SPI fund
Ambition: to drive industrial projects that create activity and employment.
SPI fund
Presentation
The SPI fund (Sociétés de Projets Industriels) aims to help projects with good business and employment opportunities for industrial sectors with an important structural role for the national economy find support for their development.
It acts in equity, as an informed investor alongside one or several companies, in project companies carrying out industrialisation projects chosen according to their growth potential, the current positioning of the industry and their contribution to ecological and energy transition.
It supplements traditional investment tools (venture capital, growth capital, infrastructure) by focusing its actions on the industrialisation phase of a technology. This crucial step in transforming technologies into industrial job-creating activities poses specific challenges. It is characterised by:
• Being very capital intensive;
• A high level of risk (technology scaling, industrial risk, commercial risk, etc.);
• ROI times often longer than for « established » companies;
• The interest for companies in surrounding themselves, including in terms of capital, with other companies.
The projects in question can be, for example, the creation of shared industrial sites integrating players that are currently fractured, the creation of equipment shared by several industrialists, the development of services likely to enable the development of an industry, or the creation of « showcases » allowing a French industry to move into exports.
The SPI fund is financed by the Programme d’Investissement d’Aveni (PIA) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) and managed by Bpifrance Investissement. It is Bpifrance’s first investment fund in project companies.
The need to create new financial tools to meet economic challenges
Creation of the industrial positions of tomorrow, today
The creation of the first industrial units of their kind on future issues is crucial for the development of a new generation of industry in Europe.
Recreating industrial jobs
The industrialisation of new businesses creates a large number of qualified direct jobs that cannot be relocated as well as indirect jobs.
Allow innovation to achieve industrialization
Investment in the new « valley of death » enables intense and high quality R&D to bear fruit in terms of new production capacity
Creating a sustainable industry
Investments concerned with their environmental impacts or focusing on the energy transition sectors can reconcile industry and sustainable development
How to benefit from this product or activity?
The main investment rules of the SPI funds are:
• The project creates value and has a good profitability-risk ratio. Liquidity is assessed over the long time, compatible with the balance of the project. It is organised upstream
• Investment is mainly made in equity, on coupons between €10M and €160M
• Investment is informed, minority and pari passu with partners. They may make contributions in kind, but these must be accompanied by contributions in cash
• Investment is accompanied by an active role in governance: a shareholders’ agreement is concluded to organise it, and Bpifrance is represented on the board of directors
• The investment decision integrates ESG criteria
A few figures
€800 Million
under management
10
holdings
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