Fundraising
The market uncertainty in H1 put several fundraising rounds on hold. Hence, fundraising in H1 was lower than usual, but still not far from an ordinary year. We expect a lot of funds to close in H2.
Venture funds raised €446 million in the first half of 2020. The amount is almost as much as in each of the years 2014, 2015 and 2018. However, it is less than the average for H1 in the last five years (€688 million), due to very fundraising in H1 2016 and H1 2019.
Large fundraising rounds include Nysnø, which received a total of NOK 1 billion in government grants in the first half of the year, and Alliance Venture that raised NOK 600 million just before the summer for its fourth fund called Delta.
With many large funds raising capital at the moment, we expect the fundraising amount for the rest of the year to be €1.2 billion. If so, the total fundraising for 2020 will end up close to €1.7 billion, which is well above the five-year average for the period in the Nordic venture segment (€1.43 billion a year).
In Q2 2020, €4.4 billion was raised by Nordic buyout funds, compared with only €265 million in Q1. In an ordinary year, we would expect funds to close during Q2, before the summer. It is nevertheless surprising that fundraising was highest when large parts of Nordic societies shut down due to the pandemic. Fundraising in H1 2020 already exceeds the years 2014 and 2019 as a whole, and it is just below the level of 2016 and 2017.
Funds that expect to close in the second half of the year are looking to raise more than €26 billion. If the buyout funds succeed in doing this, 2020 will be a record year for fundraising in the Nordic buyout segment. Before the end of Q3, when we write this number crunch, PE funds have raised close to €20 billion.