March 27 (SeeNews) – Bulgarian alternative investment fund manager AlfaStar Ventures has launched the first open-ended venture capital fund in Bulgaria that complies with the European venture capital funds label (EuVECA) and expands opportunities for cross-border investment in early stage startups, a legal advisor to the company said.
As an EuVECA fund, AlfaStar Capital enables investments in unlisted companies with up to 499 employees and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) listed on a stock exchange growth market for SMEs in Bulgaria and the Southeast Europe region, law office Gugushev & Partners, which counselled on the fund’s registration, said in a statement on Friday.
Since it is compliant with the relevant EU regulation, the open-ended fund can be marketed to both professional investors and high-net-worth individuals investing at least 100,000 euro ($107,757). In addition, the fund ensures lower costs associated with authorisation and compliance under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). The AIFMD provides financial regulation on hedge funds, private equity, real estate funds and other alternative investment fund managers throughout the EU.
“As an investor in sustainable, ground-breaking innovation we had to think about how we meet the investor return goals and at the same time accommodate the asset maturity timelines. The open-ended features of our fund have many benefits, amongst which the ability to choose the best time to exit investments to maximise the return, as well as being efficient with cost and flexible with liquidity,” AlfaStar Ventures’s co-founder, Desislava Gospodinova, said.
AlfaStar Capital EuVECA prioritises investments in pre-seed, seed and early growth stage start-ups in both traditional industries like agriculture, industry, manufacturing, supply chain or finance and emerging industries like climatetech, agtech, robotics and automation or fintech, with a focus on AI, machine learning, IoT and big data.
($ = 0.9278 euro)
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