Azimut, an Italy-based asset manager managing about $70bn, last week acquired 30% of P101, a local venture capital (VC) firm with €200m ($240m) of assets under management.
(H/T Niccolò Sanarico’s week in Italian startups newsletter.)
Azimut was one of the cornerstone investors in P101’s initial fund (named after the first personal computer in the world from Olivetti) from 2013 with a €15m commitment. It re-upped to P101’s €65m second fund in 2018 before setting up a retail investment vehicle, ITA500, that could coinvest alongside the program 102 fund.
The launch of ITA500 was part of Azimut’s proposal for investments in illiquid assets to private customers, according to news provider Bebeez, and “an epochal turning point in its industrial strategy, with the aim of investing at least €10bn in private assets over the next five years, launching a series of investment vehicles largely dedicated to the retail public”.
Pietro Giuliani, president of the Azimut Group, which wants to manage about 15% of its total assets in alternative investments, said: “The partnership with Andrea [Di Camillo, founder and managing partner of P101,] and P101 from an initial product collaboration will develop towards industrial logic to bring private savings and institutional investors ever closer to the world of alternative investments and the [real] economy.”
As discussed last week in a reflection on David Swensen, former chief investment officer at Yale endowment, the blurring of public and private capital markets will see more of these deals.
Last month, Singapore state-owned Temasek and mutual fund manager BlackRock set up Decarbonization Partners as a climate-focused venture fund and committed an initial $600m. It aims to raise a total of $1bn with input from external institutional investors.
This asset management strategy of building VC products to appeal to investors is related but separate from the strategic financial technology interest.
Information Venture Partners, a Canada-based VC firm that primarily invests in early-stage, fintech and enterprise software companies modernising financial services, last week closed its third investment fund at $101m with limited partners including four of the country’s six largest banks.
Last year saw $22.8bn in funding, a 98% year-on-year growth, according to data provider CB Insights.
Other recent funds included crypto venture firm Multicoin Capital’s $100m fund to invest in decentralised finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) projects and, at the end of April, Polygon launching a $150m DeFi fund to increase adoption and projects on its network.
AS VCs raise more money from limited partners from corporate and financial services investors, as noted by Hector Shibata and Ricardo Latournerie at AC Ventures, the strategic and financial worlds will increasingly blur.
