Greenhouse to spin out new fund

The boss of the Reuters Greenhouse fund has plans for a parallel fund of about £250m. It will invest alongside the original fund, but its focus will be on returns rather than on discovering new technologies that Reuters can use.

John Taysom, founder of Reuters Greenhouse, the fund that invests in companies whose business could be of use to Reuters, is to launch a £250m Greenhouse II fund. The new fund will be free to invest in companies whose business is unrelated to Reuters’s.

Taysom said in the Wall Street Journal that he and five other Greenhouse executives would start raising money this year. Reuters has said it will be a minority investor in the new fund.

Greenhouse II will reportedly keep the Greenhouse focus of investing in internet technologies but will also have the ability to move into hot sectors such as telematics.

The original Reuters Greenhouse fund has invested about $400m and recouped some $270m. CSFB values the unrealised assets in the Greenhouse portfolio at about $300m.