Kairos appointed Roberto Zanco as Head of a team dedicated to Illiquid Investments
IN PIPELINE THE LAUNCH OF A VENTURE CAPITAL FUND TARGETING ITALIAN START-UP AND INNOVATIVE SMALL & MID COMPANIES
Kairos Group announces the appointment of Roberto Zanco as Head of Alternative Illiquid Investments and Board member of Kairos Partners SGR.
Roberto Zanco joins the Kairos investment team, headed by Guido Maria Brera, the Group’s Chief Investment Officer. Roberto will have the task of developing the area of illiquid alternative investments, creating a dedicated team that will take care of the launch of a new Venture Capital fund. The project will consist in the launch of a closed-end fund ruled by Italian law with a fundraising target of €150 million, which will make ESG-compliant investments in innovative Italian start-ups and SMEs – early and late stage – focusing on B2B digital transformation, med tech, new space economy and clean tech sectors.
Following the launch of its first ELTIF fund – KAIS Renaissance ELTIF – which closed the first placement at €50 million, Kairos intends to expand its offer in the segment of illiquid investments as an asset class that can offer new return opportunities and represents a strategic leverage to drive the huge savings of Italian families, which reached record levels in the last year marked by the pandemic, towards the real economy of the country, characterized by several excellent SMEs that can’t have access to capital markets because they are not listed.
Roberto Zanco, graduated in Economics and Statistics from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, with an MBA from the University of Iowa in the USA, began his professional experience at Deloitte as a consultant, and then moved to Quadrivio SGR, one of the leading players in the Italian Private Equity and Venture Capital market, where until 2013 he served as Investment Associate for the TTVenture fund. In July of the same year he founded RedSeed Ventures and became its Managing Partner. In his career he has made over 30 investments in Private Equity and Venture Capital and currently sits on the Boards of Directors of several innovative start-ups and SMEs, including Braincontrol, Leaf Space, WIB, Gruppo Sicuro.it and Dianax.
Guido Brera, Chief Investment Officer of Kairos, commented: “Thanks to the entry of Roberto, Kairos team will gain new skills in the field of illiquid investments, especially in private equity and venture capital, where Roberto has gained a high-profile experience. We are really excited to undertake, leveraging on his expertise, our first project in venture capital, continuing the path we started last year with the launch of our ELTIF fund through which we approached the market of unlisted companies. The venture capital project represents for Kairos a further step forward to cover what we define as the full ‘vertical’ of Italian companies, capitalizing on the epochal change that our country is going through, marked by the implementation of the Recovery Plan and an unprecedented change of pace in the European economic policy”.
Roberto Zanco, Head of Illiquid Alternative Investments, added: “I would like to thank the whole Kairos management team for giving me the opportunity to join a team that has been operating successfully in the Italian asset management industry for over twenty years, mainly thanks to the ability it has always shown in anticipating trends and proposing cutting-edge investment solutions. I am very honored by the trust that Kairos has decided to put in my experience, entrusting me with the task of leading the launch of the new venture capital project that will allow the Group to expand its range of action in the field of illiquid investments”.