The Norwegian private equity market ranges from seed and growth investments by angel and venture capital funds, to leveraged buyout (LBO) and secondary transactions by private equity funds, herewith public-to-private acquisitions and IPO exits.

In 2020, leveraged buyout transactions of private targets dominated the transaction volume, representing 50.6% of the total private equity transactional volume for that year. The Norwegian private equity market spans the width of all transaction types found in any mature market, but the typical club deals have, save for a few exceptions, for all practical purposes been outside the realm of the Norwegian private equity market. The main reason for this is that most Norwegian transactions are of a size that normally does not require a major international private equity fund to spread its equity risk in order to avoid exceeding investment concentration limits in its fund. The foregoing notwithstanding, sell-downs or syndication of minority equity portions subsequent to buyouts also occur in the Norwegian market.

"Club deals have, save for a few exceptions, for all practical purposes been outside the realm of the Norwegian private equity market"

By the number of private equity transactions, TMT services and the industrial and manufacturing sectors dominated the Norwegian market in 2020, each with 46%, 11.3% and 10% of the buyout investment volume respectively, followed by the consumer sector with 8.8%, and the medical sector and the energy sector, each with 6.3% of the total deal count, respectively.

Read more about the current state of the Norwegian private equity market, including legal issues that arise within private equity transactions in Norway today, in the latest issue of The International Comparative Legal Guide to: Private Equity - a practical cross-border overview of legal issues within private equity. Ole Kristian Aabø-Evensen, partner at Aabø-Evensen, takes you through all you need to know about private equity transactions in Norway, both from a legal and commercial perspective.

This article was first published in the ICLG - Private Equity. To learn more about the publisher, please visit www.iclg.com.

Contact
Ole K. Aabø-Evensen
(+47) 477 81 840
oka@aaboevensen.com

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