Baltic, Direct Speech, Estonia, Forum, Investments

"Increasingly more private capital funds are being established and there are a lot of transactions in the Nordic countries. At the same time, there is no significant competition between the investors. Those wishing to invest can find a suitable company that wishes to involve money and make their investment," Peter Carlsson, partner at Swedish private capital fund Spintop Ventures, said at the private capital conference 0100 Conferences Tallinn.

Karma Ventures founding partner Margus Uudam said that the market is reaching a phase where there is competition emerging between investors in certain fields, but at the same time, there are fields where it is very difficult to find an investor.

Walter Stockinger, leading partner at Norway's Hadean Partners, at the same time said that in the Nordic countries, a lot has always been invested in research and development and many innovative solutions have emerged, however, in the field of medical biology, for example, there is essentially no funding of business projects.

According to Jari Mieskonen, leading partner Finland's Conor Venture Partners, there is a well-developed startup and initial phase funding in the Baltic countries, with the support of various private funds and the state, but the Baltics are lacking financing mechanisms that would help medium-sized enterprises grow into large companies that could be taken to the stock market in the US, for example. However, in order to take that step, companies, when growing, are moving to London or Silicon Valley.

Sebastian Krol, partner at Central Europe's Enterprise Investors, said that the Baltics' strong advantage for involving direct investments of foreign private capital is the region's very good stability and growth potential at the same time. "This is one of the most stable regions in Europe. The legal framework is also very similar to Western Europe. In addition, the people here are much hungrier than in Western Europe, the desire is to grow and do it quickly. This is why the region here is much more attractive," Krol said.

At the same time, Krol added that the main restricting factor unavoidably is the small size of the Baltics. "The Baltic market is small but at the same time, I see a lot of activity in terms of venture capital and startups. I hope that these companies will grow big and achieve stability, then they will also find investments in the next growth phases," he said.