As a leading Nordic private equity investor, Mandatum Asset Management (MAM) manages over €1 billion in private equity assets, including direct growth equity investments, co-investments alongside top-tier managers, and commitments to private equity funds. Mandatum Asset Management Private Equity (MAM PE) is the firm’s growth equity strategy, which focuses on minority and active ownership to scale fast-growing Nordic companies.
Distinct Heritage
As part of Sampo Group (Sampo), MAM leverages over 30 years of private equity investment experience and expertise. Sampo made its first private equity investments in the 1990’s and has since become a sizeable and active private equity investor in the Nordics. Its long history of private equity investing has resulted in a successful track record, a large network of high-quality relationships, and access to attractive deal flow.
Historically, private equity investments at Sampo were completed on an opportunistic basis on the firm’s balance sheet. In 2020, MAM offered its first direct private equity fund, MAM PE I, allowing our clients to access Sampo’s differentiated deal flow and investment expertise.
The MAM PE team currently manages approximately €350 million in direct private equity investments as of December 2021, including investments in companies such as Cadmatic, Coronaria, Sofigate, and CDON.
Differentiated Strategy and Approach
MAM PE targets significant minority investments in Nordic growth companies with proven business models and scalable growth ambitions. Our approach is industry-agnostic, flexible, opportunistic, and selective, focusing on companies with net sales of more than €20 million and a target EV of €10-100 million. We try to avoid auction processes by leveraging Sampo’s deep network of relationships and proactively reaching out to target companies to generate proprietary deal flow and invest in attractive companies at relatively low valuations.
MAM PE acts as an active owner alongside management and other stakeholders to provide strategic expertise, flexible growth capital, and ownership solutions. During our ownership, we offer several value-add capabilities, including go-to-market planning, financial planning, management recruitment, and M&A advisory services. MAM PE aims to get board representation at all its portfolio companies, ensuring accountability and close monitoring of the companies’ progress and development.
We believe that MAM PE also operates in a distinct area of the private equity market. Most other Nordic managers tend to focus on either the buyout or venture segments, leading to limited competition in the growth segment. Additionally, we see a large number of interesting and attractive small to mid-sized companies, many of which have not been previously approached by a strategic and minority private equity investor. As a result, MAM PE believes that there is significant untapped potential in the growth segment of the Nordic market.
Dedicated Professionals
MAM’s Helsinki-based private equity team has significant investment expertise in cross-border M&A, business development, management consulting, equity funding, debt advisory, and Nordic IPOs. The team is led by Alexander Antas, who is the Head of Private Equity at MAM and has over 15 years of experience in alternative investments. Previously, Mr. Antas was the Head of Alternatives at Sampo and an investment banking professional at Carnegie.
MAM PE is also able to leverage MAM’s team of 40 investment professionals and over 80 risk management and operations professionals. Primarily, MAM PE works closely with the firm’s equity investment professionals, along with fixed income, real estate, legal, and other operations professionals. MAM PE’s investment committee includes MAM’s CIO and senior equity and loan professionals, who review and decide on each potential investment.
Finally, the team also has access to local and experienced industrial advisors, who act as a sounding board during both the due diligence phase and the holding period.
Responsibility
We view sustainable development as a core factor for creating value and we aim to support our target companies in defining and achieving sustainable development targets. Instead of cumbersome reporting requirements and demands, we aim to be a reliable partner that can bring ESG expertise and best practices to benefit our target companies. We integrate the ESG areas into every stage of our investment process, from finding targets to due diligence surveys, all the way to amending ESG deficiencies during our period of ownership.
MAM PE always surveys a company’s core ESG factors before investing. Based on this, further development steps are agreed with the company in a way that at the end of the investment period, the company will have achieved the set targets and the organisation will have developed a strong foundation for further development.
Our investment portfolio not only analyses the possible financial results, but also considers the possible risks and factors of sustainable development. We follow our investments throughout their life cycle in order to control and prevent our investments from resulting in harmful environmental and social effects.
For more information, please contact:
Alexander Antas, Head of Private Equity, Mandatum Asset Management, alexander.antas@mandatumam.com, +358 40 533 0986