Cathay Capital raises $1.40 billion to support entrepreneurs in Northern America, Asia, Europe and Africa

Cathay Capital, a cross-border private-equity firm dedicated to supporting the international development of small and middle-market companies across North America, China and Europe, announced today that it has raised $1.40 billion (€1.3 billion) to support entrepreneurs, following the final closing of the €800 million Midcap II fund and the achievement of the €500 million target for Cathay Innovation II.

Those two investment vehicles are operational and will enable Cathay’s teams to best support start-ups (for Cathay Innovation II) as well as SMEs and ETIs (for Midcap II), helping them to finance and implement their projects. These two funds are global and will invest locally in companies in the geographical areas where Cathay operates, namely Europe (mainly France, Germany and Spain), Asia (China but also South East Asia via the group’s new office in Singapore), and North America.

The teams associated with these two funds will invest in sectors that present significant development opportunities and stand out for their sustainable growth potential, such as healthcare, high-tech industry, new modes of consumption, education and digital services.

Founded in 2007 Mingpo Cai, Cathay Capital Group is a global investment platform specialized in cross-border development with a focus on Northern America, Asia, Europe and Africa. The group identifies investment opportunities with the potential to impact the world and accompanies portfolio companies in their international expansion through its ecosystem of partners and the local expertise of its close to 100 employees based in Paris, Shanghai, Beijing, New York, San Francisco, Munich, Tel Aviv and Singapore.

To date, Cathay Capital has completed over 140 buyouts, growth and venture capital investments. Midcap II represents Cathay Capital’s largest fund to date and an increase of $325 million over its Midcap I fund, which closed in 2014. With the new fund, Cathay Capital will have $3.8+ billion in assets under management.

Specifically, Cathay Innovation II will continue to support the digital transformation and the industrial revolution induced by artificial intelligence, with major and cross-cutting applications for retail, fintech, healthcare, mobility and energy.

Cathay Innovation II has recently been selected by both the French Ministry of Economy and Finance and the French Ministry of Digital Economy, as one of the few funds qualified for their involvement in financing French technology companies, and more particularly in supporting start-ups in their industrial and commercial development in the scale-up phase.

These two vehicles are in line with their previous vintages and mark a new stage in the development of the Cathay platform, with a significant increase in means made available to entrepreneurs for each of the two strategies (from €500m for Midcap I to €800m for Midcap II; and from €287m to over €500m for Cathay Innovation II).

The raising of these two funds was made possible by the renewed confidence of Cathay’s historical investors, and by the arrival of new partners attracted by Cathay’s values and achievements, notably international institutional investors.