West Private Equity, the European mid-market buy-out firm, has hired Matthias Graeper as managing director based in Düsseldorf, to develop the firm's business in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Graeper has worked in the German private equity industry for the past 15 years. He worked for Schroder Private Equity in Hamburg, then moved to Thomas Matzen, a German private equity firm, where he was a partner, and in 1993 became a managing director at Baring Capital in Hamburg. In 1996 he started his own firm focused on small and mid-cap deals in Germany.