The number of transactions in Latin America has fallen slightly compared to the previous month, however, the volume of investment has increased as a number of large deals have been closed, especially cross-border transactions.


The number of transactions in Latin America has fallen slightly compared to the previous month, however, the volume of investment has increased as a number of large deals have been closed, especially cross-border transactions.
Last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was attended by more than 85,000 people from 201 different countries and attracted executives from the world's largest telephone operators, software, equipment suppliers, internet companies and industrial sectors such as automotive, finance and health, including Zuckerberg from Facebook, Korum from whatsapp and Rometty from IBM.

The CDTI has recently published a study on the impact of its funding on the evolution of Spanish companies. The results have been very good: these companies have achieved 17% of their sales coming from the new technological developments financed.
In recent years, the number of companies investing in technology-based startups has grown considerably. The main reason for this phenomenon is that companies are moving to an open innovation model, seeking innovation through new acquisitions.
After 3 consecutive years of growth in the number of private equity transactions, 2013 saw a 14% fall. Despite this, invested capital grew to reach its highest post-crisis levels at $426bn thanks to 13 large transactions (>2.5bn$). These include the two largest since 2008 led by corporate investors: Dell for $24.5Bn and Heinz for $23.2Bn. The pace of investment grew quarter on quarter, reaching its highest levels since 2008 in the third quarter.
The 10 largest funding rounds in the ICT sector raised a total of $600M in 2013, the majority of which were in early stage companies.
Venture capital has invested $150M since 2010 in Baas, the connection between mobile applications and cloud services. There have not yet been many sales in the sector, limited to smaller acquisitions.
In recent years, alternative financing has grown considerably, with P2P Lending in the US attracting large amounts of money through companies such as Lending Club, Prosper Marketplace and Funding Circle.
The media sector is in the midst of a profound change brought about by a poor outlook for traditional publishing models such as newspapers and printed books. As a result, we are seeing the emergence of new models funded by venture capital.
With the growth of content marketing, the software market has created several tools for what is known as content curation. According to our research we have identified more than 30 tools, of which only 8 have received venture capital backing for a total amount of $18M.
Private equity invested almost 40% of its investments in the "Other services" and "Other industrial products" sectors. Corporate investors grew by 29% in 2013, with very significant activity in the internet and technology sectors. Spain has one of the best Business Angels network infrastructures.

In the past year venture capital firms invested $1.4MM in 239 American cybersecurity companies. 80% of which ended in acquisitions or IPOs, with an average return of 10 times the investment.