Livonia Partners Reaches €70m First Close on Maiden Fund
Livonia Partners Fund I, a pan-Baltic private equity fund, has held its first close. Fund’s investors from the Baltics, Nordics, and Western Europe include leading pension funds, insurance companies, and developmental finance institutions. The fund plans to invest €3 to €15 million of equity and mezzanine capital per investment in 8 to 12 companies active in the Baltic and adjacent regions.
“We are very pleased with the broad support of our investor group and excited about the opportunities for our maiden fund,” says Kaido Veske, Founding Partner at Livonia Partners. “The past entrepreneurial history of our team naturally makes us exercise an active ownership model and provide support to management teams.”
“We are excited to support a strong new fund manager in a greatly underinvested region witnessing strong economic growth and capital markets development” says Graham Cope from European Investment Fund, which supported Livonia through the Baltic Innovation Fund. Lovis von Andrian from European Bank for Reconstruction and Development adds, “We have worked closely with the Livonia team for a number of years and are pleased to support the fund with a significant commitment.”
Team members at Livonia are locally based and hold extensive experience in building businesses across the wider region. The previous expertise is primarily from business services, manufacturing, consumer, TMT and other sectors. Peteris Stepins from Swedbank Investment Management, an investor in the fund, states that “With many investment opportunities in the Baltics, we believe that domestic pension funds play a crucial role in the development of the investment landscape. Locally based teams such as Livonia are best positioned to leverage their professional networks for sourcing and managing investments.”
Livonia
Partners is an independent fund management company founded by Kristine
Berzina, Rain Lõhmus, Mindaugas Utkevicius, and Kaido Veske. The
fund seeks to acquire both majority and minority interests in
businesses. Livonia has offices in Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius, and is
domiciled in Latvia, which has a transparent legal, tax and regulatory
framework for investment funds.
Photo: Daniel Beilinson