Nordic Networking
CapMan held it first Nordic Advisor Meeting at its premises in Helsinki in September. The event gathered CapMan’s senior investment professionals, Senior Advisors and the Company’s Industrial Advisors for a day to discuss the topical issues in Nordic private equity and at CapMan.
CapMan’s advisor concept, with the purpose of bringing additional senior experience from various industries to CapMan’s investment process and portfolio companies, was originated already in the late '90s with the nomination of the first Senior Advisors. The Senior Advisor concept was expanded to other Nordic countries after CapMan’s Nordic expansion in 2001-2004. Shortly after that CapMan started to broaden its Nordic contact network with the introduction of the Industrial Advisor concept in 2004. Currently CapMan Advisor Network consists of four Senior Advisors and six Industrial Advisors, and new members are looked for on an active basis.
The Senior Advisors work full time for CapMan and its portfolio companies, whereas Industrial Advisors are engaged in CapMan with part-time relationships or on a project basis. Together, the Advisors form CapMan’s Nordic Advisor Network, supporting CapMan’s investment teams in all stages of the investment process from deal flow generation to exits. The main targets of CapMan’s Nordic Advisor Network are to get a better market coverage, to increase abilities to generate proprietary deal flow, to help to analyse changing, growing and/or consolidating industries and to strengthen CapMan’s value creation approach, for example, by more professional Board work. Senior and Industrial Advisors work either for one or all of CapMan’s investment teams in a specific Nordic country or in the whole Nordic market.
In recent years the Advisors have proven their value in deal making. Examples of CapMan’s investments where Senior or Industrial Advisors have played an important role are Eltel Networks, Moventas and Solagem/Sentera. The meeting held in Helsinki in September generated new ideas for Nordic deal making and networking. The importance of wide contact networks, informal information flows and industrial experience will inevitably remain recognised also in the future.