.
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