Klar Partners closes debut fund on €600m hard-cap

The GP started raising the fund in March 2020 and said that the vehicle was "significantly oversubscribed".

Klar partner Carl Johan Falkenberg told Unquote: "Teaming up with the right people – within the team, but also among advisers – has been key, and I'm happy that we got it right."

Established last year, Klar is made up of senior team members who previously worked at Triton. The GP has already deployed the fund to make two platform investments, namely a carve-out of Finnish company Empower IM and Swedish technical installation company Sandbäckens.

Describing the fundraising process, the GP said the pandemic had "thrown everybody a lot of curve balls, including us", but that it was very important "that you build a strong foundation in your firm and are able to display that to investors".

The GP declined to comment on how much of its own capital it committed to the fund, but said: "We're going all-in on this to create alignment with our investing partners, and that is one of the things that our investment partners appreciated."

Evercore acted as the exclusive global placement agent for the fundraise, while Macfarlanes provided legal advice to the GP.

Investors
LPs in the fund include public pensions, endowments and foundations, funds-of-funds, family offices, insurance companies and consultants.
Falkenberg declined to say how many LPs there were in the fund, but added that the GP was "very happy about the quality of the investor base, which is a good mix of blue chip North American and European investors".

Investment strategy
Klar I will buy controlling stakes in 8-12 companies headquartered in the Nordic, DACH and Benelux regions. Falkenberg told Unquote that the GP only invests in B2B, mission-critical services and light industrial sectors, by which he meant companies that "offer high-margin industrial components to stable end markets". He added that this is what the members of Klar had been doing over the last 10 years, but that they were now "re-entering the small-mid-cap market".

The GP will take a transformational investing approach including growth, operational improvement and buy-and-build strategies. Many of the GP's team also have experience in carve-out deals.

People
Klar Partners – Carl Johan Falkenberg (partner).

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Funds
• Nordics
• Sweden
• United Kingdom