Nordic Capital

"They needed an advisor but were in no hurry. It took Nordgren over a year to decide which suitor to choose. In the end, it was Christer Dahlström and Skandia Investment who, through newly issued shares, were able to buy 15 percent of the company for 10 million kronor. At that time, Skandia Investment made all purchases with their own money, no borrowed funds. Therefore, they only entered as minority owners, so that the money would suffice for several different businesses. Nefab, which had sales of 120 million when Skandia bought in, then experienced rapid growth—they started production in China, South America, Malaysia. In 1996, the company was listed on the stock exchange, with sales by then of 560 million. The family remained as major owners. Thus, they shared in the increased value of the company as it grew, while maintaining control. In 2007, Nordgren, together with another private equity firm, Nordic Capital, bought the company off the stock exchange again. The family felt that Nefab was undervalued, and Nordic, as one of Sweden’s largest private equity firms, had the resources to take the company to the next growth phase. By then, the value had risen to 2.7 billion. Nordgren sold some shares again, but kept 40 percent of the company. Nordic had to settle for buying 60 percent; they would have preferred a larger majority, but had to give in. Ingmarie and Jockum Nordgren-Pihl, who now live in Luxembourg, were not willing to negotiate."

"When IK got its name, Savén had already made one of his most important deals, the purchase of the publishing house Liber together with, among others, the competitor Nordic Capital. “We couldn’t afford to buy it ourselves.” They also bought Esselte Publishing, with Norstedts Förlag, from Savén’s old domains and merged it with Liber. Three years later, the new publishing house was sold to Holland. “We signed at half past six in the morning at Procordia’s old office. There was always someone who needed to go somewhere, sometimes you just had to take the time you could find,” Björn recalls."

"Later that spring, Mix heard the rumor that Feder’s counterpart at Harvard would come to Stockholm to meet competitor Nordic Capital. Mix acted lightning fast. He called up and invited Peter Dolan to dinner in one of Operakällaren’s secluded smaller dining rooms upstairs. The dinner went well, and Harvard also chose to invest in Altor’s first fund. In May 2003, in the record time of three months, Mix had gathered the 650 million euros that was the target; in addition to the pension foundations of Harvard and Princeton, he also brought along Yale’s university endowment, a total of about fifty investors. – At IK, we worked a lot with “shotgun wedding” when looking for investors, meaning we marketed ourselves very broadly. When I started Altor, I did the opposite, he says. Altor has stuck to that strategy. It works as long as things go well; you call old investors when setting up a new fund and ask if they want to join, and if they are satisfied, they say yes. Therefore, it is difficult for new investors to get into the best venture capital firms, their funds quickly become “pre-booked”."

"A couple of years earlier, in 2005, Nordic Capital had bought the subcontractor Plastal and begun building it into one of Europe’s largest in its niche, plastic components for the automotive industry. In 2007, Plastal had more than doubled in size through acquisitions, to 6,000 employees, of which 500 in Sweden, sales of 12 billion kronor and operations in about thirty countries. Nordic was looking for a buyer. But it was too late. The financial crisis crushed all such plans, and instead the venture capitalists were forced to put in more money and lay off 400 employees. In March 2009, it was over; bankruptcy was a fact. The bankruptcy administrator tried to sell the company in parts, and that summer the largest creditor, Handelsbanken, took over part of the business. Nordic Capital’s founder Robert Andreen says in the book “Swedish Billionaires” that it would not have helped if the company had zero kronor in loans; it was the market that collapsed. But the more capital a company has in the bank, the greater its chances of survival, of course. Nordic owned two more subcontractors, the roof rack manufacturer Thule and Finnveden-Bulten, and they managed to save those."

"In retrospect, it has become important to determine who was first. Who wrote the first chapter in the unlikely story that began in Sweden during the second half of the 1980s? One of the first to see the potential in trading unlisted companies was Skandia’s then CFO Björn Hall, when he founded Skandia Investment – but the one who handled the company acquisitions was Christer Dahlström. The first to start his own business and make acquisitions according to the American model was Mikael Ahlström. But Björn Savén started the first fund. One of Nordic Capital’s founders, Robert Andreen, is annoyed at Hall for taking credit for starting Nordic, when Andreen claims that Skandia was just a part-owner in the beginning. Hall then responds with a smile: “But you, who hired whom?”"