Interview: ASCRI's Maite Ballester

Susannah Birkwood
05 May 2011

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The Spanish private equity association (ASCRI) has renewed its efforts to promote venture and finally created separate platforms for its membership. Susannah Birkwood speaks to Maite Ballester, the partner and managing director of 3i Spain and president of the association since last December, about her vision for the next two years.

You have a two-year mandate as ASCRI president ahead of you. What are your main priorities?

Although it seems obvious, the first thing I want to do is create more awareness about private equity among local entrepreneurs and management teams. For this purpose we've created three platforms, similar to those used by EFCA, to enable us to focus our communications strategy on venture capital, the middle-market and large buyouts as distinct groups.

In the mid-market platform, we've started improving our relationship with auditory firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young in order to gain access to their clients and explain to them how private equity can help those struggling to access bank debt. We also publish a lot of articles on this subject and I speak at conferences every week - not to people involved in private equity, but to entrepreneurs and advisers who don't know much about it.

We're also working with the Ministry of Innovation and Economy to help them invest public money in start-ups and convince the market of the importance of venture capital. We're predicting this will be a strong year for venture in Spain, which is important because despite what many people think, local entrepreneurs with viable projects do exist - but due to fundraising difficulties, there isn't currently enough money to support them.

Why is venture such a hot topic in Spain?

Venture could prove vital in improving the nation's employment prospects [Spain currently has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, with 20% of adult out of work]. Jobs aren't being created in the public sector (the government recently announced that for every 10 civil servants that retires, just one new person will be hired) and nor are they being generated within big corporations and banks. The best possible source of new jobs is therefore going to be businesses which grow from 0 to 100 employees, or those which start increasing their overseas exports, as internal demand is relatively low.

Our venture capital platform is working in all the forums it can to help the asset class develop companies specialising in biotech and other areas of technology. Several conferences exist in which start-up businesses get the opportunity to talk to investors and vie for their backing. One example of this is Hit Barcelona, which is taking place in the same week as this year's ASCRI congress [13th-17th June]. This event sees a real mix of investors come together under one roof. Entrepreneurs are each given two minutes to present their projects, and if they peak the investors' interest, they're given a further 10 minutes to seal the deal.

Another excellent way of promoting venture is via the Asociación Española de Business Angels, which conducts research into the most effective forms of financing for start-ups.

This year's ASCRI congress is being held in Barcelona on 14-15 June. What can attendees expect?

We're going to try and make it as exciting as possible, instead of just talking about "the difficulties obtaining credit" - because nobody cares about that anymore. We've designed a programme which celebrates the 25th anniversary of ASCRI and focuses on important topics for entrepreneurs, management teams and advisers - not just for our members. The programme kicks off with a discussion featuring Bernardo Hernández [worldwide director of emerging products at Google], which explores why we in Spain are less successful at venture than they are in the US. What have they got that we haven't? That will focus on several positive and negative case studies and the lessons we've learned in the field.

Next we'll have a session entitled ‘China, India, Brazil'. This will examine the challenges Spanish SMEs face when operating in these countries and will be moderated by investment manager Julia Sanchez, who has spent years in China, along with representatives from three companies based there who will tell us about their experiences.

We'll then hold a session on macroeconomics, which will be hosted by a representative from the Ministry of Economy, possibly Jordi Sevilla [a former Minister for Public Administration who belongs to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and works for PricewaterhouseCoopers]. Our grand finale will celebrate our anniversary, featuring a panel of ex-ASCRI presidents from the past two and half decades.