KKR loses over €1B on Accell as pandemic e-bike bet unravels in second restructuring
What's the deal? KKR and its backers have lost more than €1 billion on their investment in Accell GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the Dutch bikemaker that owns brands including RaleighDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and BabboeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The US private equity firm has agreed to hand its remaining equity stake to Accell's senior lenders following a second debt restructuring in just over a year. KKR will exit with nothing, having written off its original €1.1 billion equity cheque plus hundreds of millions in follow-on loans.
The restructuring significantly reduces Accell's total debt and provides fresh funding, avoiding insolvency. KKR acquired Accell in a €1.8 billion deal in 2022, betting that pandemic-era growth in e-bike sales would continue.
Why now? The first restructuring, completed in February 2025, cut €600 million from Accell's €1.4 billion debt load and allowed KKR and fellow shareholder Teslin to retain control. But the company kept burning cash. A second round of talks became unavoidable when liquidity pressures persisted and no path to profitability emerged under the existing structure.
The root causes were compounding. E-bike demand grew more slowly than expected post-pandemic. Supply chain disruptions caused component shortages while Accell had simultaneously over-ordered other parts during the demand surge, leaving it with bloated inventories that had to be cleared at steep discounts — hitting both revenue and margins.
What could go wrong? Accell now passes into the hands of its lenders, who were not originally in the business of running a bicycle company. The management transition and operational complexity of transforming the business — as chief executive Jonas Nilsson describes it — while carrying reduced but still significant debt will require sustained execution. The brands retain value, but consumer demand for e-bikes in Europe remains soft.
The signal: KKR's Accell loss is a cautionary tale about pandemic-era deals made on the assumption that consumer behaviour shifts would be permanent. The e-bike boom of 2020–2021 attracted significant capital, but the normalisation of demand after lockdowns ended caught many investors off guard.
Accell is not an isolated case — across European consumer and retail, private equity firms that paid peak prices during the pandemic are now reckoning with the gap between 2021 projections and 2025 reality. For the broader market, it is a reminder that demand pull-forward is not the same as structural growth, and that leverage amplifies both the upside and the downside when the cycle turns.
Sources:
Financial Times
Private Equity Wire
A.M.
