March 11, 2021
Willkie advises PAI Partners on the closing of its inaugural €920 million PAI Mid-Market Fund.
On March 11, Willkie client PAI Partners announced the successful final close of its inaugural PAI Mid-Market Fund (“PAI MMF”, or the “Fund”) with a total of circa €920 million of commitments. The Fund was raised entirely virtually and is above €700m target and original €800 million hard cap, which was increased following significant investor interest.
The Fund received strong support from PAI’s existing investor base in addition to new investors. The capital commitments were received from a total of 50 investors including a broad range of institutional investors, notably leading public and private pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and family offices across the globe.
The MMF draws from PAI’s core investment DNA and capabilities, leveraging the firm’s European expertise, its local market presence most notably in France, Spain, Italy and Germany, and its specialized, in-depth sector knowledge to create an extension of the firm’s platform to access the mid-market. It is being invested alongside PAI’s larger-cap fund, PAI Europe VII, which closed at €5.1 billion in 2018.
PAI MMF will focus on rapidly scalable companies in the European mid-market and will support high-quality management teams to develop and grow their businesses, capitalizing on PAI’s international consolidation expertise. The Fund has already demonstrated a strong pipeline, having made three separate investments in Amplitude Surgical, Angulas Aguinaga and MyFlower.
The cross-border Willkie team was led by partners Nathalie Duguay and Phillip Isom and included associates Raphaël Bloch, Giovanni Smedley, Charles Hadley, Anthony Civico, Matthew Pei, Gabrielle Schwartz, Tatyana Lozé, and Romain Michaux.
