Christian Fuhrhop joins Summa Equity

Stockholm, 30 May 2023: Summa Equity (“Summa”, www.summaequity.com) is pleased to welcome Christian Fuhrhop as CFO of Via Summa.

Central to the Summa mission is investing in companies which have the potential to outperform financially while helping solve environmental, social and governance challenges. Summa takes an active and collaborative approach to ownership, which is called Via Summa. Fuhrhop will play a leading role in this work, with a particular focus on finance and operations.

On joining Summa, Christian Fuhrhop said: “I am thrilled to join Summa Equity as I am of the opinion that everyone should, in some way, contribute to making the world a better place. This takes many forms and in my case, as CFO of Via Summa, I look forward to helping portfolio companies achieve financial and operational excellence, whilst delivering positive ESG outcomes.”

Fuhrhop joins from Axel Springer where he worked for 15 years, as CFO and CHRO of German Media Business. Fuhrhop’s operational and financial background and expertise will be put to use to the benefit of Summa portfolio companies. He joins fellow Axel Springer alumni, Stephanie Caspar, who joined Summa in February to head up the Via Summa division.

Via Summa is built on three pillars: people, thematic experience, and impact creation. The team is involved throughout the life cycle of every Summa investment. During the due diligence process, the team is introduced to the prospective portfolio company management team and their vision. Having developed an understanding of key enablers and bottlenecks to reach this vision, the Via Summa team will then determine how best they can support strategic aims once it becomes a Summa company.

Via Summa supports the respective boards and management of each portfolio company through multiple avenues:

(A) Via Summa Essentials – a set of frameworks, routines, and tools to organize our collaboration to ensure a consistent, high-quality approach. This includes:

• A routine for board meetings, a framework for strategy and making it actionable through objectives and key results, a data-driven approach to improve organizational capabilities and leadership among others

• Via Summa Compliance, a framework and toolkit for our portfolio companies to tackle key global governance issues through strong policies and risk management procedures. All board chairs are familiar with these and implement them during the onboarding phase
  
  

(B) Network of industry and functional experts – these are available to all Summa portfolio companies, to help with specific challenges and opportunities

(C) Community events for the leadership of portfolio companies to learn from each other and also get access to thought leaders and other top executives for inspiration and networking