Novalpina Capital

Novalpina Capital

Novalpina Capital was launched in 2017 by Stephen Peel, a former TPG partner who had co-led the firm's European operations and served on its global executive committee. He brought in Stefan Kowski, also from TPG, and Bastian Lueken, previously a senior investor at KKR, to build a European buyout platform focused on complex situations where they believed deep operational involvement could unlock value. The firm closed its debut fund at over €1B, a notable first-time raise for independent sponsors in the European mid-market (per Bloomberg, 2020). The firm's strategy targeted control investments in European mid-market companies across business services, technology, and regulated industries. Three known portfolio companies from its debut fund include Zentiva, a European generic pharmaceuticals manufacturer carved out of Sanofi, and the Israeli surveillance software developer NSO Group, which Novalpina acquired in February 2019 in a deal valued at approximately $1B (per Financial Times, 2019). The third was Acronis, a Swiss cybersecurity and data protection company, though that position was subsequently exited. The geographic focus was predominantly European-headquartered businesses with global operations, with NSO Group representing a rare non-European holding. Novalpina quickly became one of the most scrutinized private equity firms globally, entirely due to its ownership of NSO Group. The fund used a novel structure to hold NSO, creating a special limited partnership within the fund to isolate liability for limited partners (per Financial Times, 2019). That structure proved insufficient when NSO became embroiled in litigation over its Pegasus spyware, including a lawsuit from WhatsApp. By November 2020, the three founders had fallen into a governance dispute, with Peel seeking to remove his partners, Kowski and Lueken, after disagreements over NSO's management (per Bloomberg, 2020). In 2021, lenders led by Farallon Capital took control of NSO Group through a corporate restructuring that effectively removed the asset from Novalpina's portfolio. The firm's defining structural feature is negative: a governance model that broke down under pressure. Most private equity firms install boards and operating partners to manage portfolio companies; Novalpina attempted a constrained co-governance between its founding partners that dissolved within 18 months of its highest-profile deal closing. No second fund has been publicly reported, and the firm's principals have not disclosed a successor vehicle.