ECM Partners

ECM Partners

ECM Partners was formed through a 2015 ownership change that repositioned a legacy Slovenian financial group as a licensed alternative asset manager. The entity traces its origins to National Finance Corporation, founded in 1994 during Slovenia's early privatization, and was once active in local public equities and UCITS fund management. Under the current leadership team — CEO Ales Skoberne, CIO Dejan Rajbar and Chairman Savvas Liasis — the firm sold its UCITS operations and focused exclusively on opportunistic investments across the Adriatic and Aegean corridors. The firm operates what it calls a Deep Value strategy, rooted in credit-focused distressed investing. It sources mispriced collateral, secondary distressed debt and underperforming mid-market companies in sectors that include industrial manufacturing, healthcare services, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, real estate and hospitality. ECM deploys capital through discretionary vehicles — including the Elements Credit Opportunities fund series backed by Slovenian pension funds and insurers — as well as non-discretionary co-investment mandates alongside unnamed global institutional funds. Anchoring transactions stretch from a €90 million healthcare LBO in 2021, the firm's first fully discretionary buyout, to a €71 million co-investment deal sourced on behalf of an international fund in 2017. Deployment passed the €900 million mark in 2023, the same year the firm launched its first international fundraise for a PE opportunistic strategy and expanded a network of regional high-net-worth investors to anchor the new vehicle. ECM operates from Ljubljana, Nicosia, Zagreb and Athens, with a team that includes 25 named professionals spanning investment, legal, operations and investor relations. Portfolio company board seats tie the firm directly to assets including Famar, a European pharmaceutical contract manufacturer, and Ygia Polyclinic, Cyprus's largest private hospital. ECM's structural differentiator is its hybrid role: it is neither a pure captive family office nor a conventional independent GP. By serving as a licensed local partner that originates, diligences and co-invests alongside international funds — while simultaneously raising discretionary capital from domestic institutions and regional family investors — it operates as a two-sided platform that monetizes local barriers to entry for external allocators, a model that remains rare among Southern European buyout managers.