Munich — FSN Capital, a private equity firm with offices in Scandinavia and Germany, has successfully completed fundraising for a new special fund. Institutional investors have pledged more than EUR 400 million for investments in particularly ESG-oriented SMEs. This exceeded the original target set for the new Compass Fund. The capital commitments come from well-known institutional investors such as foundations, pension funds and insurance companies as well as private investors; more than half of the funds come from North America and around 30 percent from Scandinavia and the DACH region.
Responsible investment approach
Robin Mürer, Co-Managing Partner at FSN Capital in Munich, says: “The additional small-cap focus complements our existing mid-cap strategy. The FSN funds have invested in eight companies in the DACH region over the past seven years and we have found that our responsible investment approach has been very well received in our second home market — in this respect, the Compass Fund is a logical extension of our previous investment activities. It enables exciting growth partnerships with smaller, socially committed companies for which our value creation model and ESG focus are attractive. And we see this in Germany in particular, where sustainability is playing an increasingly important role in business and society.”
Epista Life Science already in the portfolio
The Compass Fund has already made its first investments, including in the company Epista Life Science. The significantly growing IT service and consulting company for the biopharma industry has 150 employees in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark who support life science companies worldwide with digitalization, compliance and quality assurance. A particular focus is the implementation of innovative processes and technologies that enable customers to successfully adapt to new regulatory requirements and at the same time drive innovation in the healthcare sector. With this interface between business, politics and society, the investment is a prime example of the Compass Fund’s investment approach.
Support in achieving ESG goals
FSN Capital has already launched six funds for investments in larger medium-sized companies over the past 25 years; over EUR 1.8 billion was raised for the last fund FSN Capital VI in 2021. The Compass Fund, with its focus on SMEs that address the major social challenges of the coming decade with their products and services, builds on the previous strategy and is managed by the same team with proven processes and strategies.
According to Rebecca Svensøy, Head of ESG at FSN CapitalThe Compass Fund uses an industry-leading ESG approach, thereby consolidating FSN Capital’s position as a particularly responsible private equity company: “For us, ESG is not just about risk minimization and reporting compliance — in addition to value creation, we are primarily concerned with the full development of exciting, sustainable potential. We actively support companies in implementing their ESG goals.”
About FSN Capital
FSN Capital, one of the leading Northern European private equity firms, was founded in 1999 and has four offices in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and since 2017 also in Munich The four funds advised by FSN Capital have four billion euros under management; for the latest Fund VI, 1.8 billion euros were raised for investments in Scandinavia and the DACH region The funds make majority investments in growth-oriented companies in order to support them on their further path to success and to make them even more sustainable, competitive, internationalized and profitable. FSN Capital’s 97-strong team (29 of whom are based in Munich) is committed to investing responsibly, achieving a positive ESG impact on the portfolio and delivering market-leading returns, true to the motto “We are decent people making a decent return in a decent way”. The current portfolio companies in Germany include Bäcker Görtz, MEGABAD (Swash Group), Ecovium, Lobster, impreg, Adragos Pharma, Rameder and TASKING.
For more information, visit www.fsncapital.com.