La Poste to merge Xange Capital with French private equity business of ABN Amro
La Poste, the French state post office, is to merge Xange Capital, its private equity arm, in a joint venture with the French private equity business of ABN Amro.
The deal will leave La Poste with control of the business, Les Echos, the FT’s sister paper in France, has learnt.
It provides a partial exit from private equity in France for the Netherlands bank, whose French private equity business, ABN Amro Venture Capital, has a Euros 90m (Dollars 109m) portfolio of investments. For La Poste, busy developing its financial services, the consolidation will provide an opportunity to reinforce the specialist private equity business it launched in spring last year.
Neither La Poste nor ABN Amro would comment, but it is understood that provisional approval from the French markets regulator, the Autoritedes Marches Financiers, was agreed at a meeting of the AMF on Tuesday evening.
ABN Amro Venture Capital was founded in 1997, to provide ABN Amro’s private clients with the opportunity to invest in cutting-edge technology businesses. It was key to the launch of several so-called FCPI funds that provide for collective investment in technology businesses.
Its portfolio includes investments in more than 20 companies, including Access Commerce, quoted on the Nouveau Marche of Euronext Paris, Caramail, e-Mail Vision and the biotechnology company Drug Abuse Sciences.
Initially, Venture Capital raised a new fund each year, but that stopped after interest in the 2002 funding round proved weak, causing ABN Amro to review the future of the business.
ABN Amro is expected to retain 33 per cent of the combined entity, with the balance owned by La Poste. Its Xange Capital arm was launched in spring 2003 to give La Poste a vehicle to invest in promising companies in businesses related to its core activity of letter and parcel distribution.
Xange is 34 per cent owned by La Poste, with the balance of the equity shared between eight co-investors – insurer AGF, Alten, accountants Deloitte & Touche, GMF, LaSer-Cofinoga and Neopost from the private sector, together with French state investment bank Caisse des Depots et Consignations and state-controlled insurer CNP Assurances.
