Star Capital

Star Capital

Star Capital SGR was founded in 2001 by Perricone, a former KPMG Corporate Finance senior manager and Eptaconsors central director. The firm has been active in closed-end fund management since November 2002. The current partnership — including Senior Partners Stefano Zavattaro, Marco Biraghi and Luca Francesco Grassano — took full ownership of the management company in May 2010. Each partner's professional biography runs straight through Italian private equity, corporate finance and audit, with principals averaging over 15 years of collaboration inside the firm. Star Capital targets majority and minority equity investments in Italian industrial and service companies with enterprise values typically under €100 million. Sectors are broad — manufacturing, business services, niche industrial — rather than thematic, because the sourcing model rewards local relationship density over sector-labeling. The firm structures each deal through one of four vintage closed-end funds: SSRF (€100.3 million, 2002), SBSRF (€70 million, 2006), Star III (€87.7 million, 2012) and Star IV (€140 million, 2018). Across those vehicles the firm has completed 28 platform investments, most in Northern Italy, using a buyout-plus-growth-equity approach that often involves secondary transactions or succession-driven deals in family-held businesses. Since 2002 the four funds have collected a combined €398 million in commitments and completed 28 investments. The latest vehicle, Star IV, closed at €140 million in August 2018 and wrapped its investment period in August 2023 with seven deals. Star Capital's office remains in Milan, and the team has included a dedicated ESG Officer since at least 2023, reflecting the fact that funds have been branded as "social responsible" since the 2002 vintage. The firm has not publicly disclosed a successor fund vehicle as of mid-2026. What separates Star Capital is the pairing of an all-manager-owned SGR structure with a deliberate refusal to expand beyond Italian SME private equity. Most competitors of similar vintage either sold to larger platforms or widened their mandate. Star Capital kept the partnership concentrated, the fund sizes bounded, and the geographic lens fixed, turning management independence into a quiet structural moat that aligns the partnership with the 20-year hold periods typical of the Italian industrial families they back.