Initiative & Finance is an investment firm that has been helping SME entrepreneurs, and more recently mid-cap companies managers, achieve their ambitions for more than 35 years.
OUR BUSINESS
Initiative & Finance has been working with SME managers for more than 35 years and has gradually opened up to mid-sized companies. We support our partner executives in their transformation, buyout and growth projects, offering them the perspective and expertise of a professional shareholder to help them tackle their financing, strategy, governance and organizational challenges.
KEY FACTS & FIGURES
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to enable our partner executives to carry out their shareholding projects – buyouts, transfers, acquisitions, growth, etc. – in the best possible conditions, while helping to give their companies solid strategic and structural fundamentals. Over the years, we help to release their potential, and they emerge more robust, more curious about growth opportunities, and better prepared to face the future.
OUR INVESTMENT STRATEGY
We invest alongside men and women with development projects:
OUR INVESTORS
At present, Initiative & Finance is managing more than €500 million on behalf of top French and European institutional investors:
banks, insurance companies, pension funds, funds of funds, and sovereign funds such as Bpifrance and the European Investment Fund, plus some entrepreneurs or family offices.
OUR HISTORY
2019
Initiative & Finance FPCI III fundraising round, worth €206 million
2020
Building on its existing know-how, Initiative & Finance launches a new strategy targeting mid-cap and middle-market firms: I&F Mid Tomorow aimed at companies that take the environmental transition into account in the development of their business model
1984
Creation of Initiative & Finance by four financial institutions
€7.6 million in assets under management via the venture capital mutual fund “FCPR Capital Transfert”
1988
The company goes public, taking assets under management to €61.4 million
1992
Friendly takeover of Initiative & Finance by Natixis Private Equity. The firm subsequently spends more than 15 years as an autonomous entity within the Natixis Group (BPCE)
2010
Initiative & Finance becomes independent
Initiative & Finance Gestion is taken over by its Partners
2010
The team moves into asset management for top French and European institutional investors.
Initiative & Finance FCPR I fundraising round, worth €141 million
2015
Initiative & Finance FPCI II fundraising round, worth €168 million
OUR VALUES
Loyalty
We build lasting human relationships, do things properly and keep our promises, earning our partners’ trust and making sure we are always up to the task.
Conviction
We believe that, in our business, performance is about more than figures and ratios. Above all, it is a matter of experience and intuition, of courage and tenacity, in our investment choices and in the support we give to our partner executives.
Simplicity
In the often complex world of private equity, we aim to be pragmatic, humble and close to our partners, remaining accessible and keeping our feet firmly on the ground in all circumstances.
Collective approach
We know that human capital is the decisive asset in any project, so we always take a collective approach, sharing decisions, ventures, risks and successes.
ESG / SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Since it became independent in 2010, the Initiative & Finance team, already alert to environmental, social and governance issues (ESG) when planning and managing its operations, has engaged in a process of continuous improvement.
A signatory of the France Invest and French Strategic Investment Fund partner companies charters, Initiative & Finance has always promoted the principles of Responsible Investing. Since 2015, the team has strengthened its commitments with the adoption of a charter setting out how ESG components are integrated in its investment policy and approach.
As a professional shareholder, Initiative & Finance is aware of its responsibilities to all stakeholders and took things to another level in 2020 by becoming one of the first signatories of France Invest’s Gender Diversity Charter and a signatory of the PRI (unpri.org).
The team has, on that occasion, established a more comprehensive ESG approach including extra-financial support for its portfolio companies, measurement of ESG criteria and suitable communication in order to help those companies enjoy sustained success and grow in value.
Initiative & Finance is also a member of Invest Europe, the world’s largest association of private capital providers.
