A new Special Purpose Acquisition Company (Spac) is in fundraising mood targeting Italian SMEs. This time it is a veichle promoted by some italian professionals, with former private equity firm Clessidra sgr’s partner Alessandro Papetti, and the US money manager Marc Gabelli, son of Mario Gabelli, founder of Gamco Investors, one of the major asset maangement firms in the US, listed at the New York Stock Exchange with more than 43 billion dollars AuM at the end of 2017.
The new Spac is said to officiallly open its fundraising today after an international roadshow in the last week and targeting a 100 million euros figure from investors before listing at the AIM Italia market. Nomad and specialist is UBI Banca, which is also joint global coordinator together with Unicredit.
Italian SPACs dry powder will then raise to 2.8 billion euros. As for BeBeez‘s database (download here the March updated BeBeez SPACs Report), SPACs and pre-booking company focused on the Italian market have been raising 3.7 billion euros since 2011 or since the first SPAC (it was Italy 1 Investments sa) listed on the Italian Stock Exchange. Since then SPACs have been investing 980 million euros in 12 companies that are now listed at the Italian Stock Exchange while other 300 million euros have been allocated already as other three more business combinations have been announced since the 2018 started.
But this is not enough as at least three other SPACs are on their way. One is a SPAC with an insurance focus, promoted by former Eurovita’s ceo Andrea Battista (see here a previous post by BeBeez), while other two are targeting the financial sector and are promoted by former Mps and Banca Popolare di Vicenza top banker Fabrizio Viola, who is promoting the veichle together with Derek Vago, a former Nomura manager; and by former Uncredit’s managing director and four good banks’ chairman Roberto Nicastro, who has been just names as Cerberus‘s senior advisor (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
