From Finance Minister to Fund Builder: Péter Oszkó on the GP Stakes Model and O3 Partners' European Ambitions

O3 Partners is not a typical investment company. Rather than backing individual companies, it owns equity stakes in fund managers - 3TS Capital Partners, Catalyst Romania, and OXO Labs - generating recurring revenue from management fees, carried interest, and dividends across more than €300M in AUM and 90+ investments across Europe and the United States. Listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange since 2021, the company delivered a total shareholder return of over 50% in 2025, including a 12% dividend yield, with revenue growing from €1.9M in 2024 to €5.9M in 2025.

The company is led by Dr. Péter Oszkó, former Managing Partner at Deloitte and Hungary's Finance Minister from 2009 to 2010, who has spent the past decade building O3 Partners into a listed GP stakes investor with pan-European ambitions and a clear roadmap toward a Standard Market upgrade and a future listing on Euronext Amsterdam.

We sat down with Péter to understand the thinking behind O3 Partners, how the GP stakes model works in practice, and what the current crowdfunding campaign means for retail investors.

1. You've had an unusual career path: from Deloitte to Hungary's Finance Ministry, and then into venture capital and private equity. How did those different experiences shape the way you think about building O3 Partners?

My time in consulting at Deloitte equipped me with a strong foundation in problem-solving, particularly in finding solutions for unique and complex situations. It also provided me with essential management skills and an extensive network of international business relationships. Subsequently, my tenure as Finance Minister was a masterclass in handling critical situations, making rapid and highly targeted decisions, and executing crisis management. It also allowed me to build an exceptionally broad network of investor relations and gain deep, practical experience in fundraising.

When you combine these experiences, they create an ideal investor profile. The venture capital and private equity sector offers the perfect environment to leverage this background, allowing me to build something truly unique and valuable with O3 Partners. These diverse perspectives enable us to approach fund management and GP stakes with a level of strategic agility and resilience that sets us apart.

2. O3 operates as a GP stakes investor, owning equity interests in fund managers rather than investing directly in companies. For someone unfamiliar with the model, how would you explain what that means and why it's attractive?

The GP stakes strategy is essentially about investing in the business of investment itself. Instead of investing capital directly into individual startups or mature companies, we acquire equity stakes in the management companies (the General Partners, or GPs) that run venture capital and private equity funds.

The primary attraction of this model is that it allows investors to participate in the high-yield potential of the private equity and venture capital sectors while holding a cash-positive, value-retaining portfolio. Traditional direct fund investing often involves the burdens of long-term, illiquid capital commitments, highly unpredictable portfolio valuations, and a continuous lack of cash flow in the early years. The GP stakes model mitigates these issues by generating recurring revenue streams from management fees, while still providing the upside potential of carried interest (profit sharing) when the underlying portfolios perform well. It is a more stable, cash-generative way to access the outsized returns of the alternative asset class.

3. Your portfolio of fund managers includes 3TS Capital Partners, Catalyst Romania, and OXO Labs. What does each of these bring to the group, and how do they work together as part of O3's broader strategy?

These three entities are highly complementary and represent the core phases of venture capital investment, building upon one another to create a comprehensive ecosystem.

OXO Labs focuses on the earliest stages, providing acceleration and seed capital to help promising startups get off the ground and find product-market fit. Catalyst Romania typically steps in at the next stage, providing early-stage and Series A growth capital, with a strong regional focus on Romania and the broader Eastern European market. Finally, 3TS Capital Partners represents the expansion and international scaling phase, investing in technology companies that are ready to grow globally. Together, they allow O3 Partners to capture value across the entire lifecycle of a technology company, from its inception to international scaling, creating a seamless pipeline of investment opportunities and shared expertise.

4. The funds managed by O3's partner GPs have a track record that includes exits like SmartBill, LogMeIn, and Tresorit. What does it take to produce that kind of outcome from Central and Eastern Europe?

Achieving outcomes of that magnitude from the CEE region requires a combination of factors, but the most essential element is deep local integration. You need exceptionally strong local networks to source the best deals before they become widely known.

Furthermore, having a strong, recognizable brand and a reputation for adding real value is crucial for attracting top-tier founders. It also comes down to rigorous, disciplined selection - identifying not just good ideas, but teams capable of executing on a global scale. Beyond that, it requires the ability to bridge the gap between regional excellence and global markets, providing founders with the strategic guidance and international connections necessary to scale beyond their home countries and attract global acquirers.

5. In 2025, O3 delivered a total shareholder return of over 50%, with revenue growing from€1.9M to €5.9M. What drove that performance, and how should investors think about the return profile going forward?

It is important to understand that 2025 was an exceptional year. A significant portion of that high return was driven by share price appreciation, which occurred as the market and our shareholders began to fully understand the massive potential inherent in our GP acquisition strategy.

Looking forward, our fundamental goal is to deliver consistent, double-digit returns every year. We aim to achieve this while positioning the stock as a reliable, continuous dividend payer. Furthermore, the model inherently provides the opportunity for additional, extraordinary profit realizations on top of this baseline, driven by successful fund closings and highly profitable exits from the underlying portfolios.

6. O3 is expanding beyond technology into green energy infrastructure, VC secondaries, and new geographies across DACH, Benelux, and the Nordics. What's the strategic logic behind that expansion?

The strategic logic is rooted in smart diversification and capturing high-growth opportunities. In the European market today, green energy infrastructure and VC secondaries are highly relevant investment segments with massive growth potential. We have already performed exceptionally well in the secondary space, and we are now organizing this expertise into a dedicated fund.

Regarding geographical expansion into the DACH, Benelux, and Nordic regions, this is a necessary evolution of our growth strategy and further diversification. We already possess established networks and a presence in these markets, and we see numerous highly attractive acquisition opportunities there. It allows us to apply our proven GP stakes model to a broader, more mature European landscape.

7. You're targeting a Standard Market upgrade on the Budapest Stock Exchange and a future listing on Euronext Amsterdam. What does that roadmap mean for the company, and for investors who participate in the crowdfunding round today?

Our roadmap for further capital raises and increasing our market capitalization will be strictly aligned with our growth and acquisition opportunities. The goal is to ensure that this expansion happens alongside a continuously growing asset base and increasing shareholder value, which should ideally be reflected in an appreciating share price.

For investors participating in the current crowdfunding round, this represents a highly favorable early-entry opportunity into a growth story that is already underway and partially proven. It is worth noting that our profit last year was €3.5 million, which translates to earnings of €1.1 per share. The current capital raise is happening at a price of €8.1per share, which implies a very attractive P/E ratio of roughly 7. This is particularly compelling given that our daily trading price has recently been fluctuating between €8.5 and €9.3.

8. For an investor who is considering the O3 Partners crowdfunding round on SeedBlink, what would you want them to understand about the opportunity before they decide?

I would want them to understand that they are investing in a highly cash-generative, diversified model that captures the upside of venture capital and private equity without the typical illiquidity constraints. They are entering at an attractive valuation (a P/E of ~7 based on last year's earnings) into a company that is already profitable, and executing a clear pan-European expansion strategy. Ultimately, as we continue to successfully execute our geographical and sector expansion, and progress toward our larger listing goals, we expect the valuation of the company to grow accordingly, offering significant upside potential for those who join us at this stage.

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