We invest in high-quality portuguese businesses facing restructuring or succession challenges
Significant in-house operational experience enables better investment decisions and truly transformational projects
Independence, Candor, Merit
As long-term investors, we hold that a focus on ESG throughout the investment lifecycle allows us to better identify investment risks and value creation opportunities
Our Investment Strategy
Atena invests in high-quality Portuguese companies facing succession or restructuring challenges. Atena has substantial experience investing in control-oriented equity and distressed debt instruments, adapting each deal structure to the needs of the seller and the stabilization of the company. Atena’s in-house portfolio development team works closely with the target company’s management team from day one to define and implement ambitious value creation plans.
Our businesses
Since its foundation in 2014, Atena invested in four sectors: Industrials, Education, Healthcare and Business Services. Together they represented around 260M€ in sales, with over two thirds abroad, and more than 2000 people. We have experience with exporting to more than 40 countries, with local presence in Portugal, Spain, Poland, Brazil, Algeria, Mozambique and Cameroon.
Our Team
Atena was founded on the premise that it is crucial to have in-house operational experience to make sounder investment decisions and to support the portfolio management teams in the design and implementation of truly transformational projects. Above all, we all share the same culture of Independence, Candor and Merit.
Our Funds
Atena raised its first Atena I fund in 2014 and is currently investing its Atena II fund, closed in January 2019 with 75M€. Atena's funds under management have as ultimate beneficiaries its management team and several international (European and US) institutions. Atena Equity Partners and its funds under management are authorised and regulated by the CMVM.
Atena was founded on the premise that it is crucial to have in-house operational experience to make sounder investment decisions and to support the portfolio management teams in the design and implementation of truly transformational projects. Two of the three Founding Partners have had significant line experience in Portuguese SMEs and we count today with in-house dedicated Transactions and Portfolio Development teams. Our Operating Partners, world-class senior executives who invest and work alongside Atena's investment team, strengthen our due diligence capacity and help to foster change at the portfolio level by "having done it before".
Atena has also developed a network of Operating Executives who are affected to its fund's portfolio companies as interim executive managers when necessary, and with the consultive support from Senior Advisors who are heavyweights in the Portuguese corporate world.
Until recently, Atena did not market or manage funds that directly promoted environmental or social characteristics nor those aimed at sustainable investments. In the end of 2023, Atena launched its Fund III, currently in fundraising, an Article 8 Fund that promotes environmental or social characteristics but not sustainable investments.
We firmly believe ESG-driven decisions by consumers and governments worldwide have a material impact on the success of our investment mandates. Therefore, as long-term investors, we hold that a focus on ESG throughout the investment lifecycle allows us to better identify investment risks and value creation opportunities.
In 2024, we published our first Sustainability Report, referring to 2023.
Furthermore, as part of our ESG commitment, we are active signatories and promoters of the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment.
[EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation - download PDF]