Montana Capital completes US venture secondaries deal

Aegon acquired Transamerica in 1999. Transamerica Ventures operates as a corporate venture arm, under Aegon and Transamerica, investing tickets of $2-5m per round, focusing on series-A, -B and -C rounds for companies in sectors including insurance technology, financial technology and enterprise software.

The deal is composed of 18 companies and two funds. The businesses are largely based in the US and operate in the fintech and insurtech sectors. The companies include KKR-backed online insurance business PolicyGenius, as well as Digital Currency Group, which is backed by investors including Bain Ventures and provides services for bitcoin and blockchain companies.

The Transamerica Ventures team, headed by Georg Schwegler and Andrew Pitz, has formed a new firm, HighScale Ventures, as a spinout from the vendor. HighScale Ventures Fund I will acquire Transamerica Ventures Fund, with backing from MCP.

Asked about how the deal came about, Christian Diller, managing partner and co-founder at MCP, told Unquote: "We started working on this attractive deal in November 2020. Aegon was advised on the process by Deloitte. I understand that there were many parties involved at the beginning, but we have been selected as preferred party for the seller, and also for the GP, due to our customised solution."

Dentons provided legal advice to MCP, Diller said. MCP is investing via Opportunity Secondary Program IV which held a final close in April 2018 on €800m, surpassing its €650m target. MCP's strategy focuses on both LP stakes and GP-leds, as well as direct co-investments, single fund stakes, small portfolios and funds-of-funds stakes. The GP generally focuses on deals valued at less than €50m.

"This transaction marks one of the final investments from Fund IV, and we are excited to continue our proven investment strategy in MCP OSP V, where we have already closed our first deal," said Diller.

MCP's fifth secondaries programme held a final close in December 2020 on its hard-cap of €1.3bn. The larger fund will afford the GP more flexibility in the number of deals that it can carry out via the fund and will also mean that the firm can undertake some larger deals, managing partner and co-founder Marco Wulff told Unquote in January 2021. 

"We will continue to target transactions in the small-cap and mid-market with deal sizes below €100m and a sweet spot between €30-70m," Diller told Unquote.

The Transamerica deal is valued in the upper end of MCP's €30-70m sweet spot.

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