Intesa Sanpaolo launches venture capital funds Atlante Ventures and Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno

Intesa Sanpaolo - through its Corporate and Investment Banking Division - launches Atlante Ventures and Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno, two Venture Capital funds created with the objective of supporting the innovation and development of Italian businesses. The project took shape as a result of the initiative and experience gained by the Corporate and Investment Banking Division and by Intesa Sanpaolo Eurodesk; the group team that specializes in providing corporate and technical support to businesses involved in research and innovation projects.

The Atlante Ventures fund, which was a trailblazer in starting its operating phase in the second half of last year, starts with initial funding of 25 million euro (entirely subscribed by the Intesa Sanpaolo group) with the facility of extension by a further 25 million. With a planned duration of 12 years, the fund aims to support the start-up of Italian companies by helping to fill the current void in financial instruments for university and company spin-offs and to promote partnership agreements between new and already established businesses. Backed by the Intesa Sanpaolo group’s relationship network, the Atlante Ventures project has set itself the prime objective of putting small, innovative businesses in contact with each other, with medium-large sized companies and with the world of universities and research centres, so creating a true business accelerator at least on a 2 national scale. Atlante Ventures therefore takes the form of an open platform that will seek to seize the best opportunities for cooperation, also between the public and private sectors.

Considering the importance which the Intesa Sanpaolo group’s strategy attaches to the development of Southern Italy, another fund has been set up in parallel with the launch of Atlante Ventures - Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno (which will soon come into operation).

The Atlante Ventures Fund has already made an initial investment (with an overall value of 1.5 million euro) in Igea S.p.A., a biomedical company in Modena (http://www.igea.it/) which has developed an innovative therapy for some types of surface tumours, that is already being used in the main Italian oncological centres and is in course of distribution at European level.