American Business Group Milan

Speaker for September Lunch

Francesco Marini Clarelli

"Angel Investing the Italian way"

An overview of angel investing and the way it's done in Italy, highlighting differences with the U.S. system. A quick peek into some of the speaker's recent investments: successful and unsuccessful start-ups.

About the speaker

Obtained a BA with honors in 1980 majoring in Economics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, he started his career at Bank of America's New York branch.

In 1982 he started working as a stockbroker for EF Hutton, and in 1983 founded the Shearson Lehman Brothers office in Monte Carlo.

In 1992 he started his own company in Milan, Astor Partners, specializing in scouting opportunities for the nascent Italian private equity industry. Astor Partners engineered many buyout transactions directly investing in most of them.

In 2001 he founded, with other partners, Unifortune, the first funds of hedge funds management company in the country.

He presently runs Astor Investment Advisors, an asset management company.

All along his career he casually invested in startups as an Angel Investor, in this field he made his first investment 1985 while his latest investment was made in 2007.

He currently sits on the Boards of I.F.I., one of the major Italian holding companies with interests in the automotive, banking, paper, and leisure industries, and Sportswear Company, active in the fashion garment industry.