New fund manager aiming for €200m enviro fund-of-funds
London, 28 May: A recently launched fund manager claiming “depth and breadth” in experience is understood to be hoping to raise €200 million ($279 million) into a low-carbon technology private equity fund of funds.

Osmosis Capital, formed by renewable energy, private equity and fund-of-fund veterans, has recently begun marketing the fund, according to investors, and is aiming for a first close by the end of this year.

The London-based fund manager is understood to have identified around 500 funds operating in renewable energy and other low carbon technologies globally, of which 100 are likely to be contenders for investment.

The fund – which will focus on expansion-stage private equity, with some allocation to venture capital – is likely to take stakes in 15 to 20 of these with around 70% of its assets, reserving the balance for co-investments in portfolio companies alongside primary fund managers. It will focus on European and North American funds.

Osmosis is headed by CEO Ian Wilson, a former senior derivatives sales executive at JP Morgan, who founded the company alongside Jon Bailie, formerly global head of alternative investments at Russell Investments and chairman of the management committee at its private equity fund-of-funds subsidiary Pantheon, and Sean Gorman, a former power sector financier with RBS and head of business development at developer Trinergy, whose wind assets were bought by International Power for €1.8 billion in 2007.

The firm recently appointed Jim Totty as a senior investment manager from Citi Alternative Investments where he specialised in venture capital.

Gorman declined to comment to Environmental Finance on any fund-raising plans, but confirmed: “We’ve built up a credible team ... with a complementary skill set. This sector is so wide, there are so many technologies and each market is very different because of the regulatory regimes [underpinning them]. We think it is very difficult for generalists to come into this space.”

He said that limited partners – private equity and venture capital investors – “are talking about [environmental technology], they are thinking about it. They want to get into the sector, but they are concerned about its diversity.”