Francesca Basso
MILAN F2i, Fondi italiani per le infrastrutture, a company managed by Renato Ravanelli, is growing: now the Third Fund is here, with an asset of approximately 3 billion Euros to invest in the airport segment, in renewables, in integrated water services, and in gas distribution.
F2i’s strategy is very much appreciated among its institutional investors and aims to attract foreign assets for nationally driven initiatives – proving that Italy can rely on industrial entities in the infrastructure sector that can also be attractive for foreign investors. F2i’s operational framework encompasses segments which are still in an immature state in terms of ownership and characterised by an elevated number of manufacturers. In recent years F2i acted as an aggregating force bringing about improved efficiencies in the various economic entities it acquired. These sectors also rely on consolidated and stable regulations. In addition, the investment fund is an extremely transparent tool. These reasons combined led F2i to launch its Third Fund.
This new vehicle is expected to attract also the participation of one of the major international pension funds and of one very important sovereign fund (during the past weeks, the name of Singapore’s sovereign fund popped up), which will add up to F2i’s consolidated investors: welfare funds, bank foundations, and the Italian Cassa depositi e prestiti. Fund III will have access to fresh financial resources accounting for 1.5 billion Euros, primarily raised on international markets. Foreign investors reacted positively towards this new project, which plans to incorporate the investments of the First Fund in the new instrument. The First Fund has already exhausted the resources originally put forward by the investors. For this reason, F2i decided to indicate the Third Fund as a collection vessel to gather the investments performed by the First Fund, which have granted an average annual yield of approximately 12%, in addition to new resources. The merger transaction is expected to close by mid-December.
The First Fund of F2i – founded in 2007 – holds participations in the airport segment (it controls Naples, Turin, and Alghero’s airports and has qualified participations in Sea Milano and in Bologna’s airport), renewables – particularly in the photovoltaic sector where it is the major operator with a joint venture together with Enel, gas distribution (2i Rete Gas is the second major operator with over 4.4 million customers and 2,200 concessions in Italy), and integrated water services (Iren Acqua).
F2i also launched a Second Fund in 2014, which closed its fund raising in July 2015. Fund II, which controls F2i Energie Speciali, is now completing the deployment of its over 1.2 billion Euro available assets. The foreign investors rate increased over the years from 30% in the First Fund to 45% in the Second Fund.
The strategy
To attract international assets for nationally driven initiatives.
Investments
Renato Ravanelli, 52, has been F2i’s CEO since 2014. He was A2A’s general manager from 2008 to 2014, after acting as CFO and member of the executive committee at Edison.