Government launches £1 billion VC fund
Article Date: Jun 30 2009The UK government has created a fund to support early-stage technology companies via the venture capital (VC) industry.
It has committed £150 million to the UK Innovation Investment Fund, which will invest in privately-run VC funds backing high-tech ventures. The ultimate aim is to attract further money from the private sector and build the fund’s assets to £1 billion.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown claims the fund will ‘provide crucial support for our most promising start-ups and existing small companies just when they need it most'.
The move has been welcomed by the VC industry, with Simon Walker, CEO of the British Venture Capital Association calling it ‘an exciting economic incentive for more than a thousand young venture-backed companies and the ideas and jobs which they represent’.
Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, says the ‘fund of funds’ approach will allow a degree of separation between the government and investment vehicles, ‘avoiding red tape’.
I hope these funds will be better used than NESTA has achieved thus far. NESTA was established with the vert best of intentions but has become just another quango - centralised and bureaucratic. the bu
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