Italy’s venture capital firm Principia sgr is changing its investment approach and moves towards a European concept of venture capital which embraces capital for growth of small and medium enterprises and not merely seed capital for startup companies or early stage investments, MF-Milano Finanza, wrote last Saturday March 7.
“We are planning to invest about 70% of our dry powder in SMEs capital for growth and the remaining 30% in seed investments”, Principia sgr’s ceo Alessandro Falcone told the newspaper.
Falcone explained that “the change in the investment approach happens together with the news that Humphrey Julian Nokes is a new shareholder in the Italian venture capital firm with a 35.4% stake”. Other shareholders in Principia sgr’s capital are Falcone (17.6%), CNR (27%), BNC (17%) and other managers of the firm.
Nokes is a venture capitali guru in Europe, founder of ETV Capital, having invested for about 300 million pounds in the last few yearsin venture capital investmens with a preference for debt instruments. Nokes has been advised for the deal by Watson Farley & Williams on legal issues while Principia sgr was advised by King & Wood Mallesons (see here the press release).
“Nokes will appoint a member of the board and will be personally a member of Principia sgr’s investment committee”, Falcone said, adding that “thanks to the fact of having such a heavyweight shareholder in Principia sgr’s capital, the firm will find it quite easier to go on fundraising among international investors”.
Principia sgr is now in fundraising for its Principa III-Health. The fund announced a first closing at160 million euros last December out of a target of 400-500 millions. The second closing might be announced by the end of this month while the final closing is expected by the end of the year. An anchor investor for this fund is Enpam, the Italian medicians and dentists pension fund which committed for 150 million euros (see a previous post by BeBeez).
In order to manage this new fund Principia hired three new experienced managers: Paolo Siviero (former head of strategy and pharma politics for AIFA, the Italian Drug Agency), Stefania Petruccioli (former partner of Italy’s mid-market private equity firm Progressio sgr) and Mauro Brunelli (a well-known m&a advisor having worked for Société Générale Italia and Banca Intesa).
“We are preparing the launch of another new fund which will focus on Italy’s design and fashion sectors and will target 100-150 million euros in committements. We are looking for an anchor investor for this fund too”, Falcone said.
As far as the previous funds are concerned, at the end of March 2013 Principia II closed its investment period. The fund still has about 20 companies in its portfoglio and some of those have been recentely received a new round of funding from other investors too. For example Docebo, Eco4Cloud and Dove Conviene.
As for Principia I fund it still has just one compny left in its portfolio which is Banzai. The latter, which is the leading Italian e-Commerce operator and one of the most important digital publishers, listed a few weeks ago on the Italian Stock Exchange and Principia has a 6-months’ time lock up period (see a previous post by BeBeez).
