This article is a part of Poland Unpacked. Weekly intelligence for decision-makers
A leading Baltic asset manager overseeing billions of euros is stepping up its expansion in Poland. It already has a track record of successful investments and a portfolio that includes Polmed. It is looking for platforms through which to consolidate fragmented sectors, and sees opportunities arising from the coming wave of business succession.
Polish private-equity funds have hardly been idle. Avallon MBO, which specializes in management buyouts, raised EUR 171.5m in September for its fourth vehicle. The fund is targeting EUR 260m in total commitments.
But Polish companies are also highly attractive to foreign financial investors. Invalda INVL, a group originating in Lithuania, has big ambitions for Poland.
It is one of the largest asset managers in the Baltic states. It has been active in Poland for years, and now plans to accelerate its expansion through a EUR 410m fund raised last year – about PLN 1.8bn at current exchange rates.
“Over the next three to four years, we could invest well over EUR 100m in Poland. In total, through INVL Private Equity Fund II, that could amount to EUR 150m–160m, or even considerably more. Some of our portfolio companies from other countries will probably invest and make acquisitions in Poland, because it is the largest market in the region. At the same time, we are working on more than 20 projects, so we will not be waiting long before making investments,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė, managing partner of INVL Private Equity Fund II.
A fund of rare scale in the region
Founded in 1991, Invalda INVL is one of the leading and fastest-growing asset-management groups in the Baltic states. Its assets under management surpassed EUR 1bn in 2019, EUR 2bn in 2025 and reached EUR 2.3bn at the end of June 2026. Over three decades of trading on Nasdaq Vilnius, the market value of the parent company has increased more than 400-fold. Over the past year alone, it has risen by a quarter, to EUR 350m, or about PLN 1.5bn.
That performance helped the group raise a private-equity fund in 2025 of a scale rarely seen in Central and Eastern Europe. At EUR 410m, it exceeded not only its original EUR 250m target, but also its EUR 400m hard cap. By comparison, leading Polish players Innova Capital and Enterprise Investors raised EUR 407m in 2024 and EUR 340m in 2025, respectively, for their latest vehicles.
“We operate across a range of asset classes [including private debt, infrastructure, real estate and even real assets such as forests and farmland – ed.], but private equity is our foundation. We were the first in the Baltic states to start investing in this field. We have a very long list of investors who have worked with us for years, including many high-net-worth individuals. For years, they have earned annual returns of around 20% with us, putting us among the market leaders. That kind of repeatable performance helps retain existing investors and attract new ones,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
Interactive chart Opening a Warsaw office was a strategic move
Korsakaitė also emphasizes the size and experience of INVL’s team. It has around 150 employees, including more than 60 investment professionals. More than 30 of them have many years of experience in the financial sector.
“The timing for investment is good, and our investors are well aware of the geopolitical risks. Investing in CEE is part of their portfolio diversification. They value the region for, among other things, its rapid growth, while we deliver strong results. We have local experience and expertise, including in Poland. For a fund of our size, that is very important,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
An important step in that direction was the recruitment of Sylwester Urbanek. A year ago, he became head of the fund’s Warsaw office. He had previously served as an investment director, including at Abris Capital Partners.
“That was a strategic move. Operating from outside the country, you can complete one or two deals there. But if we wanted to make Poland one of our core geographies, we needed someone on the ground – someone who speaks the same language as business owners and knows the market well. Bringing in someone with Sylwester’s experience was crucial to our investment plans,” explains Deimantė Korsakaitė.
Expert's perspective
Foreign investors continue to bet on Poland
The market has shifted into a more selective mode. Investors are scrutinizing asset quality, the resilience of business models and pricing more carefully. Poland’s strength lies in its diversified economy. The energy transition is creating a multi-year pipeline of projects in grids, renewables and energy storage. Rising defense spending, meanwhile, is driving demand not only for equipment, but also for components, logistics and cybersecurity.
The growth of AI is increasing demand for data centers, helped by Poland’s large market and strong pool of technical talent. Consolidation is also continuing in private healthcare. Funds are building platforms in business services and consumer brands as well. One example from our own practice is the recent addition of Grant Thornton Poland to the Grant Thornton Advisors platform, backed by U.S.-based New Mountain Capital.
Poland combines the scale of a large EU economy, convergence potential and mature legal and transaction infrastructure. Our conversations with clients are increasingly less about whether to invest in Poland and more about how to do so and in which sector.
The main barriers remain gaps in price expectations and limited exit opportunities given the shallow IPO market [initial public offerings ahead of a stock-market listing – ed.]. As a result, earn-outs [deferring part of the transaction price and making it contingent on future performance – ed.] and sales to strategic investors are playing a growing role in our deals.
