COFIDES steps ahead: Catalysing private capital, originating deals, and learning to measure impact

Having spent 15 years at infrastructure company Elecnor before development finance, Ángela Pérez brings a grounded view of risk. Public money alone can't close the gap in emerging markets, so the job is increasingly about catalysing private capital, hands-on originating and structuring projects that are genuinely bankable.

Takeaways from the sharp end

• The corporate years have changed how Pérez sees risk. From the financier’s seat, projects can become "Excel sheets, models and contracts,"  a simplification of reality. After years of moving people and equipment to hard-to-reach places, with real social and physical impact, she is "a little bit wiser," with a day-to-day appreciation of what project managers actually face on the ground.
• COFIDES' core role is as catalyst, particularly in emerging markets, not sole financier. With public resources insufficient to meet needs, the mandate is to act as anchor/catalyst investor, deploying EU risk instruments and longer term capital to make structures more attractive to co-investors, and to crowd others in. “One of our roles precisely is to become a catalyst or an anchor investor or a provider of a solution that can make the whole structure more attractive for others.”
• Public participation draws Spanish companies into challenging markets. When companies see the state providing instruments that make financing viable in difficult markets, they start looking at those markets "with more attention" so COFIDES is both a promoter of opportunities and an enabler of others' risk appetite.
• The biggest barriers: Bureaucracy and ineffectively-shared risk. There’s no single culprit behind sclerotic deals, but opaque, slow administrative processes (especially where multiple bodies must grant approvals) combine with weakly designed structures. Bankability ultimately comes down to how risk is shared between the players. “Things become stuck somewhere and you don’t have enough transparency or information to know what is happening.”
• The funds are tracking to target. COFIDES now manages six funds. The flagship outbound vehicle for Spanish companies investing abroad (FIEX) hit a record in 2025.  “Last year, we committed more than €430 million. And the expectation for this year is to achieve the same or even higher.” FOCO (inbound co-investment into Spain with international investors) is as much as 70% committed, and the FIS social impact fund is on course to be fully committed by June.
• Pérez’s biggest proposed change to emerging market infra finance is better end-to-end project preparation. Development can't be done in a single phase. It needs good feasibility studies, technical assistance, project management and structuring, planned coherently "from the very beginning to the end"  through follow-up, operation and impact measurement.
• Origination over waiting. Rather than waiting for opportunities to arrive, COFIDES is stepping ahead,  presenting its value proposition to companies and investors who often don't know what's available, and widening its pipeline accordingly. “Traditionally we wait for business… or for the opportunities to come to our organisations. Nowadays we need to step ahead first.” 
• A varied, exciting pipeline. Spanning traditional international infrastructure, car manufacturing and pharma, plus newer ground: Spanish social-economy projects (where the team is learning a lot about measuring impact and "the intentionality of impact"), and FOCO-backed bets on Spain's reindustrialisation, digital transition, green transition and technology. Higher-risk, "on the edge," but with the potential to reshape the ecosystems they operate in. 

 With thanks to our partners at the lill Institute for Public Value for giving us the space to host this interview.

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