Atlante (private equity fund)

Atlante is an Italian private equity fund that dedicated to recapitalize some Italian banks, as well as purchase the securitizaties of the junior trenches of non-performing loans. The fund was under regulated by EU Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive.

According to Federico Ghizzoni, former CEO of UniCredit, despite the bank may inject €1 billion to the fund, the bank had a priority to sell their bad loan to the fund. UniCredit had about €20 billion net value of bad loan in the balance sheets as at 31 December 2015. Moreover, both UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo (via Banca IMI) were already under-written Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca for a combined €2.5 billion capital increases. The contributions of the fund would make the fund becoming the buyer of the unsold shares, instead of the banks themselves. As BPVi announced that the new shares would priced between €3 to €0.1 per shares, the fund on behalf of UniCredit would purchase the unsold share for €0.1 only.

It was reported that banking foundations, such as Fondazione Cariplo, Fondazione Cariparo, Compagnia di San Paolo () and Fondazione CRT, which in previous banking reforms were forced to sell their banking subsidiaries (forced to diversify investments), were invited to invest in the fund. According to ACRI, the foundations had €40 billion shareholders' equity, with most of them no longer owning their banks in majority or entirely sold. Fondazione Cariplo, a shareholder of Intesa Sanpaolo and the management firm of the fund, had a shareholders' equity of €8.9 billion.

On 29 April 2016 Quaestio announced that the fund had collected €4.249 billion from 67 investors including Cassa Depositi e Prestiti.

The Italian banking sector was suffer from the impact of the recession of the country. According to Banca d'Italia (the central bank), the non-performing loans (NPLs) of the whole banking system stood at €360 billion gross book value in December 2015 (peaked in September 2015) with more than half were sofferenze (€210 billion, means bad loan). On average, the total NPLs to total loans ratio was 18%, the highest among European Union.

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