
Nordic Capital has run a process to help it secure fresh capital for a top-performing asset.
BlackRock Private Equity Partners led a consortium including Neuberger Berman and Aberdeen Standard Investments in buying a minority stake in payments business Trustly, which the Scandinavian buyout firm acquired in 2018, according to a statement.
Some investors committed co-investment capital and others secondaries capital, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. The aim was to provide liquidity for exiting shareholders and bring in larger, more aligned investors through a process that Nordic could control.
“The analysis investors had done was no different from a single-asset secondary but the ultimate commitment was not into a continuation fund vehicle, but to get a stake in the company directly,” the source said, adding that the deal could be described as a “direct single-asset process”.
Selling shareholders were mainly early employees, Secondaries Investor understands. The size of the minority stake is not clear, nor whether Nordic sold down any of its stake.
Nordic acquired Stockholm-headquartered Trustly using its €4.3 billion, 2018-vintage Nordic Capital Fund IX. The account-to-account payments provider has more than 600 million customers across Europe and North America, and a network comprised of more than 6,000 banks.