Investindustrial to boost Asia sales, sell companies

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - European investment group Investindustrial plans to boost sales in Asia by two-thirds to $1 billion in three years and aims to sell its portfolio companies to Chinese firms eager to expand overseas, its President Filippo Aleotti said.

Investindustrial, whose portfolio companies posted $600 million in sales in Asia, a tenth of global revenue, is setting up regional headquarters in Shanghai to tap robust economic growth in China.

"Our role is to bring Italian, Spanish companies into China, and later we can do exactly the opposite, as Chinese companies are having expansion abroad," Aleotti said in a recent interview.

Unlike major buyout firms such as Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group , Spain-based Investindustrial was founded in 1990 out of an industrial conglomerate, and its investment focuses on Italian and Spanish industrial- and retail-related companies.

Investindustrial, whose investors include U.S. and European pension funds, endowments and several sovereign funds, manages $3 billion in four private equity funds, and has 15 companies in its portfolio.

Although the Shanghai office is just established, Investindustrial entered China in 2001 when its unit Italmatch started business in the country as a local phosphorus supplier, Aleotti said.

Currently, Investindustrial has four subsidiaries operating in China, including Italmatch, Permasteelisa, Polynt and Ducati.

"The rest of the world is in a low-growth environment," Carl Nauckhoff, Investindustrial's principal said in the same interview. "In China, you have growth here, a lot of expertise, and technology is catching up very fast."

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Jacqueline Wong)