Mikael Ahlström

MBA’86J

Founding Partner, Procuritas Partners KB

When Mikael graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Lund in the late 1970s, Sweden’s socialist government didn’t allow entrepreneurs much freedom. So Mikael promptly accepted a one-year assignment at the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce in New York. Mikael loved New York and moved on to work for a US energy company, ESI Coal, where he rose to become Managing Director.

“It was at this time, in the early 1980s, that I became aware of something called ‘leveraged buyouts.’ They were very new and fascinating. I remember thinking that this financial technique could be exported.”

But to be successful in the leveraged buyout market, Mikael realised he needed three things, “I needed to learn more; I needed more credibility and I needed a wider network. I needed to go to business school.”
Mikael chose INSEAD for many different reasons. He had heard of its excellent reputation, he wanted to return to Europe and liked France, he had friends who had enjoyed their time at INSEAD and perhaps most importantly he wanted a one year MBA programme.

“One word can sum up my experience at INSEAD – ‘enlightening’. Everything about my year was ‘enlightening’ –the business approach, the organisational behaviour, the teaching methods, the cultures, the teamwork.”

“But when I look back at my time at INSEAD, one of my fondest memories is the garden flat that my wife and I rented, right in the centre of Fontainebleau. I remember spending many hours in that lovely garden.”
Mikael was so focused on leveraged buyouts that he, along with three other MBA participants, worked with INSEAD to create a special elective on Leveraged Buyouts and INSEAD even invited specialists from London to help teach the course.

At the end of his MBA Mikael was confronted with a dilemma: on the one hand he had already made up his mind to set up his own company; on the other hand, he had received jobs offers from both Barings and Mckinsey. He contrived to have the best of both worlds. He asked Barings if instead of the job offer they would invest in his new venture, and McKinsey promised they would defer his job offer for eight months in case his company failed.

Mikael got the investment he needed and never needed to take McKinsey up on their offer.
23 years later, Mikael is still Chairman of Procuritas Partners, the first private equity firm in the Nordic region.

Mikael has been a very active supporter of INSEAD over the years. He is a member of INSEAD's Swedish Council, has held seminars for more than ten years in Sweden to help build the INSEAD brand and has sent Directors, executives and union representatives of Procuritas and its portfolio companies to INSEAD on Executive Education courses.

Over the years, Mikael has been very active as non-executive Director or Chairman in many Procuritas related companies in Scandinavia.
“My ambitions for the future are to ensure that Procuritas Partners continues to prosper, with or without me, to support my children and to ensure that they get equally as rewarding opportunities as I did, and to further establish Charity Rating, a not for profit valuation rating organisation I helped to set up in 2005.” This organisation, which is the first in the Nordic region, tries to analyse how charities create value for their donors and clients.
In 1985, he received Dr. Marcus Wallenberg's Award for International Industrial Enterprises Studies.