Gruppo Servizi Associati (Gsa), a company active in the firefighting services sector and controlled by  Armònia Italy fund, managed by Armònia sgr (see here a previous post by BeBeez), is mulling to buy Babcock International‘s Italian assets (former Avincis) consisting in helicopter rescue and firefighting service, Armonia sgr’s ceo Alessandro Grimaldi told  Reuters.
Gsa reached 70 million euros in revenues in 2017, up from 60.9 millions in 2016 when it posted 9.9 million euros in ebitda. The company is now targeting also Spain, France and Switzerland’s markets.
Investindustrial  (50.1%) and Kkr (49.9%) sold helicopter rescue services group Avincis (former Inaer Aviation) to Babcock International Group in March 2014 for a 1.1 billion pounds enterprise value (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The group, thereafter renamed Babcock Mission Critical Services, is a world leader ins airplane and helicopter rescue emergency services and in transport and assistance for people working on off-shore platforms for oil&gas extraction in the Notrthern Sea and Australia.
Avincis has been built by Investindustrial starrting in 2005 and by Kkr too starting in 2010, merging Italy’s Elilario, Elidolomiti and Helitalia, Spain’s Inaer, UK’s Bond, Australia’s Australian Helicoptersand Sweden’s Norsk Helikopterservice.
As for Armonia sgr, the Italian asset maanger is going on with the fundraising of its first fund that has now reached 235 million euros in committments and targets a 300 million euros final closing next July. This is far below the original 700 million euros target. Mr. Grimaldi told Reuters that this was due to the fact that Italian institutional investors were already committed to subscribe Atlante 1 and 2 funds for rescuing italy’s distressed banks and subscribing Npls so investors had just small room left for other private equity committments.
Armònia sgr was founded by former pharma entrepreneur Luca Rovati, Sigieri Diaz della Vittoria Pallavicini, Alessandro Grimaldi (former senior partner and co-founder of Clessidra sgr) and Francesco Chiappetta (Marco Tronchetti Provera’s trusted lawyer) and was then joined by Fabrizio Di Amato,chairman and ceo of Maire Tecnimont,
