Private Equity
Bill Taranto has revved up Merck’s venture program, expanding it to growth equity. He now looks to go abroad and earlier.
5 min read · 26 July 2015
Ottawa has received just six applications for its pilot immigration program for millionaires, far fewer than for its investor class visa that was scrapped last year amid criticism, Reuters reported. The federal government announced in December that it was looking for 50 wealthy foreigners to join the pilot run of the Immigrant Investor Venture Capital plan.
2 min read · 24 July 2015
The index of publicly traded, VC-backed stocks fell slightly to end June at 955.27
1 min read · 24 July 2015
The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) reported that its client list of Canadian entrepreneurs running small and medium-sized businesses hit a record 32,000 last year. Its activities in 2014 included authorizing $114.8 million in investments in support of Ottawa's Venture Capital Action Plan (VCAP) and creating BDC Capital, which brings together the bank's two teams responsible for venture capital and growth and transition capital. The bank also reported BDC Capital's venture capital investment commitments now exceed $1 billion. The growth and transition capital group, profiled by peHUB Canada last November, accounted for $231.5 million in financing in 2014.
3 min read · 23 July 2015
Index Ventures has raised $66.5 million toward a new life sciences fund, according to an SEC filing. The new fund, Index Ventures Life VII, raised the capital in Euros from a single investor.
1 min read · 23 July 2015
Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund, a venture capital fund-of-funds managed by Northleaf Capital Partners, has closed at its hard cap target of $300 million. The fund, which was launched in early 2014 with the backing of Ottawa's Venture Capital Action Plan (VCAP), raised new commitments from Sun Life Financial and several high net-worth and family office investors. Additional money came from existing limited partners, most of them corporate and institutional investors. The fund has already committed 50 percent of its capital to Georgian Partners, Golden Venture Partners, Relay Ventures, Versant Ventures, Version One Ventures and XPV Capital, as well as to direct investments in eSentire, FreshBooks, Silanis, Vision Critical and Wattpad.
3 min read · 23 July 2015
European venture firm Notion Capital has raised $120 million in the first close of its third fund. The target of the fund, which focuses on European cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service companies, is $150 million. The vehicle's limited partners include family offices, high- net-worth individuals, the European Investment Fund and British Business Bank. Also, the firm has hired Adam Shepherd and Dan O’Toole as associates.
6 min read · 23 July 2015
Mega deals play big role again this year
2 min read · 23 July 2015
Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Ventures answers questions directly from readers in Ask an LP.
4 min read · 22 July 2015
The pace of fundraising scales back in month, while Fitbit leads list of new VC-backed public offerings
2 min read · 21 July 2015
