INVL holds first close on €106m for Baltic Fund

Oscar Geen
11 February 2019

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INVL Asset Management has held a final close on €106m for its debut closed-ended private equity fund, INVL Baltic Sea Growth Fund.

The official closing took place on 7 February 2019, seven months after the vehicle was registered in June last year. It is targeting a second close in June 2019 and has a goal of €200m, with a €300m hard-cap.

So far, the fund has made two investments and it plans to build a portfolio of 10-12 companies in the Baltic region. It is targeting the funding gap left between the investment ranges of local Baltic players and large international and pan-European funds.

The team has been active in PE in the Baltic region since 1991 and has generated a cash-on-cash multiple of 2.2x and a 22.2% IRR since inception, Unquote understands.

The vehicle has a 2% management fee, 8% hurdle and 20% carry rate. The investment period is expected to last five years with an optional one-year extension; follow-on investments will be made for an additional two years after that and the entire fund life is 10 years, with two optional one-year extensions.

Investors
The European Investment Fund acted as the fund's anchor investor with a €30m commitment. The EIF used its Baltic Innovation Fund to make the commitment, a programme launched in cooperation with the governments of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to boost equity investments into Baltic SMEs.

INVL's management team will make a pooled commitment of €20m to the strategy. Also investing in the fund are Estonia's LHV pension funds, INVL pension funds and other financial and private investors.

Investments
The fund will make primary investments in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, deploying tickets between €10-30m. It will then focus on expansion into neighbouring regions such as Germany, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and FInland.

Just over half of the investments are expected to be leveraged buyouts with the remainder made up of buy-and-build strategies and growth equity transactions.

People
INVL Asset Management - Alyvas Banys (senior adviser); Darius Šulnis (managing partner); Ashwin Roy (non-executive partner); Vidas Venckus (partner); Nerijus Drobavičius (partner); Vytautas Plunksnis (partner); Andrejs Martinovs (director).