Chapter 18
Realza Capitala
DECEMBER 2006
It was a cold night in Madrid in December 2006 as Alfredo Zavala and Martin Gonzaález del Valle walked back to the 10-square-meter office they were subletting from a venture capital firm in Madrid. The partners of Realza Capital (Realza), a fledgling mid-market private equity fund, had just returned from the company’s Christmas dinner and things were not going according to plan. Their cornerstone investors, who had verbally committed the initial €40mn for Realza’s first fund, had just called Zavala to say they were pulling out of the deal.
Realza’s goal had been to raise €150mn to €200mn for the fund. The process of raising money was well underway and Zavala and Gonzaález del Valle had already built a small team. They had recruited Catherine Armand as administrative assistant and had just convinced Pedro Fernaández-Amatriain to take a risk, forego a steadier career in corporate finance and join them as an analyst. With the promise of future success, Armand joined for free and Amatriain for a very moderate sum for the next 6 months. But Armand and Amatriain were not the only ones with everything on the line. Zavala and Gonzaález del Valle had both left lucrative jobs at leading Spanish private equity firms to pursue this entrepreneurial venture, which now appeared to be at risk. Three alternatives presented themselves to the partners. The first was that a major European private equity group was trying to convince them to join and create ...
