Highland Europe invests in European-rooted tech companies; it collaborates with and provides growth capital for standout teams. It has just strengthened its own team by promoting Jean Tardy-Joubert, Gajan Rajanathan and Ronan Shally to partner level.
Jean and Gajan joined Highland in 2017/18 from Qatalyst, the San Francisco-based boutique investment bank serving the global tech sector. Ronan has been with the firm since 2014 and is Highland’s Chief Financial Officer. By promoting Gajan, Jean and Ronan, Highland Europe is better positioned than ever to help the founders it backs to achieve their ambitions.
Alongside these promotions, Highland has also successfully closed its fourth fund in eight years. Today the firm announced it has raised €700M to facilitate its backing of Europe’s best tech companies.
Building on a track record of investing in consumer tech brands and software companies such as AMCS, Brandwatch, ContentSquare, Featurespace, GetYourGuide, Huel, Jellysmack, MatchesFashion, Nexthink, PhotoBox, WeTransfer, Zwift, and Wolt, the new fund takes Highland Europe’s assets under management to €1.8B.
Over the past 12 months, the firm has backed seven exceptional founding teams investing – nearly €200M in Alkemics, Cobalt, DominoDatalab, Farewill, Meditopia, Modulr and Supermetrics as well as the existing portfolio. Highland Europe’s portfolio companies attracted exceptional external investment appetite with €730M follow-on investment in the last 12 months, some of which fuelled seven M&A transactions completed by portfolio companies.
Just as mission-critical tech and innovation have been instrumental in enabling businesses and individuals to continue functioning during the pandemic, technology looks set to play a key role in an eventual economic recovery. Reflecting this, Highland saw significant commitment from investors to the sector, resulting in an oversubscribed fund.
According to Fergal Mullen, co-founder and partner at Highland Europe,
“Highland Europe’s role is to bring capital, our deep network and scaling expertise to companies that can make it all the way to IPO. We have the track record, the team and a highly selective and focused strategy to help Europe’s most promising tech businesses become global leaders.”
The wider tech communiity welcomes this raise by Highland Europe because without good European sources of capital, many promising tech companies will struggle to raise the funds needed to fuel international success. According to one estimate, just one in eight European companies reach scale, compared with one in four in America. Highland comes in at the crucial but underfunded growth stage – and hopes to aid European scale-ups in taking on American and Asian tech giants.
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