IK prepares for minority stake fund launch

Nicole Tovstiga
15 August 2018

Tweet
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google plus
Send to

IK Investment Partners is preparing to launch a new fund dedicated to buying minority stakes in companies, according to publicly available filings.

IK began registering vehicles for the fund in April earlier this year. The public filings indicate that IK Minority Partnership I Fund GP, the management entity that legally manages the fund, was registered by the GP in Luxembourg on 15 May. A co-investment fund and two feeder vehicles were registered on 8 August, the filings show.

The move into a minority strategy comes after the GP entered the small-cap market in 2015 when it launched the IK Small Cap I fund, holding a final close on €277m in March 2016. By November 2017, the fund had made 11 investments. A successor fund, the IK Small Cap II fund, closed on its hard-cap of €550m in February 2018. Both funds follow the same strategy of making both majority and minority buyouts in companies with an enterprise value of up to €100m across the DACH, Nordic, and Benelux regions, and France.

The new strategy follows similar launches by other GPs. Inflexion launched its second Partnership Capital Fund in February 2018, registered in Guernsey. The fund, Inflexion Partnership Capital Fund II, targets £700m and is looking for minority investments. Similarly, Bregal Milestone started to invest its €400m capital in July 2018, seeking to deploy between €20-60m in European companies in order to provide non-control growth capital.