DAL Partners, a new Finnish private equity firm, has held a first close on its debut €40 million fund. The fund will invest in profitable, owner-led Finnish SMEs.
DAL helps the companies it invests in grow faster, largely by modernizing them through digitalization and AI. DAL Partners will invest in only three or four companies from the fund and, unusually for the industry, its own partners move into operational roles in the businesses it backs.
DAL Partners primarily targets profitable Finnish service and technology companies with revenue of roughly €3–10 million, the lower mid-market that is just below the reach of most Finnish and Nordic buyout funds. Initial investments start at several million euros, and DAL Partners can commit up to €10 million to a single company over the course of its ownership.
Founders Casimir Kontio, Markus Remes and Niklas Lahti have worked as investors, executives and advisers at leading Nordic and international firms, among them the private equity group EQT and the investment bank SEB. They founded DAL Partners to bring the same disciplined approach to building and developing ambitious SMEs. DAL Partners is chaired by Yrjö Närhinen, the former CEO of the Finnish healthcare group Terveystalo and the beverage company Hartwall.
“Ten million euros is a transformative amount of capital for a company with around five million in revenue. Finland is full of profitable, well-run SMEs that are too big or too established for venture capital but too small for traditional buyout funds, and that is exactly where we invest. Entrepreneurs get capital from us, but they also get operational help to grow their business and expand internationally,” says Casimir Kontio, founding partner of DAL Partners.
“We invest in only a few companies, which is exactly why we can dedicate significantly more time to each of them. In practice our model means that after our investment, one of us takes an operational role in the business, for example as CFO or COO, or to lead add-on acquisitions. Over the first 6 to 18 months we build capabilities the company lacks and recruit committed new people,” says Markus Remes, founding partner of DAL Partners.
DAL Partners sees a particularly significant opportunity in the digitalization of SMEs, which AI now makes possible far faster and more cheaply than before.
“A systems overhaul that once took several years and serious investment can now be done in months with a fraction of the resources. AI has fundamentally changed what is possible for companies of this size,” says Niklas Lahti, founding partner of DAL Partners.
Alongside the anchor investor Tesi, the fund is backed by institutions and foundations, Finnish and Swedish family offices, and a broad network of private investors. A significant share of the investor base consists of entrepreneurs, current and former CEOs of listed companies, and senior operators from growth companies. Just under a fifth of the capital comes from outside Finland, most of it from Sweden.
“SMEs are a key pillar of the Finnish economy, which is why DAL Partners is a very welcome new player in the private equity market. Their distinctive approach means that the fund has both a wide choice of attractive investment targets and significant potential for value creation. Beyond being an interesting investment opportunity, we see DAL Partners advancing the development of the Finnish private equity market, which is one of Tesi’s tasks,” says Asseri Lehtiniemi, Investment Director in Tesi’s fund investments team.
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Additional information:
Markus Remes
Founding Partner, DAL Partners
+358 40 768 0611
markus@dalpartners.fi
Anna Brchisky
PR partner
anna@bamla.agency
About DAL Partners
DAL Partners is a new Finnish private equity firm that invests in established, profitable SMEs in Finland and works operationally alongside their management.
