360° closes first fund

360° Capital Partners, the French – Italian venture capital firm, has raised €100m for its maiden fund following a first closing on €50m in December 2006.

For the last half it attracted investment from the European Investments Fund, AGF, Banca Sella Group and Natixis, who join CDC Enterprises, Alpha Associates, Partners Group, Gruppo Banca Intesa San Paolo, Wilshire Associates, Paul Capital and Coller Capital from the first round.

The venture firm, which is headquartered in Luxembourg with offices in Milan and Paris, will invest between €2m and €5m in the first or second rounds of financing. It will focus on high growth innovative companies operating in various segments including information and communication technologies, internet web 2.0, diagnostics/medical devices, and cleantech. The fund has some capacity – 10% – to invest in small-medium public companies, and 5% dedicated to seed stage companies.

Fausto Boni, co-founder and general partner, said: “We are extremely pleased by the results of our fundraising. The enlargement of our investors base to some of the most well-known European institutional investors is a clear recognition of our team’s capability to select and manage investments in high growth innovative companies. We trust that today there are several unique and untapped investment opportunities in the Italian and French markets.”

360° has so far made four investments: Iminent, a company specialises in value added services on instant messengers; Yellow Korner, an innovative click and mortar retailer specialised in art photography; Montecristo Multimedia , a PC videogame company and in particular in the city builders vertical; and Electro Power Systems which designs and manufactures power systems for clean electric energy production based on fuel cell technology for a wide range of applications.

360° was founded in September 2005 by Fausto Boni – co-founder of Net Partners Venture – together with Diana Saraceni and François Tison. In March 2006, Emanuele Levi joined the founders following several co-investments with them whilst he was at Pino Venture, an Italian venture firm. The firm hired a fifth partner in the shape of Paolo Gesess in July 2007. He joined from the Jupiter Venture fund, which had also co-invested with Net, in 2001 in MutuiOnline.