Business angels invested at least 31.9 million euros in Italian companies in 2013, down from 33.8 millions in 2012 and from 34.8 millions in 2011, confirming a substantial stability trend in a 30-35 millions in the last 5 years. The figures are by Iban, the Italian Business Angel Network, and will be presented today in Milan (download here the Iban convention meeting program). MF-Milano Finanza published some of those figures in advance last Saturday June 14th.
As for business angels’ divestments, in 2013 they were 19, but just 10% of the interviewed angels told they sold at least one partecipation last year. Half of the sales brought a loss or just 1x the invested capital to the angel investors while 14% of the sales brought a profit margin above 50%.
Figures have been collected by Iban thanks to answers from various local branches (Ban) and angels club, for a total of 246 business angel interviewed and 324 investiments. Figures are not comprehensive then of this world made of private investors coming from different worlds. The figures have been collected for Iban by Vincenzo Capizzi (professor of Investment Banking at the Italian Bocconi University and professor of Economy of Financial Intermediaries at the Piemonte Orientale University).
The typical Italianbusiness angel is a 40-50 year old man, living in Northern Italy and is an entrepreneur, often a former manager. He has a bachelor and owns assets valued less than 2 million euros. He invests less than 10 pct of his assets in start up companies.
Investments by Italian angels had been focused on equity (84%), followed by loans (11%) and guarantees (5%). Investments had been concentrated in Northern Italy in the Ict sector (30%), followed by media & entertainment (14%) and medtech (11%). Seed capital investments have been 35% of the total and 68% of investments had a size lower than 100k euros. Finally 74% of Italian angels ownsless thana 15 pct stake in the target company and 46% of the angels invested alone, while 31% of the angels co-invesdted with 8 or more other angels.
Year 2014 might be better in terms of investments by business angles thanks to new laws intoduced by the Italian Government on start ups in the last few months aiming at lowering fiscal impact on investments in start up companies (see a previous article of BeBeez)
