Solidarierà Veneto, the Italian pension fund gathering Veneto region’s workers from every productive sector, bet 7 million euros on Assietta Private Equity III, a small-mid market private equity fund managed by Assietta Private Equity sgr whcih had reached its final closing with 48 million euros in fundraising last July, MF Milano Finanza wrote last Saturday.
Solidarietà Veneto actually bet a total of 30 million euros on the private equity sector or about 3% of its 950 million euros of total assets under management and it is going to rais this stake till a 5%.
This is a great news on the Italian panorama where Italian traditional pension funds had not been investing in private equty yet due to a lack of risk management competence and a legal framework that had not been pushing for those funds to invest in alternative assets.
However things are changing now as a new law was voted at the end of 2014 (see the Decree n. 166/2014), which substitued an old Decree (n. 703/1996) paving the way to alternative investments by the Italian pensions funds while the Italian Supervisory Authority on Pension funds Covip too said the Italian pension funds are allowed to ask their external managers to invest in alternative assets even if their mandate does not include specifically those assets. Moreover last July another Decree (implementing Law n.190/2014) introduced tax credit for pension funds which invests in private equity, venture capital and infrastructural assets (directly and indirectly).
Coming back to Solidarierà Veneto, the investment in Assietta III is the second experiment as last February the pension fund also invested 7 million euros in Fondo Sviluppo Pmi, a local private equity fund managed by FVS sgr, promoted by two local government investment holdings (Veneto Sviluppo spa and Friulia spa). However the investment in Assietta III is the first investment in a private equity fund managed by an indepennet private equity firm.
The news was goven last fridday Sept. 11th by Solidarietà Veneto’s chairman Andrea Tomat, the vice-chairman Maurizio Doppio and the managing director Paolo Stefan, together with Assietta sgr’s ceo Marco Cornaglia and exectuive board member Maurizio Atzori.
