Madrid, April 16, 2024. Today, the Council of Ministers has approved the regulations for the operation of the Co-investment Fund (FOCO), which represents the fulfilment of one of the milestones included in the addendum to the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. The Fund, endowed with €2,000M and managed by COFIDES, has the purpose of attracting foreign investment to promote investments in Spain, aiming to contribute to modernising the Spanish productive model and increasing its competitiveness, especially those linked to both the green and digital transitions and technological innovation.
COFIDES Chairman and CEA, José Luis Curbelo, highlighted that "FOCO is a very innovative fund that will help to mobilise international resources to consolidate the green and digital transformation of the Spanish economy".
COFIDES director general, Miguel Tiana, explained that "with the approval of the Council of Ministers' Agreement, the conditions are in place for the Fund to start operating. COFIDES has been working for months to identify operations that could receive support from the Fund. Therefore, we hope to be able to make the first investments in the short term".
CO-INVESTMENT FUND (FOCO)
FOCO is an instrument created by the government as part of the addendum to the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (RRTP) and is endowed with €2bn from the NextGenerationEU programme. Through co-investment with international investors, the Fund aims to mobilise additional resources for projects that contribute to the green and digital transition of the Spanish economy.
FOCO will make direct investments in the capital of companies that develop new productive investments in Spanish territory that boost the competitiveness of the Spanish productive model, always in the form of co-investment with international investors and under pari passu conditions with them. It may also take equity stakes in investment vehicles mobilising foreign investors. FOCO's contributions will range from €10M to €150M per operation, provided that additional resources are mobilised from international investors for at least the same amount as that provided by the Fund.
The addendum to the PRTR sets the objective for the Fund to commit its full resources no later than June 2026. However, FOCO is set up as an open-ended instrument, so that returns on investments made will be returned to the fund so that they can be invested in new operations beyond this date.
COFIDES is a state-owned company specialized in managing state funds that provides financing for private investments to achieve various public policy objectives. For over three decades, it has managed resources aimed at supporting the internationalization of Spanish companies and, since 2021, the FONREC, a fund aimed at strengthening the solvency of Spanish companies severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the PRTR addendum, COFIDES has been assigned the direct management of two new financial instruments: FOCO and the Social Impact Fund, the latter aimed at strengthening the national ecosystem of impact investment. Additionally, COFIDES supports the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) in managing financial cooperation resources. The Spanish state owns 53% of the capital, while the remaining 47% is held by Banco Santander, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), Banco Sabadell, and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF).