The sweet spot: EUR 35m
INVL is looking for companies valued at roughly EUR 30m–200m. It is prepared to invest EUR 10m–60m in them, with around EUR 35m of its own equity seen as the sweet spot. Debt financing and co-investors can also be brought into the mix. In Polmed, one of Poland’s largest healthcare companies, for example, INVL invested alongside the International Finance Corporation and Accession Capital Partners.
“So the amounts involved can be considerably larger. We are open to further co-investments. Cooperation between funds could become one of the trends in Central Europe. It allows investors to carry out transactions that would otherwise be out of reach. It can also provide companies with greater support, and not only financial support,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
The fund is interested in a range of sectors, regardless of country. What they have in common is fragmentation, scope for professionalization and structural growth in demand. This creates opportunities to consolidate markets – private-equity funds look for so-called platforms on which to pursue buy-and-build strategies – and to create strong market leaders.
“Healthcare is one of the sectors that matters to us. We are also looking at areas including education, B2B services and the circular economy. We are not chasing the artificial-intelligence wave. We assess the extent to which adopting AI can improve the efficiency of each business, but it is not a decisive factor for us,” explains Deimantė Korsakaitė.
Expert's perspective
The opportunities and challenges of buying consolidation platforms
That is the situation in many sectors in Poland today. Ownership structures add another layer. According to PwC data, 64% of family businesses in Central and Eastern Europe are still in the hands of the first generation, compared with 32% globally. The result is a large number of successful companies that may nevertheless be too small individually to attract the attention of an institutional investor or a global strategic buyer.
Consolidation can overcome that barrier. The value comes from the fact that the company at the end of the process is a different asset from the sum of the businesses acquired along the way. It has a market position, a professional management team, a single system and a growth story that can be presented to an international buyer. A strategic investor may be willing to pay a premium for that – provided, of course, that what it is buying is genuinely one company rather than a collection of businesses operating under a common owner.
The biggest challenge, therefore, is not acquiring successive companies but integrating them effectively. That is the common denominator of buy-and-build strategies regardless of sector. According to Bain & Company, buy-and-build deals backed by a clear strategic rationale generated returns almost 60% higher than those based solely on multiple arbitrage.
The market tests this at exit. A buyer does not want to take responsibility for integration that the previous owner failed to complete. That is why a platform needs its own M&A [mergers and acquisitions – ed.] capabilities. The project requires a clear action plan and people responsible for executing it, while synergies must be measurable. Cost synergies are considerably easier to control than revenue synergies.
Two other factors have become increasingly important in consolidation in recent years. Only sufficient scale can justify serious investment in technology, including AI. At the same time, buy-and-build is increasingly becoming a route to international expansion, rather than merely a way to strengthen a company’s position in its domestic market.
Thousands of potentially attractive companies in Poland alone
Around 8,000 companies across the region meet INVL’s criteria. More than 6,000 of them are based in Poland. The fund will not analyze all of them. It says that completing a single transaction typically requires assessing around 100 companies, while its target portfolio is about 12 businesses.
“In previous years, deals often fell through because buyers and sellers had different valuation expectations. Owners were in no hurry to sell, hoping their companies would become more valuable. Today, the more common reason is that the founder is not yet ready to move to the next stage of development with a private-equity partner,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
The injection of capital and professionalization of the organization require the owner to give up control, or at least accept shared decision-making. They also require more professional management and reporting.
“An entrepreneur has to start analyzing data rather than relying solely on intuition. In addition, we commit to a joint exit within a defined time horizon,” explains Deimantė Korsakaitė.
Succession is driving the deal pipeline
New transactions are also being supported by limited interest in the Warsaw Stock Exchange – which sees only a handful of IPOs each year – the growing activity of smaller private-equity funds and succession challenges. For INVL, succession is the most important factor driving attractive new opportunities.
“Smaller private-equity funds are playing an increasingly important role in preparing companies for the next stage of growth. They introduce management and reporting standards that make transactions easier. But the main driver is succession. Companies founded in the 1990s, and even in the early 2000s, have now reached the right scale and level of maturity,” says the managing partner at INVL Asset Management.
More and more founders of such businesses are reaching the point where they must decide what happens next: whether to hand the company over to the next generation, sell it outright, or bring in a partner for the final few years.
Interactive chart Investment objective: multiply performance within a few years
INVL does not set specific targets that it intends to achieve with its portfolio companies. These depend on the individual investment.
The scale of what it aims to accomplish over the course of an investment is well illustrated by two of its projects. One is healthcare provider InMedica Group, acquired in 2019 and sold to Mehiläinen Group six years later. The other is Eco Baltia, an environmental-services company that remains in the portfolio.
