New Italy’s private equity operator Armònia sgr is waiting for Bank of Italy to give its authorization to work. The new private equity firm is to launch a new fund targeting Italian SMEs and is ready to raise funds for as much as 700 million euros. The latter being quite a big size for an Italian fund so that Armònia sgr is going to be the third private equity firm for size in Italy after Investindustrial and Clessidra.
Armonia sgr has been founded by Sigieri Diaz Della Vittoria Pallavicini, who already controls the investment company Gmw (Global Wealth Management), entrepreneur Luca Rovati (through Fidim srl; he sold last Summer its Rottapharm pharmaceutical group to Sweden’s Meda, see here a previous post by BeBeez), Alessandro Grimaldi (former senior partner and co-founder of Clessidra sgr) and Francesco Chiappetta (quite a famous lawyer in Italy, who has been working for years for Pirelli’s major shareholder Marco Tronchetti Provera).
“We are hiring for our management team people coming from several European countries and having over 15 years of experience in private equity. We ain at buying Italian SMEs which have great potential to grow internationally by m&a activity too in order to build up solid industrial groups”, Sigieri Diaz told BeBeez.
“Of the 700 million euros targeted by the fund, about 250 millions are going to be invested by some funds managed by Gmw”, Diaz told MF-Milano Finanza last March 23rd, adding that “other 200 millions are going to be searched among Italian institutional investors while the other 250 millions euro are going to be raised among international investors. We will be ready for an international roadshow just after the Summer”.
As far as investment are concerned, “the fund will invest on average 20-70 miilions in equity in each deal with a maximum of 100 millions”, Diaz said to BeBeez, adding that “we are interested in investors who would like to co-invest with us so that we might catch bigger opportunities too. Gmw holding’s funds will be ready to co-invest”.
