Farnese Vini changes ownership: to the USA Platinum fund for 180 million euros

It has been at the center of frantic negotiations for weeks, with four major international investment funds ready to bet heavily on it, and now Farnese Vini, as confirmed to WineNews by its founder, president and CEO Valentino Sciotti, officially passes into the hands of the US private equity fund Platinum, from Rb Renaissance, which in 2016 became the majority shareholder of the group by acquiring shares of 21 Investimenti of Alessandro Benetton. “We have just signed an exclusive agreement with Platinum - explains the CEO and shareholder of Farnese Vini - which will quickly lead to the purchase. It is a 180 million euro operation, a fund change that rewards the great growth of the company in recent years, constantly in double digits (with turnover growing from 68.7 million euros in 2017 to 75 million euros in 2018, ed)”.

An important amount, as rarely seen in the world of Italian wine (to give an example, Biondi Santi passed to the Epi Group in 2016 for 107 million euros), “probably the highest transfer ever recorded in Italy”, continues Valentino Sciotti, “and the new partner, particularly solid with its 17 billion dollars of assets in the US, none of which in the wine sector, will give us great impetus in the overseas market and in our ambitions for growth, also through new acquisitions. We want to become - concludes the founder of Farnese Vini - increasingly important, emancipating ourselves from the dogma of a company in Southern Italy (where it controls the brands Vini Fantini, Vesevo, Vigneti del Vulture and Cantine Cellaro, among others, in regions such as Tuscany, Abruzzo, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata and Sicily), to which we remain proudly attached”.