Italy’s insurance company Mediolanuim Vita invested 5 million euros in the Tenax Credit Italian Fund, a private debt fund focused on Italian SMEs, led by Massimo Figna.
The announcement was made yesterday by Mediolanum Group’s ceo Ennio Doris, in a press conference. This is a small investment but “we plan to make many of these small investments in order to help the economic growth in Italy with an eye to risk diversification”, Mr. Doris said. A concept that Mr. Doris stressed already last November when he announced a 3 million euros investment in United Ventures, an Italian venture capital firm, made by Banca Mediolanum.
Tenax Credit Italian Fund is a closed-end fund based in Ireland with a 7 years’ maturity. It targets 150 million euros in fundraising with a net Irr for invesdors of about 5-6%.
“We reached the first half of our fundraising target and we are not ready to invest. We have four deals in our pipeline”, Figna said, adding that “the fund invests in senior secured debt instruments and each investment will be in a 5-8 millions size range with a 2–7 years’ maturity. The fund will issue new credit and subscribe new minibonds but may also invest in existing credits and bonds”.
