Firms raise funding of €54m

A TOTAL of €54 million of venture capital funding was raised by Irish companies during the first quarter of this year, significantly bucking the international trend where spend in leading economies was down on a year-on-year basis.

The total actually represented a 24% like-for-like increase for the period and saw 32 technology companies raise funds.

Venture capital funding activity was down, in the quarter, in leading international markets such as the US and Britain.

The latest figures – published as part of the Irish Venture Capital Association’s (IVCA) latest VenturePulse survey – follow on from a 7% rise, to €243m, in venture capital funding for Irish businesses in 2008, as a whole. Last year, 93 technology companies successfully raised venture capital funding.

That monetary figure isn’t too shy of the kind of funding that was generated in Britain last year – a total of €885m, when the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors were excluded.

“When you consider the respective sizes of the economies, this suggests that Ireland is punching much bigger than its weight internationally and nurtures some hope in striving towards the goal of creating a smart economy here.

“The Government’s move to invest in university R&D may be starting to see benefits,” commented IVCA chairman Joe Concannon.

Mr Concannon added that Irish performance in attracting funding – both last year and to date this year – was especially impressive given that we are “in the teeth of the global credit crunch”.

The 24% year-on-year increase in funding in the first quarter of the year amounted to eight more companies gaining funding in the first three months of this year than was the case for the same period last year.

Then, 24 companies (up from 14 in the first quarter of 2007) raised €43.3m, while €33m was raised in the first quarter of 2007.

First quarter venture capital figures for the US, meanwhile, showed a year-on-year fall of 61% in terms of the amount of money invested.