“InMedica’s revenue increased fifteenfold to EUR 150m, while EBITDA rose 25-fold to EUR 25m. Eco Baltia, meanwhile, quadrupled its revenue from EUR 70m to EUR 282m, while EBITDA increased fivefold from EUR 8m to EUR 42m by the end of 2025. These are exactly the kinds of success stories we want to build,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
Building world-class regional champions
The fund also has an important non-financial objective: to take companies to the next stage of development and build them into local, or even European, leaders.
“We can help smaller companies secure a leading position in their home market. Businesses that have already reached that stage, meanwhile, we want to transform into regional or even European leaders by expanding them into Western European markets. We see the Baltic states and Poland as good places from which to build world-class regional champions,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
In her view, a large domestic market, strong entrepreneurship, high productivity and ambitious management teams provide everything needed to deliver on that plan.
Interactive chart Beyond macro factors, the problem often lies in management
Invalda INVL’s private-equity portfolio comprises companies generating more than EUR 1bn in revenue, EUR 250m in adjusted EBITDA and employing 10,000 people. Three Polish companies account for a significant share of that portfolio. Alongside Polmed, they are veterinary-clinic chain LuxVet and PVC recycler Metal-Plast.
Despite their different profiles, they share the potential to consolidate fragmented sectors and build leading players. That fits well with the fund’s strategy. The factors that can hinder its success, however, vary from case to case.
“In organizations where things are not going well, management is often the problem – beyond external, macroeconomic factors. If the founder loses the motivation to keep developing the company or steps back, and successive management teams fail to deliver, it is difficult to succeed. But where there is ambition, determination, flexibility and a willingness to adapt to change, the chances of success increase,” explains Deimantė Korsakaitė.
Poland’s successful economic transformation
INVL’s appetite for investing in Poland is underpinned by the country’s development to date and its future prospects.
“Poland has one of the most successful stories of economic transformation behind it. It has become one of the most mature investment markets in Central and Eastern Europe by virtually every important economic measure. And today it is leading growth not only in the region, but also across the European Union,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
She stresses that the positive trend is continuing. As the market grows and matures, Polish companies are becoming larger and more professional, as well as better prepared for further expansion. INVL has already achieved notable successes in Poland and is counting on more.
“Sanitas, one of our portfolio companies, acquired Poland’s Jelfa, and in 2011 we exited that investment in a transaction worth more than EUR 300m. Kauno Tiltai, meanwhile, made numerous acquisitions in Poland between 2005 and 2010 and increased its revenue from EUR 45m to around EUR 360m. Poland has therefore always been a natural direction for our expansion, and we want to continue along that path,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
Competition is growing, but it is still a good time to invest
INVL sees growing competition in Poland for the best assets. This reflects not only the increasing strength of local investors, but also greater interest from foreign buyers, including strategic investors. At the same time, however, this also increases the chances of exiting investments on attractive terms.
“Our strength is speed: in analyzing a company, identifying its growth drivers and making decisions. We are also well known for our flexibility, partnership-based approach and ability to handle difficult situations. Despite the intense competition, this is a very good time to invest in Poland. It is possible to find projects at reasonable valuations and increase their value significantly, creating benefits for everyone involved,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė.
Key Takeaways
- A Lithuanian fund is betting hundreds of millions of zlotys on Poland. Founded in Lithuania in 1991, Invalda INVL is one of the largest asset-management groups in the Baltic states, with more than EUR 2.3bn under management. It has been active in Poland for decades and already has a track record of successful investments. Through the EUR 410m private-equity fund it raised in 2025, it has made Poland a strategic market. It could invest EUR 150m–160m, or even more, once acquisitions carried out by its portfolio companies are taken into account.
- A strategy built around consolidating fragmented sectors. INVL is looking for companies valued at roughly EUR 30m–200m. It is prepared to invest EUR 10m–60m in them, with around EUR 35m of its own equity seen as the sweet spot. Debt financing and co-investors can also be brought into the mix, meaning transactions can be considerably larger. Among the sectors the fund finds attractive are healthcare, education, B2B services and the circular economy. Regardless of the industry, the key factors are fragmentation, scope for professionalization and structural growth in demand.
- Poland remains attractive to foreign investors. The fund is seeing growing competition among investors for the best companies in Poland. Even so, it believes this is a good time to invest in the country, supported by Poland’s development to date and its future prospects. “Poland has one of the most successful stories of economic transformation behind it. It has become one of the most mature investment markets in Central and Eastern Europe by virtually every important economic measure. And today it is leading growth not only in the region, but also across the European Union,” says Deimantė Korsakaitė, managing partner of INVL Private Equity Fund II.