The Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF) will increase to €645 million the resources allocated to venture capital investments in order to support transformative business projects that contribute to Catalonia’s economic leadership. The regional Secretary of Economy and Finance, Alícia Romero, presented the new investment strategy of the public bank at an event with fund managers and companies from the sector, where she announced the creation of the Catalunya Lidera Investment Fund, an umbrella fund endowed with €285 million that will finance initiatives in health transfer, deeptech, and advanced technologies, among other fields.
“We are creating this umbrella fund to support innovation in our country. We are leaders in research and knowledge generation, but we struggle to bring this knowledge to the market,” the Minister emphasized. Romero recalled that one of the main challenges for Catalan companies is to gain scale in order to boost their capacity for innovation and internationalization, “and this new strategy provides us with the tools to achieve it.”
The Catalunya Lidera Fund represents a major step forward in the ICF’s venture capital strategy, reinforcing its investment role in Catalonia both in terms of the volume of resources mobilized and the range of projects and companies that will be supported. “Very often, the Administration provides resources to develop public policies, but there is no return. We want that return to exist so we can keep investing in our companies, creating a virtuous circle that makes us more productive and helps us grow in scale and innovation,” she added.
This umbrella fund, together with the ICF’s existing venture capital instruments —which already total €360 million—, will make it possible to cover all possible stages of investment, from the early beginnings of a project to much more advanced phases. In this way, the Government of Catalonia consolidates its commitment to public-private collaboration models that amplify the economic and social impact of public capital. “We are proposing a long-term strategy in which venture capital helps increase investment in early stages, assuming the risks that private capital cannot always take, thus multiplying efforts,” Romero stressed.
At the event, the Minister was accompanied by the Secretary General for Economy and Finance and President of the ICF’s Governing Board, Juli Fernández, and by the ICF’s CEO, Vanessa Servera.
The Catalunya Lidera Investment Fund is structured as an umbrella fund comprising four instruments, with a total allocation of €285 million:
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