Hephaestus Ventures launches HV labs startup accelerator and starts €100M venture fund

Hephaestus Ventures is a private equity fund supporting the growth of Corporate Venture Capital through the creation of an accelerator in Milan called HV Labs to support the expansion abroad of Italian Companies towards Brazil, United States, China, South Africa, Russia and India, United Kingdom and Germany on projects of Open Innovation and Digital Trasformation in these verticals: FinTech, Energy, Smart Mobility , Digital Health.

Trough the creation of the accelerator for digital startups Hephaestus Ventures will move from a private equity fund to be a seed venture company and will support all the corporate companies that have plans to expand to emerging markets and the United States and all those open innovation projects that will lead to the creation of corporate spin-offs and will be a fund of position from seed to series A to favor later stage and acceleration of the startups up to the support towards the internationalisation towards the reference markets that the company is approaching such us the United States, BRICS, and Germany and England in Europe. Currently it is the only one of its kind on the Italian market. Competitor is the Dutch Startupbootcamp. The fund targets to raise €100M of private capital in 7 years. It won't collaborate with public funds or public fundings either as regards fund raising or for investment with portfolio startups. It is planned to start mid-2018 with 8 startups and to reach about 25 startups by mid-2020.

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Tages Capital SGR acquires 51MW of operating solar plants from Maccaferri Industrial Group for its Tages Helios Fund

Milano, 22 dicembre 2017 - Tages Capital SGR announced that the Tages Helios fund has subscribed a contract with SECI S.p.A. (Maccaferri Industrial Group) for the acquisition of a portfolio of 35 solar plants located in Puglia, Sicily and Emilia Romagna with an overall installed capacity of 51MW.

The portfolio's plants use primary technologies and were built directly by Enerray, a subsidiary of SECI Energia - the sector leader in Italy.

With this acquisition, the portfolio held by Tages Helios, with an installed capacity of 208 MW, generates a total of approximately 290 GWh per year, an amount of energy sufficient to meet the electricity needs of over 100 thousand households and allows about 152 thousand tonnes of annual CO2 emissions savings into the atmosphere.

Tages Helios Investment Fund is the first renewable energy fund launched by Tages Capital SGR, focused exclusively on the Italian photovoltaic sector and which has raised a total of €253M as of 22 June 2017 (final closing date).  Leading insurance companies (75%), pension and social security funds (10%), banking foundations (7%), banking institutions (3%), qualified private investors (3%) and Tages management (2%) constitute the final investor base breakdown. New subscribers included Aviva, an international insurance group, as well as Equiter, an important Italian investor in real estate infrastructure assets and part of the Intesa SanPaolo Group.

According to the consolidated operating plan, the plants will be managed by Delos Power, a partnership between Tages Helios and Renam – a leading Italian player in the management of renewable energy plants, with more than 400 MW under management – established for the purpose of managing plants acquired by the Fund. Operations and maintenance activities will continue to be carried out by Enerray.

With this transaction, the Tages Helios portfolio reaches the size of 208 MW, confirming the fund as the third operator on the Italian market.

Tages Capital SGR was assisted in the transaction by the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, by Moroni & Partners for technical due diligence and by PwC for accounting and financial aspects.

The Maccaferri Industrial Group was assisted by Legance Avvocati Associati as legal advisor, REA reliable energy advisors as technical advisor and by Ernst & Young Italia for  theaccounting and financial aspects.

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