Innova Capital

Day-to-day investment committee authority sits with the partnership group led by Managing Partner Steven Buckley in London and Senior Partner Andrzej Bartos in Warsaw. The firm operates a consensus-based IC across its three offices, with individual deal sponsors retaining substantial autonomy on origination and execution. Bartos, the founder, remains a voting member on all flagship fund investments but has stepped back from operational management.

Innova relies on local-language networks built over three decades — relationships with mid-market corporate law firms, regional banks running non-performing loan books, and family-owned industrial groups facing succession gaps. The firm does not run an auction-heavy model; a majority of its control deals originate bilaterally before a formal sales process is launched. This is especially important in Romania and provincial Poland, where business owners are often reluctant to engage English-speaking, fly-in investors.

Innova primarily seeks control or majority stakes — buyouts, successions, and carve-outs — but has selectively executed minority growth-equity transactions where the capital funds a cross-border expansion the original founder cannot manage alone. The firm's historical weighting is roughly 70 percent control, 30 percent significant minority, always with board seats and governance rights.

Innova has publicly stayed away from extractive industries, commodity speculation, and defense manufacturing, partly reflecting LP sensitivity and partly because those sectors in CEE are often shaped by state-linked capital that complicates a private-equity governance model. The firm also avoids early-stage venture deals without proven revenue.

Yes. In 2023, Innova expanded its platform to include a dedicated CEE credit fund, targeting mezzanine and senior-secured lending to mid-market companies in Poland and Romania — an adjacency that leverages the same origination funnel as the equity business. The credit vehicle is structured with separate LP commitments and a distinct investment committee.

Innova had no direct exposure to Russia or Belarus and limited operational exposure in Ukraine itself. The shock was primarily indirect: risk premiums on the Polish zloty and Romanian leu widened temporarily, and some Warsaw-listed portfolio valuations compressed. The firm used the dislocation to make one add-on acquisition in a Romanian logistics asset at a discounted multiple.

Steven Buckley's elevation to Managing Partner in 2022 formalized a succession path that had been underway for several years. Andrzej Bartos retains his Senior Partner role and IC vote but has ceded day-to-day management authority. The remaining senior partners span early-hire, locally raised dealmakers and Western-trained professionals recruited over the past decade, creating a two-layer bench.