The Swedish financial investor EQT has raised 22 billion euros (24 billion dollars) for its largest private equity fund to date, outperforming the competition in a difficult fundraising market for the entire industry. However, EQT also had to ask for a delay of six months. "There is a brutal selection by investors, many of whom are also reducing the number of funds they invest in at all," Johannes Reichel, EQT's Head of Germany and Head Central & Southern Europe, told Börsen-Zeitung. "We are therefore very pleased and proud of the excellent result and are now concentrating on good investments." 70% of the investors were already involved in the predecessor fund. The new fund focuses on Europe and North America. EQT acquired Barings for Asia some time ago.

Around a third of the new fund is already invested and has acquired the Swedish medical freight company Envirotainer and the British manufacturer of veterinary medicines Dechra Pharmaceuticals, among others. "The new fund will invest primarily in healthcare, technology, tech-enabled services and industrial technology," explained Reichel.

The Deutsche Bahn logistics subsidiary Schenker, the heating meter reading company Techem or the data centres of the regional utility Mainova, which are currently up for sale in Germany, do not fit into these categories very well. EQT could in principle be interested in the enterprise management software company SER Group from the portfolio of its competitor Carlyle, for which non-binding offers are to be submitted shortly.

In Germany, EQT is known for its investments in the Linux software company Suse, the medical technology group Ottobock and Deutsche Glasfaser. "In the case of Suse, we completed the take-private in November and will not think about an exit again for another year or two," said Reichel. "Suse has doubled its sales and profits since our entry, and new growth opportunities are now opening up because competitors such as IBM Red Hat are switching from open source to closed source."

Reichel is also optimistic about the family company Ottobock, which for a long time was scheduled to go public. Family patriarch Hans Georg Näder now wants to buy the shares from EQT so that Ottobock becomes a genuine family business again – similar to how the Messer family bought out the financial investor CVC from the industrial gases group a few months ago. "It pains us that an Ottobock Initial Public Offering (IPO) was not possible in the past two years due to the war in Ukraine and the interest rate hikes," said Reichel. "We now have a good solution for our partnership and are working together to bring it to a successful conclusion."

The exit of the former Nestlé skincare division Galderma is also imminent. "At Galderma, an IPO is just one of several possible exit options," emphasized Reichel. Presumably, the IPO plans for Galderma also depend heavily on whether the German perfumery chain Douglas from CVC's portfolio dares to come out of hiding with the "intention to float".

In any case, the new EQT fund will not be used to include companies in the portfolio that have failed to exit. "Continuation funds are a tool that can be interesting for the private equity sector in individual situations," said Reichel. "However, investors must never get the impression that this is a residual ramp to conceal weak fund performance."