Il primo osservatorio in Italia sui search fund, i primi corsi MBA ed Elective specializzati a cura della Graduate school of management del Politecnico di Milano, il primo fondo istituzionale italiano dedicato, promosso da Eureka! Venture: nasce l’ecosistema italiano dei search fund, modelli di investimento innovativi che offrono una soluzione concreta al passaggio generazionale e alla continuità delle imprese italiane di cui abbiamo scritto in questo articolo che ne illustra le caratteristiche e modalità operative.
The observatory’s analysis shows a total of 29 search funds surveyed in our country from 2016, the year of the first initiative of this kind, to 2024, with a constant increase: at the end of last year, there were 15 active ones, 10 completed acquisitions and one exit. Demonstrating the effectiveness of the model and its consistency with our economic-productive fabric, 93% of completed searches led to an acquisition and only one search failed. Investors in search funds are institutional investors in 49% of cases, family offices in 18%, and individuals, angels and personal holding companies in 33%. The sectors involved are many: labelling, pharma, laser technology, food and beverage, waste management, software, fashion, education, facility management. The average capital used to search for the target company to be acquired is 558 thousand euros, with an average of 17 investors per fund. Italian searchers have a median age of 34 and come mainly from general management (37%), strategic consulting (32%) or investment banking and private equity (31%). 63% have an MBA and 50% of them discovered the model through their MBA.
Born in the United States at the end of the 1980s, today there are more than a thousand search funds in the world, especially in North America, where business schools such as the Stanford graduate school of management have played an important role, but also in some European countries, including Spain in particular, thanks also to the key role of the IESE business school. For this reason, the Graduate school of management of the Politecnico di Milano presents the first courses in Italy for MBAs and Electives specialising in search funds. Two different intensive modules have been designed to train aspiring entrepreneurs who want to acquire and manage a company via a search fund: the first course, in partnership with the Eureka! Venture team, will deal with the theory and operation of search funds, including practical cases, while the second will have a much more technical component, in collaboration with the EptaLex law firm, going into the most complex legal and tax profiles, from setting up the search company and raising capital, to structuring the acquisition, and the exit phase.
It was also presented, ETA Fund, the first Italian institutional fund dedicated to search funds, promoted by Eureka! Venture, with Paolo Guida with 25 years of international experience in M and A investments, private equity, venture capital and strategy consulting, MBA Chicago, one of the first serial search fund investors in Italy since 2017, joins the Eureka! Venture team as a partner of the investment fund. The team will be supported by a group of ambassadors including entrepreneurs, CEOs and professionals experienced in ETA Fund’s areas of interest and in legal, M and A due diligence, executive search and business development who will work alongside the searchers and acquired companies.
“In a context such as Italy’s, search funds represent an innovative investment model that can play an important role in fostering generational change and the replacement of entrepreneurs at the helm of SMEs with growth limitations with high-level managerial figures, capable of unlocking potential and fostering the scale of companies,” Andrea Rangone, professor of entrepreneurship and digital business innovation at the Politecnico di Milano, said in a note. The results of the observatory’s research show how the spread of these instruments is still in its infancy in Italy today, but is steadily increasing. In order to accelerate their development, the emergence of an ecosystem that brings together investment funds, specific training programmes and research with up-to-date data is crucial’.
‘Our most promising searchers go abroad to raise the necessary capital to buy an Italian company, mainly because until now there was not yet a generation of dedicated institutional investors,’ says Stefano Peroncini, CEO of Eureka! Venture. With ETA Fund, we wanted to show that Italy, too, is able to promote institutional and specialised investment funds, managed by Italian SGRs, capable of raising capital from private investors, family offices, and also institutional investors attentive to the return on the territory, such as the Fondazione CR di Lucca, thus fulfilling the role of anchor investor of Italian search funds, to give continuity to our small and medium-sized enterprises with renewed entrepreneurial energy: at last an institutional response to a structural problem of our economy’.
The search fund is an investment vehicle with four phases, a first one in which the promoter raises initial capital from a group of investors, which takes an average of three months in Italy, based on the data collected. A second one of research and acquisition of the target company, which is on average 21 months in our country. A third of management and growth, in which the searcher becomes the company’s CEO and entrepreneur of reference and, with the support of investors, defines the growth plan; on average it lasts 41 months, although so far only 11 search funds have reached this stage. The last phase is the exit, with the exit of the investment for the searcher and the investors; in Italy there is only one so far. (photo by Andreas Brücker on Unsplash)
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