BIG U.S. PRIVATE EQUITY firms like Carlyle, TPG and Blackstone may have billions more in assets, but Nordic Capital, a relatively small ($7.5 billion in assets) firm based in Stockholm, can claim one of the biggest killings in PE history. Along with New York-based Avista Capital Partners, Nordic Capital turned a $2.6 billion investment in a neglected Norwegian pharmaceutical company into an estimated profit of $10 billion and counting. Nordic first invested in Nycomed in 1999 when it was a “small, regional pharma company that wasn’t actually attractive to any buyers,” says Kristoffer Melinder, a former United Nations officer in Bosnia and JPMorgan banker who joined Nordic in 1998.
