Verdane makes second deal from Fund IX

Verdane Capital Advisors, a Nordic direct secondaries firm, has backed a Finnish software company through a combination of direct investment and a secondhand shares transfer.

The Oslo-headquartered firm tapped its Verdane Capital IX fund to invest more than €5 million in Vaadin, according to a statement. The deal marks the second investment from the fund and its fourth portfolio company, a spokeswoman for Verdane told Secondaries Investor.

“We consider Vaadin to represent some of the strongest software expertise in the world,” Janne Holmia, an investment professional at Verdane, said in the statement. “The importance of software and user experience continue to grow and we believe Vaadin can help businesses advance in these areas.”

Vaadin makes open source web application development tools and employs 130 staff in its Finland, California and Berlin offices. Verdane’s investment marks the software firm’s second investment round this year and Vaadin will use the capital to boost product development and marketing, according to the statement.

Verdane took four months to close its ninth direct secondaries fund on its SKr3 billion ($325 million; €307 million) hard-cap. The fund’s strategy is to back small- to medium-sized businesses in software, consumer internet, energy and technology sectors and it has a three-and-a-half-year investment period.

Verdane IX made its first transaction in October, with a more than €30 million investment in three German companies: search engine optimisation firm Searchmetrics, lender Smava and cloud security provider Hornetsecurity.

Verdane has €900 million in assets under management and has offices in Stockholm and Helsinki, in addition to its Norwegian headquarters, according to PEI data.