PRESS RELEASE
 

Golding hires impact investing team

Munich, 5. May 2021 - Golding Capital Partners is expanding into impact investing and has hired an experienced team of impact investors. Andreas Nilsson and Nina Freudenberg joined the Golding investment team in March as Head of Impact and Director respectively. The duo previously founded Sonanz in 2015 as a boutique fund manager for impact investments in private equity. Golding intends to launch its first global impact private equity product for institutional investors in the second half of 2021.

"We are delighted to have attracted Andreas and Nina to our team. Sonanz was one of the pioneers of impact investing with a bold vision that is now ready to scale. Alongside the team's deep impact investing expertise and many years of experience, they also have the specialist knowledge and understanding required for this field. We have been tracking the impact investing sector for many years now and our next step will take us well beyond ESG; we intend to make a positive, quantifiable contribution towards solving society's greatest challenges without compromising on returns", explains Founder and Managing Director Jeremy Golding.

When the two impact investors founded Sonanz in 2015, they aimed to offer investors new opportunities to invest in business solutions to social and environmental problems. With German and Scandinavian investors, such as SEB and the H&M Foundation, their first fund demonstrated the potential of a thematic sustainability strategy. It will serve as a blueprint for the planned impact fund from Golding, which will be based on this approach.

"The coming decades will be defined by an increasing climate awareness. It will change both consumer behaviour and production processes radically", explains Andreas Nilsson. "As investors, we want to counteract the climate crisis and intend to invest along two themes. Firstly, we will focus on new technologies, developed in Europe and North America, which reduce greenhouse gas emissions and resource consumption. The second theme centres around transformative business models for essential products and services aimed explicitly at 'emerging consumers'. It is important that countries in emerging markets that strive for greater prosperity for their populations achieve growth decoupled from greenhouse gas emissions. These fast-growing economies should not repeat the mistakes made by industrialised countries."

The intention is to structure the first Golding impact fund as a private equity fund of funds with clearly defined sustainable investment objectives. It will have a global approach and invest in a diversified portfolio of growth capital funds in the sectors ecotech, sustainable food and agriculture, as well as financial services. The decision to launch an impact investing strategy is a direct consequence of the continuous development of Golding's ESG strategy, which is already an integral part of investment decisions across all asset classes.

Before founding Sonanz, Andreas Nilsson was a private equity investor for 25 years, primarily at EQT and UBS. The native Swede holds a PhD in social finance ("Financing of Nonprofits and Social Enterprises") from Stockholm School of Economics and spent two years as a visiting fellow at Harvard Business School. Prior to Sonanz, Nina Freudenberg worked for a private equity firm in Bangladesh. She began her career as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group in Munich. She holds an MSc in international health policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BSc in European Public Health from Maastricht University.

About Golding Capital Partners GmbH

Golding Capital Partners GmbH is one of the leading independent asset managers for private equity, private debt and infrastructure in Europe. With a team of over 120 professionals at its offices in Munich, Luxembourg, London, New York and Tokyo, Golding Capital Partners helps institutional investors to develop their investment strategy and manages over €10 billion in assets. Its more than 200 institutional investors include insurance companies, pension funds, foundations and family offices as well as banks, savings banks and cooperative banks. Golding became a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) in 2013.

Further information:
Golding Capital Partners GmbH
Susanne Stolzenburg
Manager Marketing & Communication
T +49 (0)89 419 997 553
stolzenburg@goldingcapital.com