EQT closes Asia mid-market fund at $800m
EQT Partners has closed its Asia-focused middle market private equity fund on target with $800 million in commitments.
LPs include Credit Suisse Investment Foundation, pension funds, insurance companies, and fund-of-funds, with 79% of the capital coming from Europe and 19% from Asia. The fund, known as EQT Mid-Market Asia III, was launched in November 2015.
It will take control and co-control positions in companies in Greater China and Southeast Asia that are considered to have significant growth potential. Deployments are expected to fall in the EUR40-100 million ($47 -119 million) range.
The fund will aim to create category leaders by leveraging development themes such as sales growth, strategic repositioning, digitalization, and industry consolidation. Target sectors include healthcare, services, consumer, technology, media and telecom, and industrial technology.
Four investments have been made to date, including English language training provider ILA Vietnam, Hong Kong packing specialist GPA Global, and China’s Long-Spring Education Group. The fund has also backed US-based medical devices supplier Clinical Innovations alongside EQT’s US middle-market fund.
“Being global is one of the key contributors to EQT’s long-term success as well as being local with locals,” Thomas von Koch, managing partner and CEO at EQT, said in a statement. “Now we are starting to build EQT’s own ‘Silk Road’ by sharing knowledge from Europe and the US to Asia and back."
EQT has previously invested in Asia via a number of vehicles, including a Greater China fund that raised $535 million in 2006 and a global middle-market fund that closed at about EUR1 billion in 2014. Both of these funds are fully invested.
The GP claims to have invested more than $1.2 billion across 18 companies in Asia since it opened its first regional office in Hong Kong in 2005. Recent activity includes the sale of Australia’s I-Med Radiology Network to Permira for an estimated $1 billion.
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