From left to right: Marie Capitaine (TotalEnergies), Benoit Savattier (TotalEnergies), Antoine Delafargue (TotalEnergies), Jean-Marc Bally (Aster), Chama El Shamy (Aster)
Tailor-made support to meet the seller’s expectations
Following a competitive process, Aster was chosen by TotalEnergies to take over most of the assets of its CVC arm, TotalEnergies Ventures. The portfolio is made up of minority stakes in about twenty companies, mainly located in Europe and the United States. This deal allows Aster to notably demonstrate once again its international experience, its expertise in technologies and innovative solutions contributing to carbon neutrality, and its capacity to support start-ups in their respective growth projects.
Aster is also pleased to welcome North Sky Capital as an investor in the specially created FPCI fund (Fonds Professionnel de Capital Investissement), and endowed with a significant share to support the portfolio companies in their future financing needs. For its part, TotalEnergies will maintain a close relationship with Aster and will be interested in the future performance of the FPCI. Jean-Marc Bally, Managing Partner of Aster “this unprecedented operation testifies confidence in the Aster model and in our ability to develop solutions fully tailored to the needs of our subscribers”.
This announcement is a concrete step towards the building of a broader approach to support players interested in transferring and monitoring their venture capital investments.
The ambition to develop a secondary activity
With this solid first experience, Aster positions itself as a new entrant in the private equity secondary market. Aster can offer several liquidity and/or support solutions tailored to a smooth transition, and above all aligned with the evolving needs of the strategy and positioning of venture capital players, including in particular industrial corporates looking for liquidity or a new balance for their CVC activities and investment portfolios.
According to Fabio Lancellotti, Partner at Aster, “the economic context, combined with the cyclicality of venture capital investments, create opportunities to take over minority positions held directly by players wishing to reposition themselves on their core activities. We want to energize the secondary market with a constructive, tailor-made approach adapted to the strategic changes of large corporates, particularly industrial ones”.
Beyond the secondary buyout of assets, Aster is able to articulate multiple and varied approaches to come to a proposal adapted to each context, and to each team. Whether it is an on-the-spot audit, the takeover of management -directly or via a service provider role-, or even the sale, the options are numerous to best serve the interests of players wishing to reorient or stop their initiatives in the venture capital area.
About Aster
Aster is a venture capital firm based in Paris. Since 2000, we have managed several generations of funds raised from major industrial and institutional groups. We have built our expertise in Climate Tech with investments in the mobility, energy and industry sectors in particular. We finance start-ups at all stages of development, preferably from seed phase, and choose entrepreneurs who make the fight against climate change a priority mission of their projects. EkWateur (energy supplier that aims to accelerate the energy transition, sold in 2022) or Betterway (pioneer in the employee mobility solutions, sold to Edenred) are among our most recent success stories.
More broadly, Aster acts as a catalyst for its ecosystem, with Aster Class, a training organization that provides a framework for the dissemination of Aster’s expertise, and Aster Fab, a new kind of consulting firm unlocking the net zero transformation of hard-to-abate sectors by tapping into the startup gold mine.