Luis Graaa

Luís Palma da Graça is one of the three founding partners of Vallis Capital Partners, an independent Portuguese private equity firm he co-founded in 2010 alongside Eduardo Rocha and Luís Santos Carvalho. He serves as the firm's Chief Development Officer, where he is responsible for the origination pipeline of the firm's two funds — Vallis Sustainable Investments I (€75M) and Vallis Sustainable Investments II (€151M). The firm, based in Porto, manages over €200M in assets and runs a team of roughly 11 professionals, including six partners.

Before co-founding Vallis, he built a career as a senior business-development and M&A professional with project-development experience across the construction, utilities, infrastructure and renewable-energy sectors. He held Executive Director and Board Member positions at Affinis, Tecneira and FDO SGPS, and has worked with companies including CME, Vortal and the FDO Group, where he also led corporate-restructuring efforts. He brings an entrepreneurial background in addition to these corporate roles.

On the academic side, he holds a degree in Economics from ISEG (Lisbon) and a Global Executive MBA from IESE Business School, University of Navarra (with modules in Barcelona, Madrid, Stanford in the U.S., and Shanghai in China). He is also an invited lecturer teaching Entrepreneurship on the Executive MBA programme at AESE Business School in Lisbon.

• Invests through institutional private equity funds — growth capital, MBOs/MBIs and leveraged buyouts — typically seeking a majority stake or dominant governance influence, not minority/angel tickets.
• Targets Iberian SMEs and small mid-caps with roughly €5–50M turnover, favoring tradable-goods businesses with export potential.
• Preferred sectors: food value chains, healthcare, water and waste management, forestry, energy and energy efficiency, and technology.
• Applies ESG criteria as a "negative filter" in selection, consistent with the funds' "Sustainable Investments" branding and a socially responsible, active-management approach.
• Typical check sizes of ~€5–20M depending on the fund vintage.