Francesca Natali

Shareholder of Meta Group and managing director of META Ventures

Francesca Natali is a shareholder of Meta Group and managing director of META Ventures, the financial company managing co-investment risk capital funds in Italy, Poland and Slovenia.

She has more than 20 years of professional experience in early stage finance and technology transfer, having worked with International Financial Institutions, the European Commission, and national/regional managing authorities for the design, development and management of several Financial Instruments under ESIF in the Netherlands, Romania, Finland, Tunisia, Italy, Slovenia, and Poland. She is currently engaged as fund Manager for the Ingenium Funds, public-private early stage funds.

As a fund manager, she deals with the public managing authorities at national, regional and local level to build and implement shared rules to monitor and report results and outcomes of the Financial Instruments under ZMV management. Francesca is also in charge of the fundraising activities dealing with formal and informal investors both at national and international level. She has extensive experience in using ESIF for financial instruments for SMEs and deep knowledge of key features and regulations of ESIF financial instruments (under the CPR) in the 2014-2020 programming period, with particular focus on off-the shelf equity-based instruments.

As an international expert and Ingenium fund director, she collaborated in the preparation of ex-ante assessments for financial instruments in different regions; she participated as key speaker in several international meetings with managing authorities and the European Commission on Financial Instruments; she contributed to the analysis and assessment of the financial gap of SMEs in target countries; and she provided recommendations to International Financial Institutions and regional Managing Authorities on ad hoc financial tools to close SMEs gap using Structural Funds. Francesca sits on several boards of directors of innovative SMEs, in the interest of the Ingenium funds.