Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno, the Intesa Sanpaolo Group’s venture capital fund, is betting on Italian technological innovation and investing EUR4.6 million in three young companies based in Southern Italy: Pantea, Samares and SpinVector.
The three businesses, selected according to their extensive growth potential and goals of becoming leading companies in the coming years, share some fundamental characteristics: they are high-tech firms and plan to invest in Southern Italy, the part of the country for which the fund was created.
If Admantx, the investment of EUR2 million signed last summer, is also considered, the total investment commitments assumed by Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno in 2011 climbs to EUR6.6 million.
The fund, which was launched in 2009 with initial assets of EUR25 million, contributed in equal shares by IMI Investimenti (Intesa Sanpaolo Group) and the Department for Digitalisation and Technological Innovation of the Ministry for the Public Administration and Innovation, has a planned duration of ten years. The Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno team consists of professionals from the private equity sector with long-term experience in Intesa Sanpaolo’s merchant banking arm – a department of the Group’s Corporate and Investment Banking Division dedicated to investing in and developing equity interests and industrial initiatives – as well as several young technology specialists with international backgrounds.
“We are applying close scrutiny and rigorous analysis to hundreds of initiatives calling for digital investments in Southern Italy,” says Davide Turco, who is responsible for Intesa Sanpaolo’s venture capital funds, Atlante Ventures and Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno. “We are truly pleased to announce a significant acceleration of investment by Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno. We are confident that we have identified projects that have the quality and ambition to grow rapidly in promising sectors, albeit with all of the risks typical of start-ups. We therefore believe that we have detected signs of a gradual yet considerable maturation of the innovation ecosystem in areas of Italy where significant venture capital activity did not exist until a few years ago.”
