Industri Kapital loses two partners

Industri Kapital, a European buyout firm, has made two partners’ roles redundant ahead of raising its sixth fund, expected to launch with a €1.5bn target in the first quarter next year.

 

Ramsay: head of Industri Kapital team in Finland is leaving the firm

Thomas Ramsay, head of the firm’s team in Finland, and Samir Kamal, head of its Swedish team, are leaving the firm, according to an investor in the most recent fund.

 

A departure date has not been finalised and the two partners’ plans are not clear.

 

According to the investor the redundancies stem partly from IK’s plans for a flatter structure, after Gustav Öhman, a partner and member of the firm’s management team, returned to Stockholm and a more hands-on role.

 

Similarly Michael Rosenlew, also a partner and member of the group’s management, will be taking a closer interest in the Finland team’s day-to-day activity.

 

Ramsay came to the firm in 1996 from the corporate finance department of Salomon Brothers in London.

 

Kamal joined the firm in 2004, from the investment banking division of Carnegie, an independent Nordic bank.

 

Ramsay and Kamal’s exit was presented to investors as an orderly re-organisation ahead of the firm returning for its latest fundraising.

 

A source close to IK said: “The split is amicable. The firm is putting its house in order so everything beds down and people get used to the idea. By the time of the fundraising everything is running smoothly.”

 

He said the firm’s partners had voted to reduce the number of deal-doing Nordic partners from five to three to match the number of continental European deal partners.

 

The source said the departures were not a setback for the firm’s succession planning. An investor, who was told of the move last week, said he would have been concerned if one of the managers immediately below Björn Savén, the firm’s founder and chief executive, had decided to go.

 

Saven: IK chief executive since establishment in 1989

IK suffered just such a reverse before its last fundraising five years ago when Harald Mix left to start Altor Equity Partners. Mix was widely perceived as an important deal-doer for the firm and his surprise departure was one of the reasons investors compelled the firm to cut its fundraising target.

 

Since then Industri Kapital has returned to its mid market sweet spot and returns from its recent investments have impressed investors. In May this year it sold the last investment from its 1994 fund, bringing total returns to four times the amount originally invested.

 

One of Kamal’s deals, an investment in Myresjöhus, a Swedish prefabricated housebuilder, has already made three times its original stake, after recapitalising it just 12 months after the acquisition in March 2005.

 

Industri Kapital declined to comment.