BankInvest well on the way to USD 150m target for latest new energy fund

BankInvest of Denmark has raised the majority of about EUR 110m (USD 150m) it wants for a new fund specialising in expanding phase, and later stage, financing of clean energy firms.

The new fund, to be called New Energy Solutions II, follows on the heels of BankInvest's NES I fund, which raised EUR 50m from Danish institutions in June 2002 and has since made 12 investments in Scandinavian, other European and North American companies.

Among its holdings have been Marine Current Turbines of Bristol, UltraCell of San Francisco and BioGasol of Copenhagen. NES I focussed on start-up; and early expansion financing, but the BankInvest team headed by managing partner Poul Erik Schou-Pedersen aims to concentrate the second fund on the latter stage, plus later expansion financing and bridge, pre-IPO and merger and acquisition financing.

NES II will have the Nordic region as its first geographical priority, followed by the rest of Europe, and then the US. The fund will be designed to have a life of 10 years, and an investment period of four years.

Jens Christian Mathiesen, senior partner at BankInvest New Energy Solutions, said: "Our target for the second fund is in the EUR 100m to EUR 120m range, and we have now raised more than half of that. We expect it to take another two to three months to complete the fund raising. Our core investors are Danish, but we are also attracting funds from institutions in the UK, continental Europe and the Middle East."

BankInvest is owned by the community banks in Denmark.

By: New Energy Finance

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