Verdane Raises €700 Million for Decarbonization-Focused Growth Fund – ESG Today

European specialist progress investor Verdane introduced immediately that it has raised €700 million (USD$758 million on the remaining shut of its Verdane Idun II fund, concentrating on investments in companies throughout the structural progress pattern of decarbonization.

The full is greater than double its earlier Idun I fund, with each funds devoted to enhancing decarbonization efforts by European corporations. The Idun II fund is assessed as an Article 9 fund underneath the EU’s SFDR regulation.

Verdane’s Idun funds typically make investments between €20 and €100 million into sustainable companies. All investments made out of Idun II cross strict sustainability standards to measure their optimistic environmental impression, corresponding to a carbon avoidance goal of a minimal of 5,000 tons of CO2 averted per €1 million invested, the agency stated, including that its standards enable investments solely in companies positioned to achieve a sustainable economic system. Since 2003, Verdane has backed 42 sustainable companies through its funds, and over the previous 12 months has backed 16 European companies with €600 million in capital.

Bjarne Kveim Lie, founder and Managing Accomplice of Verdane, stated:

“With Idun II, we search to display that it’s attainable to generate world-class returns for traders whereas making a significant contribution to the decarbonization of our economic system. As structural progress traders, we’re satisfied that the search to decarbonize is a generational megatrend. Our aim is to be the popular progress companion to the businesses greatest positioned to make the most of that pattern, and to assist them attain their full potential.”

Nearly all of Idun II commitments come from non-profit organizations and traders. Idun II consists of commitments from main traders, together with Nysnø Local weather Investments, Norway’s state local weather funding fund; Banque de Luxembourg; the European Funding Fund; MN, a supplier of fiduciary administration companies for Dutch business pension funds; Finnish capital investments firm Tesi and Carbon Fairness, which allows personal {and professional} traders to spend money on a diversified portfolio of worldwide local weather funds. The fund was absolutely allotted inside 5 months.

The fund closing follows the announcement by Verdane earlier this 12 months of a collection of recent appointments to bolster its decarbonization staff.

Lie stated:

“Our decarbonization staff at Verdane is now one of many largest in Europe, with 13 devoted funding professionals. They’re supported by an in-house operations staff 35 sturdy, and profit from your entire group’s deep networks and expertise serving to scale sustainable European progress corporations over the past 20 years. This permits us to not solely dive deep into the structural progress pattern of decarbonization, but additionally to assist our corporations with on the bottom presence throughout core Northern European markets to assist corporations of their progress.”