Trade opens up to private capital: historical record in 2022

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Finance gives a nod to retail and in 2022 will make investments of 859 million euros in 31 private equity transactions. Compared to the previous year there is a decrease in the number of deals while in terms of value a record is reached which Mario Resca, president of Confimprese, defines as historic. Instead, the first quarter of 2023 saw a slow start: out of 83 transactions, only 3 involved the retail sector. These are the acquisition of Probios, a historic company that sells organic vegetarian food, by Agreen Capital, the transition to Naxicap, an add-on of the ECF Group, by Sds, a company specialized in the production and distribution of products and services dedicated to professional catering finally 18 Max Casa stores in Sicily by Cinven, Arcaplanet add-on. The comparison with 2021, again according to the latest AIFI-PwC report, sees the signing of 45 deals for a value of only 557 million.

Catering, clothing and accessories are the two sectors on which passages are concentrated. The first for scalability, the level of penetration in Italy and the potential for expansion abroad, the time to break even. For clothing-accessories, these are the presence of points of sale in the most important squares and streets, events in the point of sale, physical-digital integration, the degree of knowledge of the customer base and aspects of sustainability.

«The evolution of private equity investments since 2018 and the annual change in the total invested in Italy (+16% between 2018 and 2022) show a significantly higher trend than the European average of 11% and compared to the main competitors. 2022 records a reduction in the number of operations, in any case in line with pre-Covid levels, but with a massive increase in the amount invested: a total of 859 million euros from 557 million in 2021 – said Mario Resca, president of Confimprese , during the conference on retail and finance at Borsa Italiana in Milan -. The credit crunch and the increase in interest rates are leading the retail sector to reconsider opening up to private capital and venture capital. The new financial sources, in addition to banks which are onerous and not as abundant as a few years ago, are leading to integrations or mergers between companies and are bringing back the interest of private equity funds in some typical sectors of Italian business, for example catering, and towards internationalization». In other words, continues the president, «there are opportunities that are opening up: interest is returning and we are living it and the big international funds are taking advantage above all, also in consideration of the fact that Italian ones invest only in Italy and are small size”. Among the main markets, France stands out, where a total of 24.2 billion euros have been invested in private equity and venture capital activities. Germany follows with 15 billion while Italy precedes Spain with 13 and 9.2 billion respectively according to the latest Aifi-PwC and Invest Europe data.