Left to right: Christina Levin-Rylander and Erich Becker

Norwegian PE manager Verdane has made two hires for sustainability-related roles, according to an announcement.

Erich Becker has joined the London office as a partner in the decarbonisation team. He was head of Europe at Generate Capital until last year, per his Linkedin profile, and has also held roles at Goldman Sachs, Macquarie and Zouk Capital.

Verdane invests “thematically” in digitalisation and decarbonisation across all its funds. Edda III, a buyout fund, closed on €1.1 billion last month. Idun I, the firm’s first fund marketed as impact, closed on €300 million in 2022.

“I was brought in to basically double down on the decarbonisation effort,” Becker told New Private Markets. “There’s already an established team and we are significantly boosting and increasing the skill set of the team for all the activities and the investment targets that we have got ahead of us.”

On his remit, Becker said: “What we’re looking for on the decarbonisation side is ideally companies in need of growth equity ranging from €10 million to €50 million, or even more. And it would be good to make three to five investments per year.”

Christina Levin-Rylander has also joined the firm as chief operating officer for Elevate – the firm’s operational advisory group – where she will focus on decarbonisation investments and lead Verdane’s sustainability team. Before joining Verdane, Levin-Rylander worked as a vice-president at Northvolt and spent 18 years at Linde Gas. She is based in Stockholm.

“It’s quite unique how Verdane goes about the build phase of the companies we have invested in. We’ve got at hand more than 30 experts now coming from industry, from operational companies with different skill sets and specialisations. And I’m very much looking forward to working with Christina because she’s been running 11 processing plants at Linde and, as head of investments, has done everything from concept to construction and operations. It’s quite key to have these types of skills available to us in the decarbonisation space,” Becker said.