Summa opens North American office

Ero Partsakoulaki
08 August 2022

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Stockholm-headquartered impact-focused GP Summa Equity is opening an office in Palo Alto, California, which will be led by several of the firmтs existing partners.

Summa partners Tommi Unkuri, Gustavo Salem and Nick Roelofs will lead the firm's new US operations. They will be joined by investment director Anna Ryrberg, according to a press release.

Unkuri has been with Summa since its inception and leads the Changing Demographics theme at the firm, drawing on his experience as a healthcare investor. As a thematic partner with experience in life science and diagnostics companies, Salem is also part of the Changing Demographics team. Roelofs has more than 30-years' experience in the same industries, including Baxter Healthcare, Applied Biosystems, Stratagene, Bio-Rad and Agilent, according to a press release. As part of the investment team, Ryrberg, who previously worked for J.P. Morgan, is also focusing on Changing Demographics.

The US office is Summa's first outside Europe and its fourth in total. Its existing offices are based in Stockholm and Oslo, as well as Munich, where it opened an office earlier this year, according to the announcement.

The news comes after the firm held a final close for its third flagship fund on SEK 23bn (EUR 2.4bn) in January 2022. Fund III has a broadened remit compared with its predecessors and will invest in growth companies, covering a broader range of geographies than Summa's previous vehicles, including the DACH region, Benelux and the US, as reported. Summa Equity Fund II held a final close in February 2019 on SEK 6.8bn (EUR 680m), meaning that its successor vehicle is around three times its size.

The new fund has invested in companies including Norway-based Tibber, a smart energy company that is active in several European markets, as well as in Belgian fintech company Intix, that helps large financial institutions monitor transactions for money laundering, corruption and other illicit financial flows, as reported.

Summa Equity Fund II acquired a year ago, majority stakes in both Axion BioSystems, an Atlanta, Georgia-based multi-electrode array technology equipment maker, and in G-CON Manufacturing, a College Station, Texas-based manufacturer of prefabricated cleanrooms for the pharmaceuticals industry, as reported.

Summa will be prioritizing companies in healthcare, investing in assets with an innovative and transformative solutions approach, according to a press release. Under this theme, the GP invests in transformative companies that will deliver positive outcomes and sustainable growth for communities across the globe, creating value for the wider public.

Summa's deployment strategy is in line with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, according to a press release, and has made 23 investments that advance these goals. The GP is a certified B Corp and has also collaborated with the Impact Weighted Accounts (IWA) project at Harvard Business School. It has around EUR 4bn (SEK 40bn) in assets under management.