Venture Capital and Venture Capital in Ireland

17/03/2014
Diego Gutiérrez
Venture Capital and Venture Capital in Ireland
2014 looks like a promising year for the venture capital and Venture Capital  In Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, the government agency responsible for supporting Irish business, has done 11 deals in the last 6 months.

 

 

Most active sectors

The sector that has seen the most success on the part of the investors, analysing investments from 2008 to date, it is the financial services sector (23%), followed by the ICT sector, healthcare and energy.

"The predominance of the financial services sector can be explained by the large investment $9.2 B at Anglo Irish Bank by Lone Star, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo in 2011," says Diego Gutierrez, alternative finance expert at the group. Abra Invest.

 

Venture Capital developments from 2008 to date

 

As can be seen in the graph, the volume invested in  Risk capital grew considerably in 2010, from $10B to $3.5B. The reason for this rise may be the good tax climate in Ireland, where corporation tax was 12.5% and account participation was not taxed as capital income.

In 2012, due to the crisis in the €-zone, investment dropped considerably from an investment volume of 19 transactions and $3.5B in 2011 to a total of 9 transactions and a volume of $0.5MB in 2012. It seems that already in 2013, the situation started to improve, reaching a total of 12 transactions and an investment volume of $2.2B in 2014.
The most active investor has been Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which has carried out a total of 5 investments in the period, followed by Lone Star Funds and Advent International.

Evolution of venture capital

 

The evolution of venture capital is a little later and did not start to grow until 2011. This may be due to the delay in the response to the tax incentives initiated in 2010 and to the fact that it was not until the end of 2010 when Enterprise Ireland The government agency responsible for supporting Irish companies stepped up its activity, establishing two new funds. In addition, the low valuation of Irish companies in 2012 provided an opportunity to invest at fairly limited risk.

The largest operation carried out during the period is the Mainstream Renewable powera company dedicated to renewable energy, which in August 2013 was awarded its second  round 100M from the hand of Marubeni Corporation.

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