Oakley Capital closes Flagship Fund VI at € 4.5 billion

London, Munich, Milan, Madrid — Oakley Capi­tal (“Oakley”), a leading pan-Euro­­pean private equity inves­tor focu­sed on the mid-market, has successfully comple­ted the fund­rai­sing for its €4.5 billion hard cap Oakley Capi­tal VI fund (“Fund VI” or the “Fund”) just six months after laun­ching the fund­rai­sing in Septem­ber 2024. The Fund was over­sub­scri­bed just three months after the start of the fundraising. 

Fund VI excee­ded the EUR 2.85 billion raised by its prede­ces­sor fund by 58%, bene­fiting in parti­cu­lar from strong support from exis­ting inves­tors across the Oakley plat­form with a re-inves­t­­ment rate of appro­xi­m­ately 100%. In addi­tion, insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors from Europe, North America, Asia and new regi­ons such as Austra­lia and Latin America, among others, have made capi­tal commit­ments tota­ling more than EUR 2.2 billion. 

With the newly raised capi­tal, Oakley will conti­nue the successful invest­ment stra­tegy of Fund V, which is now alre­ady around 70% inves­ted. The invest­ment focus is on medium-sized, foun­­der-led, unlis­ted Euro­pean compa­nies in the four core sectors of tech­no­logy, busi­ness services, digi­tal consu­mer and educa­tion. The fund will focus on compa­nies of a simi­lar size to its prede­ces­sor, but with more capi­tal available for successful buy-and-build stra­te­gies and the poten­tial for a larger number of invest­ments. To date, this stra­tegy has reali­zed total gross returns of four times capi­tal employed (3.9x MM) and has achie­ved an average gross inter­nal rate of return (IRR) of 52% since incep­tion and across all funds. Over the past 12 months, Oakley has also sold three invest­ments, conti­nuing its track record of consis­tent distributions. 

Rebecca Gibson (photo © Oakley), Part­ner at Oakley Capi­tal, said: “We would like to thank all our inves­tors for their confi­dence in Oakley and their contri­bu­tion to the successful comple­tion of Fund VI at a time of contin­ued uncer­tainty for the private equity indus­try as a whole.”

Peter Dubens, Co-Foun­­der and Mana­ging Part­ner of Oakley Capi­tal, said: “Having made signi­fi­cant invest­ments over the past two years and with a full pipe­line of promi­sing invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, we look forward to working with more excep­tio­nal foun­ders and manage­ment teams across Europe and laying the foun­da­ti­ons for future returns.”

About Oakley Capital

Oakley Capi­tal was foun­ded 20 years ago with the mission to be the part­ner of choice for foun­ders and entre­pre­neurs. We back private, pan-Euro­­pean compa­nies with enter­prise values ranging from €100 million to over €1 billion, acqui­ring majo­rity stakes and support­ing complex tran­sac­tions such as carve-outs. We have a diver­si­fied team of more than 200 people working across our six offices in London, Munich, Milan, Madrid, Luxem­bourg and Bermuda, giving us true Euro­pean reach and local cultu­ral exper­tise. Our unique access to primary, proprie­tary invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties enables us to iden­tify attrac­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties in our four core sectors of Tech­no­logy, Busi­ness Services, Digi­tal Consu­mer and Educa­tion. We then support foun­ders to create value and acce­le­rate the growth of their busi­nesses by helping them to expand into new markets and geogra­phies, grow manage­ment teams, deve­lop marke­ting stra­te­gies or tran­si­tion their busi­ness to recur­ring revenue. 

We focus on buil­ding long-term, recur­ring part­ner­ships with excep­tio­nal foun­ders, many of whom go on to invest in our funds them­sel­ves. Across our group, we manage a total of around 15 billion euros on behalf of our inves­tors and conti­nuously gene­rate attrac­tive returns for all our stake­hol­ders. www.oakleycapital.com