Springwater has entered the venture capital fund of the University of Santiago de Compostela, thus achieving the privatisation of the company, which was in the hands of three Galician universities. The privatisation of the company was necessary to raise funds from the ICO, which has limited its investment to managers and funds with a majority of private capital, forcing Uninvest - whose founding partners include Axis, the ICO's own venture capital company - to spend months analysing formulas for its survival. It has finally decided to consider the exit of universities and other public shareholders.
Springwater has taken 67% of the property, the other 33% having been acquired by two of the company's directors in an MBO transaction.
Uninvest plans to set up a new venture capital fund, with the same philosophy as the first one, but with a higher capitalisation and also a higher investment capacity per project. Martín Rivas points out that experience has taught them that technology-based projects have a long maturation period and are very capital-intensive.
New Tech Transfer Ventures FCR fund
Tech Transfer Ventures FCRmanaged by Clave Mayor, S.A. SGECR, is an incubation and technology transfer fund that will invest in spin-off projects from the environment of the Universidad Politècnica de València. The expected number of investments will be 21 and the duration of the investment period will be five years. IVACE will invest up to 30 per cent of the target size of the fund, which is EUR 6 million.
The University of Salamanca creates a fund to promote business projects
The new fund will make it possible to invest in research projects linked to the community's universities. This will provide financial coverage for entrepreneurial projects from their earliest stages until they are viable.
Among the priority objectives of the new fund are the promotion of entrepreneurial activity in the Castilian and Leonese university environment, providing financial resources and advice to projects arising in the university environment. The new proposal aims to take advantage of the firm commitment to innovation deployed in recent years by the universities and the Junta, taking advantage of the infrastructures created.
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