Canadian venture capital funding continues to rise for the third year in a row, according a report from MoneyTree Canada Over the course of 469 deals in 2019, Canadian VC-backed companies raised US$4.1 billion, representing a 16 per cent rise in capital raised from 2018, but an 11 per cent drop in deal activity. “Canadian […]
A topic that has received a lot of attention recently in many markets, especially the United States, is the fall in the number of listed companies, said Jay Ritter, the Joseph Cordell Eminent Scholar in the finance department at the University of Florida, speaking at the Canadian Investment Review‘s 2019 Investment Innovation Conference in November. […]
Looking back on last year’s investment activity, institutional investors continued to pile into private equity. Globally, commitments to private equity funds jumped 27 per cent, or US$41 billion, in the third quarter, although there were only 201 final closes for the period, down seven per cent from the quarter prior, according to a report from […]
OMERS Ventures, the venture capital investing arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, has hired former Uber Technologies Inc. executive Jambu Palaniappan to join its London office as a managing partner. Palaniappan joined Uber in 2012 and led its expansion into the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions before being named the general manager […]
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board are among several institutional investors committing $427 million in the final closing of Portag3 Ventures II, a fund focused on early stage investments in the global financial technology sector. This is Portage3 Ventures’ second fintech fund, which to date has […]
While private equity’s original advantage was taking over a firm to revamp its governance and operations, private equity companies are now finding fewer underperforming firms to fix and the private equity model is changing, according to a new paper by Elisabeth de Fontenay, a professor of law at Duke University. The paper, which is set […]
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is committing $50 million towards Quebec seed funds and is charging venture capital firm Teralys Capital with supporting the funds it invests in. Seed funds are venture capital funds dedicated to supporting new startups with financing and ongoing support. “Without a rich and dynamic startup ecosystem, there is a risk of considerably fewer […]
Traditionally, defined contribution pension funds have not made significant use of venture capital, although over the long-term these assets have tended to perform well. A study by the British Business Bank and Oliver Wyman explored whether there is room for venture capital and growth equity within the U.K.’s DC schemes. It found that the average […]
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is one of several investors participating in Element AI’s $200-million Series B funding round,. The Montreal-based company, founded by Jean-François Gagné and artificial intelligence pioneer Yoshua Bengio, develops AI-powered software solutions. To date, the company has raised $340 million. The Caisse’s contribution to the round is part of its newly […]
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is opening an office in San Francisco. The new location is the CPPIB’s second U.S. office, after New York City, and its ninth worldwide. “One of the pillars of our growth strategy is to place a focus on technology and data and to better understand its impact on our […]