Volpi II closes on €323m

The fund, which had a target of €300m, will continue its strategy of investing in technology-enabled, B2B companies in northern Europe. The fund did not have a hard-cap. Crevan O'Grady, a founder of Volpi, said: "We never actually nailed it down because we never wanted the fund to grow much beyond €300m."

The fund has a team of 17 investment professionals; the team will continue to grow as the fund is invested, according to a statement. The fund is domiciled in Luxembourg and has a management fee of 2%, a hurdle rate of 8% and a carry rate of 20%.

The firm began raising towards the end of 2019, though the fund was registered in October 2018, according to Unquote Data. It did hold a first close, but O'Grady declined to comment on when and how much the fund closed on.

He said: "When we look back on it, immediately post-launch, there was some uncertainty in the world, and traction had slowed to a point, but once we got into the summer of 2020, it was becoming increasingly clear that the world was bifurcating between those sectors that are unaffected, or positively affected, and those sectors that were negatively affected by the crisis. Once that became clear, we ended up closing to our expected time table, but if I had a choice I would not do it again from home."

The fund's predecessor closed on £185m in April 2018.

Rede Partners acted as placement agent, while Loyens & Loeff and MJ Hudson acted as legal advisers.

Investors
The fund has a total of around 20 LPs. "Our objective was to end up with a base of LPs that could grow with us," said O'Grady. "And I think we have achieved that."

Volpi secured backing from both existing investors (around 70% of committed capital), and substantial new commitments from European institutions and US-based institutions (around 30%). Said O'Grady: "We didn't consider LPs outside of North America and Europe. I think we're just too small to go further afield." University endowments, funds-of-funds, insurance companies and family offices invested.

Investments
Volpi II has made five acquisitions to date: Netherlands-based IT services company Mansystems; Norway-based FSM software provider Asolvi; Netherlands-based fleet management software provider Moving Intelligence; Denmark-based software business Boyum IT; and Profit Software, a Nordic IT service for the insurance and banking sectors. O'Grady expected the fund to make three or four more investments, as the fund is now 40-45% deployed.

The firm typically invests €25-75m in equity in businesses with enterprise values of €50-200m. "We've been averaging equity tickets of around €30m across Volpi I and II, with added co-investment making our typical investment around €40m," said O'Grady.

"Our space is showing good growth, and we're not a high-volume business, but we do a lot of buy-and-build. There's no shortage of opportunities, it's just finding things we're a good fit for, and are a good fit for us, but I'm not concerned about that," said O'Grady. The founder expects to close the fund's next deal in the first half of 2021.

People
Volpi Capital – Crevan O'Grady (founder).

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