Caixa Capital Risc, the "la Caixa" group's venture capital manager for early-stage innovative companies, which had 4 investment vehicles specialising in Biotechnology, Industry and ICT, has launched a new Biotech fund together with the CDTI.

Caixa Capital Risc, the "la Caixa" group's venture capital manager for early-stage innovative companies, which had 4 investment vehicles specialising in Biotechnology, Industry and ICT, has launched a new Biotech fund together with the CDTI.
2014 looks like a promising year for venture capital and Venture Capital in Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, the government agency responsible for supporting Irish companies has done 11 deals in the last 6 months.
Después de 3 años consecutivos de crecimiento en el número de operaciones de «Private equity», en el 2013 ha caído un 14%. A pesar de ello, el capital invertido ha crecido hasta alcanzar niveles más altos post-crisis con $426bn gracias a 13 operaciones de gran tamaño (>2,5bn$). Entre ellas están incluidas las dos más grandes desde el 2008 protagonizadas por inversores corporativos: Dell por $24,5Bn y Heinz por $23,2Bn. El paso de inversión ha crecido trimestre a trimestre, alcanzando en el tercer trimestre los niveles más altos desde 2008.
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 2013 Venture Capital invested $$3.7B in mobility, consecutively raising investments in excess of $1 billion over the last two quarters of 2013.
Since mid-2013, the Geneva-based fund opened an office in Spain and has been the most active foreign fund investing in Spanish SMEs, having invested more than €50M. The firm has announced that it has more than €100M available for 2014.
The Basque Government has joined public initiatives to promote SME financing through alternative instruments to traditional banking instruments such as venture capital.
Reports on venture capital and private equity activity in 2013 have recently come out. The numbers are not good: a 31% drop in volume and a 15% drop in number of deals. Will Fond-ICO Global manage to increase these figures in 2014 and beyond?
The most positive development in 2013 in the private equity investment sector was the significant increase in divestments, which totalled €1,451M, an increase of more than 20% over 2012, for a total of 268 deals.
A total of €1,346M was raised in 2013, a decrease of 33% compared to 2012. Fortunately, the outlook for 2014 and beyond is improving with the emergence of FOND-ICO Global which aims to attract €3,000M over the next 4 years.
Although investment throughout 2013 was much lower than in 2012, the second half of the year saw a significant rebound to €1.2 billion. In addition, several recently announced transactions bode well for the future....
European countries have faced the worst of the sovereign debt and unemployment crisis. There is still a long way to go to regain pre-crisis levels of growth and capital investment, but there has been slight GDP growth and a stabilisation or reduction in unemployment in most countries. The data provided by Pitchbook show some positive trends for 2014.