Andera holds €360m first close for Winch Capital 4

Launched in Q4 2017, the fund's original target amounted to €350m, with a hard-cap of €400m. 

Winch Capital 4 has already surpassed the size of the previous Winch Capital 3 fund, closed on €300m in 2013. The fund has been fully deployed since June, according to Sylvain Charignon, partner at Andera. 

Winch Capital 3 orchestrated a couple of particularly successful exits in the past few months, including SFAM, an affinity insurance brokerage specialist, and Exclusive Group, an IT security firm. These exits facilitated the fundraising process for the fourth-generation fund according to Charignon. 

Five months ago, the GP concluded fundraising for BioDiscovery V, which closed on €354m, exceeding its original hard-cap.

No placement agent was used for the fundraise. 

Investors
Backers of Winch Capital 3 that have committed to its successor include the European Investment Fund, BPI France, Sogecap, BNP Paribas Cardif, UMR and MACSF. Most of these LPs committed either the same amount provided for Winch Capital 3 or more.

Institutional investors (funds-of-funds, insurance companies, and institutions de prévoyance) are responsible for 80% of current commitments, with the remainder coming from family offices and high-net-worth individuals.

Charignon says the GP actively tried to internationalise the LP base of the vehicle, and around 20% of backers are non-French.

Edmond de Rothschild Group, a former LP of Winch Capital 3, is not recommitting this time around. A spokesperson for Andera confirmed that Edmond de Rothschild had only committed around 5% in Winch Capital 3. This is the result of the spin-out from Rothschild and subsequent rebrand to Andera earlier in the year. The spin-out saw the management team and employees of Andera acquire the 51% stake in the firm previously owned by Edmond de Rothschild Group. 

Investments
Winch Capital 4 intends to back SMEs primarily in France and Italy, and occasionally elsewhere in Europe. Portfolio companies will be valued in the €30-300m range. Andera will acquire either a minority or majority stake, providing equity tickets between €12-40m, with the capacity to structure additional rounds of financing of up to €80m.

Originally specialised in the acquisition of minority stakes via its Winch vehicles, Andera became more familiar with investment in majority stakes with Winch 3, in which a third of investments were majority stakes.

The vehicle's first investment is the buyout of France-based Skill & You, a distance learning specialist, for which it provided a €30m ticket. 

People
Andera Partners – Sylvain Charignon, Antoine Le Bourgeois, François-Xavier Mauron, Pierre-Yves Poirier, Laurent Tourtois (partners).

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