Abris Capital Partners, an independent private equity fund manager currently celebrating its 10th anniversary of investing in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), has secured €500 million from international investors to support further investment in the region. In line with Abris’ strategy, the new fund will be invested in medium-sized, private businesses chiefly in Poland and Romania, but also elsewhere in CEE.
Neil Milne and George Swirski, Managing Partners and Co-founders of Abris Capital Partners, said “We are delighted that, despite the current political and economic challenges in our region, we have been able to once again obtain the support of many prestigious international institutional investors. We have secured new commitments from several US and European investors which have never previously invested in CEE, as well as obtaining a high level of renewed commitments from our existing Fund I and Fund II limited partners. We attribute this interest largely to the effort we have put into our two earlier funds – these funds continue to hold a number of particularly attractive portfolio companies and have also completed several recent successful exits. The fact that we achieved our targeted €500 million is, we believe, evidence that our institutional investors share our confidence in the growing quality and scale of the CEE mid-market. Since we started Abris in 2007, we have been able to help many local, family-founded businesses grow to become successful national and even international champions; this has generated attractive investment returns in the process.”
Pawe? Giery?ski, CIO at Abris Capital Partners, adds: “We have a strong, integrated team working to the highest standards of responsible investing. We are practitioners, not theoreticians and aim to work hand-in-hand with our entrepreneurs to professionalise their businesses and achieve shared strategic and financial goals. With Fund III, we plan to continue our strategy and will search for opportunities in traditional as well as less obvious business areas, with a focus on the food, financial services and e-commerce logistics sectors. “