Searching for a search fund in Finland?
We hosted a very interesting event about search funds together with our excellent guest speakers this week. There are (not yet) any search funds operating in Finland even though this form of investing is spreading rapidly internationally. If you are interested in an asset class with average historical IRR figures exceeding those of both PE and VC, I urge you to continue reading.
The concept of search fund originates from Harvard, now embraced by e.g. Standford Business School, IESE and INSEAD, and is spreading globally with more than 1000 such funds having been raised as of today. The term "fund” is a bit misleading as the concept is all about an entrepreneur-driven SPV, raising a small investment from a selected group of actively participating investors to fund a search for a suitable acquisition target. The search phase investments can be rolled over in the actual acquisition on preferred terms. The targets are SME’s with a strong cash flow and with certain other preferred characteristics, which will be grown into lucrative prospects for potential future buyers by the searchers, who then become the targets’ CEOs. Alternatively, interested investors can invest in funds that exclusively invest in search funds.
A warm thank you to our guest speakers, among others Joachim de Belgique from Innesto Partners, who is actively investing in search funds and also supporting what we assume will be the first one in Finland.
We are also proud to share that in 2025 alone, Vestra actively worked on 38 more traditional fund formations and have since our establishment five years ago been involved in more than 150 fund formations encompassing all possible sub classes (PE, VC, infra, real estate, hedge, FoF, direct lending…), most of which operate and are managed abroad. With our recent add-on of a complete team specialized in financial regulation and compliance, who know the AIFM regulation inside out, we are now even better positioned to help managers with their upcoming fund formations.
