BBVA and Santander join the European fund of 15 billion for technological companies

BarcelonaEurope continues to accelerate to finance its still scarce technological champions. The European Investment Bank, the Eurogroup and institutional investors from various member countries have joined forces to open a new chapter in the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI), a program to articulate capital that reaches the venture investment vehicles of the Twenty-seven to finance start-ups ("start-ups)and scalable (scale-ups) with more potential on the continent. The EIB has announced a second installment of the initiative, with the aim of attracting 15 billion euros to fuel European innovation.

Among the actors that have joined, Spanish giants on the scale of BBVA or Banco Santander stand out, as well as AltamarCAM. The incorporation of Danish Danske Bank and asset manager Azimut Holding, which operates in Italy, has also been announced, among many others. The EIB, as it has detailed, will invest up to 1.250 billion euros in the fund. The reaction of private capital in the second half of this year will determine the definitive size of the investment vehicle. However, the entity chaired by Nadia Calviño assures that the final objective is to mobilize up to 80,000 million euros of private capital that will provide air and momentum to 1,500 European emerging companies in their growth phase.

Help for megaphones

The European technology champions fund does not work the same way as a public capital vehicle that directly invests in the most promising companies, such as could be the young Scaleup Europe Fund. ETCI helps with megaphone resourcesfrom the continent who bet on emerging technologies. That is, it finances venture capital firms so that they are the ones who bring resources to the market.

Of the money mobilized with the ETCI program, Spanish state funds, such as Seaya or Kembara, have already benefited, which have subsequently played relevant roles in the birth of some unicorns from major Catalan emerging projects, such as Factorial or Perk. In the first phase, the program for investors supported about 15 megafunds; and the EIB itself has already warned that the expectation is that the payroll will continue to grow in the short term. "The presented partnership is about scale and speed, and about giving a boost to European pioneers with the capital they need" to access the market.