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January 2009US VC Predictions for 2009
Posted in Mike's Commentary
One has to look no further than the recent NVCA Annual Survey published on December 17 to get a good sense of how the morass of economic reports and prognostications of doom and gloom are affecting the mindset of many
Nice to get this one behind us
Posted in Mike's Commentary
We all know and accept the fact that we work in a cyclical business. That’s just the way it is. Until recently, pundits claimed that recessions, while becoming more volatile were also becoming cyclically shorter. Boy, has that view changed. With observations that the
October...More Trick than Treat
Posted in Mike's Commentary
A little late getting the newsletter out this month. I was really hoping that by delaying a couple of days we might be able to report a few more news releases announcing October financings. Unfortunately that was not the case and the results for October are abysmal. Not only were there only nine reported financings, but only one was for an Ontario-based company. Usually
Trailing 12-Month Charts don't Lie
Posted in Mike's Commentary
September turned out to be a “relatively” strong month in terms of dollars invested. In fact, not since September of 2007 have we seen as much invested in Canadian private companies in a month. Looking at the accompanying chart one might begin to think that investment in Canadian private companies is beginning to trend positively but that is not the case. Looking at our trailing 12-month chart we can see that the number of transactions reported during the past year has not changed appreciably since June 2007 while the amount invested during the trailing period has not made any significant gains since January 2007. I guess the best that can be said at this point is that the decline appears to have flattened out and we are in a sideways pattern. It’s sad to see that the number of companies receiving capital over a 12-month period has decline by over 50% since December 2005. Meanwhile, larger transactions involving later stage companies are the play of the day.
The Song Remains the Same
Posted in Mike's Commentary
As usual, August turned out to be a rather slow month, maybe a little more so this year as it seemed that many members of the investment community took a little extra time to recharge for what will certainly be a challenging final four months of the year.
It’s notable that one of our sector’s busiest firms, Wellington Financial, participated in a $20 million debt financing syndicate led by GMP Investment Management for Polaris Minerals Corporation. Polaris, a TSX-listed firm focused on the development of quarries and the production of construction aggregates in BC, is not the kind of firm that one would expect to see
It’s good to see....
July 2008It's Not All Bad News
Posted in Mike's Commentary
As we move into the last two weeks of the summer
Plenty of news coming out of the CVCA and NVCA this month with the reporting of second quarter and first half numbers. Rather than blather on about the dire state of the Canadian venture capital universe I’ll just let the numbers speak for themselves.....
June 2008And then there were ?????
Posted in Mike's Commentary
June represented an upswing in venture capital investments with 16 companies reporting raising $143.4 million compared to the 16 companies that reported raising $71.5 million in May and the 8 companies that reported raising $58.8 million in June 2007. Unfortunately, technology companies only accounted for 6 of the transactions for a total of $27 million.
On the funds side, the meltdown in the Canadian Venture Capital industry continues. This month alone...
May 2008If it looks like a token gesture and it quacks like a token gesture, then it's a token gesture!
Posted in Mike's Commentary
There has been plenty of excellent commentary this month regarding the June 11th announcement on the $205 million Ontario Venture Capital Fund (Wellington Financial, Startupnorth) so I’m not going to continue beating a dead horse, but when you really dig into the state of the VC sector (as detailed by the government and well known by everyone else in the investment space) and you look at the Ontario government’s feeble response you have to wonder if anyone at the premier’s office really understands the long term ramifications of a technology sector that has no money available for growth or innovation…or maybe they’re just too busy trying to figure out how much more money they can throw at GM (the last round was a $175 million 50-year interest free loan) to keep the truck plants going! You can be sure that the ramifications for
April-May Bring Plenty of Activity
Posted in Mike's Commentary
Plenty of interesting news this month so let’s start off with the big item impacting the Canadian venture capital space. Kuddos to our friend Rick Segal at JLA for his role in the newly announced $150 million Blackberry Partners Fund.
March 2008Expressions of Interest in Funding Companies
Posted in Mike's Commentary
Mike attended the TiEQuest Awards Dinner that was held last Saturday
and Liquid Fiber Displays was declared the 2008 winner. They won some
cash, and a lot of services, but the biggest news was that four leading
funds automatically expressed interest in funding them.
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