ANIMA SGR has acquired a 80% stake in Castello SGR

July 2023 — ANIMA SGR S.p.A., the largest independent asset management group in Italy, has acquired Castello SGR, a portfolio company of Oaktree Capital Management.

ANIMA SGR has approximately US$195 billion assets under management and more than one million customers. ANIMA results from a process of aggregation of several companies, with different and complementary specializations, and has more than 300 professionals in Italy. It creates and manages forward-looking, flexible investment solutions built around the specific needs of clients, whether institutional investors (insurance and financial groups and pension funds), companies or individuals. The parent company ANIMA Holding is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange since 2014. In 2020, the group grew through the creation of ANIMA Alternative SGR, a company focused on private market investments and controlled by ANIMA Holding.

Castello SGR, incorporated in 2007, is a leading Italian real estate asset management company specialized in alternative investments promotion and management, with 50 funds under management. Castello manages a wide variety of investments, such as core+, opportunistic, development, portfolio break-up sales, asset repositioning and distressed situations, and NPLs in several asset types, from residential and hotels to logistic and photovoltaic. Castello’s main investors are financial institutions, insurance companies, private equity firms, hedge funds, pension funds, family offices and national and international private investors.

Oaktree Capital Management is a global investment manager specializing in alternative investments. Its expertise in investing across the capital structure has allowed the firm to cultivate a diversified mix of global investment strategies in four categories: credit, private equity, real assets and listed equities, and emphasizes an opportunistic, value-oriented and risk-controlled approach to investing in these asset classes.

Our role in the transaction

Oaklins’ team in Italy acted as financial advisor to the buyer, also providing a fairness opinion.