Verdane expands team with sustainability specialists, adding to both its Elevate and IR teams’ capabilities

Verdane, the Northern European specialist growth equity investor, is pleased to announce the hires of Axel Elmqvist, as Sustainability Lead for Verdane Elevate, its specialised team of in-house operational experts, and Ellinor Schrewelius who joins as a Director in Investor Relations and Business Development.

With a background in management consultancy, including a three-year stint at sustainability specialist Material Economics, Axel has joined Verdane’s Elevate team as Sustainability lead in its Stockholm office. He will focus on developing the Firm’s ESG and Impact capabilities, further strengthening Verdane’s long-standing commitment to sustainability integration as a value creation lever.

Meanwhile, Ellinor Schrewelius has taken up a new position as a Director in Investor Relations and Business Development, based out of Stockholm. Previously an Investment Director at the Sixth Swedish National Pension Fund (AP6), Ellinor spent several years investing in European and US buyout growth funds, as well as playing a key role in AP6’s dedicated sustainability team. Prior to this, she was an Investment Director for the Swedish Government working with state-owned enterprises.

Bjarne Kveim Lie, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Verdane commented: “At Verdane, we are convinced that strengthening sustainability practices will benefit our companies in both the short and long term, and thereby our funds’ investors. These new hires are part of our vision to become an even-better investor and owner of ambitious, sustainable, tech-enabled growth companies. Axel and Ellinor bring with them a wealth of knowledge and experience that will prove invaluable to the team as we continue on this journey.”

With a strong track record of investment in sustainability-related businesses, Verdane made its first “cleantech” investment over 10 years ago. Its more recent sustainable investments span re-commerce (momox, asgoodasnew), spare parts that enable upcycling (Bildeler.no, Spares Group), sustainable consumer goods (The Humble Co.), and software (Evondos, Danelec Marine).

Elmqvist and Schrewelius are joined by an Analyst hired to Verdane’s investment team, two new recruitments to its Elevate Data Analytics and Go-to-Market teams, and a new member of its administrative staff. These additions bring the total number of new hires for the firm to eight since the beginning of 2021.

Earlier this year, Verdane announced the closing of its ninth fund, Edda II, at its EUR540m hard cap, and the firm is currently investing across the Nordics and Germany from Edda II and its SEK6bn Verdane Capital X fund.