nwk | nwu

Ralf Paslack serves as Geschäftsführer (managing director) and leads deal execution. Stephan Breitenkamp carries Prokurist authority and acts as a senior deal principal. The team also includes investment managers and analysts who support underwriting and portfolio monitoring.

It operates as a permanent-capital vehicle. The firm deploys the balance sheet of Sparkasse Bremen, its parent public savings bank, rather than raising blind-pool funds. That gives it structural flexibility to hold assets indefinitely and structure deals as equity, mezzanine, or silent partnerships.

The firm invests primarily in Germany, with a heavy concentration in Bremen, Hamburg, and Lower Saxony. It targets the Mittelstand — small and medium-sized enterprises — across succession transitions, growth capital, and corporate restructurings. Deal stages span early-stage, expansion, and buyout, often combining equity with mezzanine instruments.

All disclosed activity points to direct investments only. The firm takes equity and mezzanine positions directly on its parent bank's balance sheet and has not disclosed any commitments to external private equity funds.

No explicit sector exclusions are published, but the portfolio reveals a preference for asset-heavy or cash-flow-stable businesses — logistics, food production, healthcare services, real estate development, and light industrial. Pure-play software or pre-revenue life sciences are absent from the disclosed portfolio.

nwk | nwu is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sparkasse Bremen, a publicly chartered German savings bank. The firm acts as the bank's dedicated equity and mezzanine investment arm, providing risk capital to mid-market companies that fall outside standard commercial lending parameters.

nwk | nwu co-invests selectively. The portfolio shows several project-level partnerships, such as the daycare-development collaboration with PROCON and the joint development of villas in Baden-Baden with Hamburg-based real estate partners. These are structured as special-purpose entities rather than fund-level co-investment programs.