Former Clessidra sgr‘s chairman Francesco Trapani starts a new adventure with Tagest Holding, a parent company of three operative subsidiaries active in hedge funds, energy and infrastructure and non-performing loans sectors (download here the press release).
Tages Holding is now controlled by Panfilo Tarantelli and his partners Sergio Ascolani, Salvatore Cordaro and Umberto Quadrino who all sit in Tages’s Board of directors where also former ECB board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi sits (while he is not a shareholder in the company). Mr. Trapani will join the Board too.
Mr. Trapani will subscribe a capital increase for a 9% stake in the holding which in turn controls:  Tages Capital LLP, headquartered in London and a leading European asset manager in funds of hedge funds, seeding, Ucits alternative funds and risk premia with more than 2 billion euros in assets under management; Italy’s Tages Capital sgr, managing Tages Helios infrastructure fund, the third solar operator in Italy with a 157 MW portfolio; and Credito Fondiario (formerly Fonspa), one of the major Italian players in investing and managing Npls with about 4.6 billion euro in AUM which is partecipated by funds advised by Elliott for a 43% stake after Elliot subscribed a 100 million euros capital increase last June.  Mr, Trapan will also sit in Tages subsidiaries’ Boards.
“There is no detailed new project that I can tell you about now”, Mr. Trapani told MF Milano Finanza, adding however that “Tages today is not active in the private equity sector, which is a place where now seems quite interesting to be”. All this meaning that Tages is reasonably going to enlarge its activity to private equity too maybe with a special focus on the luxury sector leveraging on Mr. Trapani’s experience as it was the case when Mr. Quadrino, former Edison’s ceo, in turn acquired a stake in Tages Holding. Some months after that, Tages actually launched its energy and infrastructure fund.
Mr. Trapani from his side has a long experience as ceo of Italy’s jewlerry maison Bulgari and then as chairman and ceo of Lvmh‘s watches and jewlerries division, one Bulgari had been bought by the French luxury giant founded by Bernard Arnault. Mr. Trapani has been an advisorto mr. Arnault too for two years before joining Clessidra’s private equity team when the major Italian private equity company was still led by Claudio Sposito and was launching its third fund. After Mr. Sposito passed away, Mr. Trapani offered the Sposito family to buy a 59% stake in the company but they couldn’t find a deal (see here a previous post by BeBeez) and finally Mr. Sposito’s widow sold the company to Italmobiliare, the holding company owned by the Pesenti family (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
