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Monthly European Technology Venture Capital Bulletin - April 2008

According to the HTI figures for April 2008, the European market is appearing to hold well, even if the momentum is clearly losing steam. The market continues to show some of the traits which are believed to characterise the slowdown: not so much a brutal stop to investments (as in 2001) but rather a distinct change in the types of investments which are getting made, according to this latest edition of Go4Venture's monthly VC bulletin.

• Move to larger deals - Out of seven Large HTI transactions (>= €7.5mn, £5mn, or $10mn) in April 2008, four (nearly five) were in fact in what we call ‘landmark’ deals in excess of €20mn. All relate to companies which are heavily capitalised by European VC standards.
• Move away from Series A rounds - No Series A investments made it to the large HTI deal list this time, but of the broader index, only include 20% of the total represent first rounds vs. 44% on average in 2007.
• Growing importance of the UK - Much of the supply of venture capital (43% in 2007 according to VentureSource) and many of the industry executives are based out of the UK. London benefits from being a reasonably tax-friendly (albeit changing for the worse) platform located half-way between the US and Asia. This month, all but one of our large HTI transactions were UK-based, even if half involved investors from outside the UK (US and Germany).

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Go4Venture is a London-based independent corporate finance advisory firm focused on providing equity private placement and mergers & acquisition (M&A) services to Europe’s leading technology companies and their investors. Clients include: Growth companies; VC funds; Buyout funds; and IT corporates. More details can be found at www.go4venture.com.