Maurizio Tamagnini, ceo of italy’s Government-sponsored Fondo Strategico Italiano (Fsi) is discussing dinal details of a one billion euros co-investment agreement with South Korea sovereing fund, Korea Investment Corporation (Kic), MF-Milano Finanza wrote last Saturday.
The agreement will consist in a 500 million euros committement for each of the two funds to be invested in Italian companies which are ready to grow internationally with focus on Far East.
The agreement is similar to the ones the FSI signed with both the Russian Direct Investment Fund (Rdif) in November 2013 and with China Investment Corporation (Cic) last October. However the agreement with KIC might evolve in something more structured such as the deals that FSI signed with Kuwait Investment Authority (Kia) and with Qatar Holding.
Fondo Strategico already works with Seul’s Government as for its portfolio company Ansaldo Energia. The company acutally cooperates with Korean group Doosan as for an R&D project related to a new gas turbine which has been finances by the Korean Government and has been announced last Spring when FSI signed an agreement with Chinese Shangai Electric for the sale of a 40% stake in Ansaldo Energia. Doosan had been in the race to buy that stake too.
Thanks to all the five agreements with foreign sovereign funds, FSI is to bring to Italy about 3 billion euros of capital from aborad. As for FSI itself, at the end of 2014 it had invested and committed directly 2.7 billion euros on total dry powder of 5.1 billions.
