INTERVIEW WITH TOMI MARTAS, ASPIRA - CREATION OF CENSUS GROUP
Striking a new direction in audit and advisory services in Finland with launch of PE-backed platform
November 2027, Aspira Partners, a Nordic private equity firm whose focus is on being a growth partner for founders and entrepreneurs, recently joined forces with six Finnish audit and advisory service companies — together they now make up Census Group, a newly launched platform with a shared vision and strong commitment to SME clients across Finland. This is the first private equity-backed audit and advisory group created in the country.
We spoke to Tomi Martas, Principal at Aspira with a background in PE investment and strategy consulting, about the process around building this platform, in which Oaklins Finland acted as a buy-side advisor. The conversation delved into Aspira’s objectives when seeking acquisitions, the specific challenges of doing six deals simultaneously and the benefits of creating such multi-company platforms.
What is Aspira Partners’ competitive edge and how does Aspira differ from other Swedish private equity investors?
Aspira was founded quite recently, only five years ago. Co-founder Andreas Bruzelius has a significant track record in sector consolidation plays to create new market leaders by teaming up with outstanding entrepreneurs.
We’ve done seven such platform investments so far, over 100 individual transactions, and almost all of those have been proprietary acquisitions. We don’t really participate in auctions — we’d rather form a view on a specific industry where there could be an consolidation opportunity. Then we work in close collaboration with our strategic partners, such as Oaklins, to validate the opportunity and engage in discussions with the best entrepreneurs for establishing the initial platform, and build it up from there.
The edge for us is doing proprietary research and then engaging with those locally strong companies that might go under the radar for many other investors. It’s about forming our own view on what industries are attractive and putting together a plan to incentivize entrepreneurs to join us.
With initial platforms of three to five companies, you can typically get critical mass in a specific market, then you continue to drive growth both organically and inorganically. Aspira’s first platform investments were Teqt, and there we’ve now done 45 transactions, and Qflow, where we’ve done 25.TOMI MARTAS, ASPIRA
What are Aspira’s main goals when seeking an acquisition target or considering the creation of a platform like Census?
We tend to be more thematical and start with the industry, not necessarily with a company. We identify a market that we think is attractive from an investment standpoint, not too risky but still large enough and not consolidated so there is an opportunity to bring a number of smaller companies together to create a new industry leader.
We want to create something that is of sufficient size, which means €10–30 million EBITDA, and revenue somewhere around €100 million. That’s typically the goal.
What profile are you looking for among founders and entrepreneurs?
We work with companies that are entrepreneur-led. We don’t want to take over the daily management of the business, we want the existing team to continue leading it. So we also need to get comfort on the entrepreneurs themselves, that they are committed to the journey for the future.
When it came to Census, was the intention always to create a group of six companies? Did the scope change as the process progressed?
We’re not really fixated on the number of companies. So if we get 10 from the beginning, we get 10. What’s more important is that it’s enough to justify deploying that much equity into a specific market, and that we get enough scale from the start. What we don’t want to end up with is buying one small, entrepreneur-led company and then having difficulty in growing it further.
Generally, it’s three to five companies — the more we can get, the better. That’s why we speak with many entrepreneurs and try to come up with the optimal composition for the initial platform. In these critical early stages, when there is the need to get a lot done in a relatively short window, having a trusted advisor on our side is very important for us.
When did you first connect with Oaklins Finland for this particular venture? What where the key advantages of partnering with Oaklins?
We had a strong existing relationship with Oaklins, we had collaborated across many other investment projects. We have worked with Oaklins almost exclusively in Finland, and they were the natural choice in this case.
In terms of advantages, it depends who is facilitating the dialogues on the Aspira side. If my Swedish colleagues want to do deals in Finland, it’s clear that it’s much better to partner with someone with a senior profile and who speaks the same language. It’s a much better way to engage in the dialogue. We also like to work with advisors with a lot of M&A experience and who are from a firm that has a credible brand and track record.
Were there any lessons learned or significant moments during this series of acquisitions?
One takeaway, which was quite surprising, was that obviously the negotiations look quite different when they’re auditors or lawyers than when they’re with someone from a blue-collar industry — the former tend to be more knowledgeable about all the different M&A-related topics and more demanding. The share price agreement negotiation was more complicated and drawn out than we expected. It was a function of the people we were negotiating with, who were very detail oriented.
We’re not looking to compete with the Big Four audit companies — we want to build a new nationwide leader in the SME segment of audit and advisory in Finland.TOMI MARTAS, ASPIRA
Looking ahead, what would you say are the key objectives for Census in terms of synergies, brand strategy and growth?
When thinking about the trends happening in the auditing industry, quite a few of them can be better managed if you have more scale. Factors like digitalization, AI, compliance and regulation, which is becoming more and more stringent — you can keep up with the regulations if you have a bigger team that can share expertise.
Another aspect is human resources. A bigger company can offer better job opportunities for people across the group. And one thing we do at Aspira is offer broad shareholder programs, so every single employee can become a shareholder if they like — that’s something that we can do with our model that smaller companies typically can’t.
Another important area is best practice sharing, bringing people together to learn from each other and, to some degree, harmonize ways of working. We may also share some resources to work more as a team as opposed to individual companies. So we start with six companies and over time move towards being a group, and working more and more as one team. Initially we will keep the brands independent as they have strong positions in their local areas, they’re well known and respected.
We are going to invest in digitalization. We have a portfolio company that does software development for purpose-built AI solutions. So in this case we’re going to make the group as AI- and tech-enabled as possible, to be effective and keep up with the competition.
Are there any specific markets or geographies that look appealing to Aspira going forward?
If you look at Aspira’s investments, we are generally operating in the Nordic countries. But we do have companies that have expanded into Germany and the UK as well, such as WTR Group and Qflow. It depends on the specific investment. We’re not necessarily looking at UK- or Germany-based platforms — we want to form the platform in the Nordics and then expand out into northern Europe.
Overall we focus on business services, technology and niche industrials, and we only look at B2B companies, no consumer investments.
The reaction to the launch of Census group has been very positive, especially among the people in the companies themselves. It has been a breath of fresh air in an industry traditionally divided between the Big Four and smaller, local companies. On the M&A front, the announcement has been helpful because there’s been a lot of interest from targets that want to join the new group. We’re planning to expand it further, maybe three-fold compared to where it is today.TOMI MARTAS, ASPIRA
The transactions we closed with the Census Group
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