Verdane acquires Nordic Venture Partners I portfolio

The value of the deal is undisclosed, but is estimated to be approximately DKR 300m for both the acquisition of Nordic Venture Partners I and the advisory contract for Nordic Venture Partners II, which Verdane will now be managing.

Verdane's investment in Nordic Venture Partners constitutes its 19th in the Nordic region. The firm had followed Nordic Venture Partners for a number of years, and in December 2012 Verdane offered the LPs of Nordic Venture Partners I the option of selling their interests to Verdane or continuing their investments in the fund.

The deal originated through shared networks; the parties already knew of one another due to Verdane and NVP both being players on the Nordic market.

The Nordic Venture Partners I fund was backed by nine different investors including significant Danish LPs such as ATP, PensionDanmark, Danske Bank and Sampension.

Nordic Venture Partners I consists of two different vehicles (Nordic Venture Partners KS and Nordic Venture Partners Seed KS) and was established in 2000 as a DKR 1.5bn expansion capital and early-stage fund.

The fund portfolio consists of four direct assets; CRF Health, Saxotech, Octoshape and Excitor, with the most significant of the four being CRF Health and Saxotech.

CRF Health is a service provider to the life sciences industry, focused on providing technology for patient reporting in clinical trials (for example via smartphones and tablets). The company was founded in Helsinki in 2000.

Saxotech provides content production and distribution solutions for the newspaper industry. The company was founded in Aalborg, Denmark, in 1993 and has expanded into the US from its base in Northern Europe.

Octoshape and Excitor are both headquartered in Denmark. Octoshape's core business is video streaming services, while Excitor's main activities are mobile device management, mobile email and "business mobilisation" solutions.

Verdane completed a similar deal in Finland in 2011; however this is the first investment the firm makes in Denmark. More investments in the country will follow if the right opportunities arise, the GP told unquote".

Since 2003, Verdane has organised four secondaries direct funds & co-investment pools, and the funds it advises have more than €500m of committed capital. The funds advised by Verdane have acquired 19 portfolios with stakes in more than 250 companies.

People
Lars B Thoresen is a managing partner at Verdane.

Advisers

Equity - Andulf Advokat, Gorrissen Federspiel, Hannes Snellman (Legal); KPMG (Commercial & financial due diligence)

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

• Topics
• Nordics
• Now researching
• Portfolio management
• Financials
• Denmark
• Verdane Capital Partners