Staffen Elmgren, vice president of Sweden’s SPP Investment Management is leaving to set up New Economy, a fund specialising in IT, telecoms and media companies. Other founding partners include Claus Stenbaek, the owner of Richmond Capital, a venture capital firm dealing in Nordic IT and Jens Wilhelmsen, president of the Norwegian/British chamber of commerce and previously with Norway’s Sundt & Co.
The fund will specialise in TMTs and in particular telecoms and the internet. More specifically it will invest in domestic and European companies, unquoted tech funds and technology investment companies. It will also participate in second, third and fourth round financing.
The founders need a substantial investor to take a stake of up to 30% in the fund to get it off the ground. New Economy has yet to find a strategic partner but Elmgren says they are negotiating with a European and an American institution interested in investing. Elmgren intends to raise E100m and New Economy should be launched by December with offices in London and Stockholm.