20th September 2012 – Italian asset manager Ambienta is pre-marketing a potentially €300 million ($388 million) private equity fund to invest in European environmental technology companies.
The fund would follow the Milan-based firm’s first fund, which attracted €217 million in 2009, predominantly from Italian institutions.
That fund, Ambienta I, has invested in companies focused on “natural resource efficiency”, said Nino Tronchetti Provera, Ambienta’s CEO and founder, creating eight ‘platforms’, across energy efficiency, pollution control and renewable energy.
Provera describes the fund’s approach as “plain vanilla private equity growth capital”, investing mainly in companies that help their clients reduce costs, rather than companies which rely on subsidies or regulation to turn a profit.
“Whoever has a technology, process or product that helps utilise natural resources more carefully … or that reduce, control and manage pollution, they have a business,” he said.
“The problem is, these competencies are hidden in thousands and thousands of small and medium European companies. We have to find them, invest, and help them go global,” he said.
by Mark Nicholls – Environmental Finance