Europe and VC

clipped from www.ieeconferences.org Europe’s womb: nurturing technology businesses The latest figures from the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA) shows that Europe had more venture capital funding last year than the US, and, although there are more business angels in the US than the UK per capita, Europe is catching up fast. Between 2000 and 2004, a million jobs were created by new companies and, in 2005, venture capitalists invested $4.2bn in start-ups, three times the amount invested in the previous year. Europe is bursting with ideas, but while aid is available for fledgling firms, there is still much to be done. ....However, a major stumbling block at the moment is a European requirement that means as soon as financial aid is provided, companies need to stump up the same amount of money. Another key issue is that there is no conformity about intellectual property (IP). Félicitas Riedl, an investment manager at Fonds d’Investissement Européen, said that usually universities own the rights but in Italy and Sweden, professors own it, and, in other cases, IP is managed by people who have nothing to do with it.