Page 30 - Annual Report 2010

ANNUAL REPORT 2010

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Advent Life Sciences

“This new capacity

will help us make a difference to the technology

and

innovation

sectors and gives us the opportunity to support, develop

and transform UK businesses into European frontrunners.”

Raj Parekh General Partner, Advent Life Sciences

Introduction

The UK Future Technologies Fund (UK FTF), a fund-of-fund managed by EIF and backed by the UK government, has £200m to invest.

It invests in venture capital funds which target UK innova-tive SMEs specialising in a range of technologies such as life sciences, digital technology, and advanced manu-facturing.

Although only launched in February 2010, UK FTF has already signed three milestone investments with key play-ers in the UK market at end-2010. This includes the £15m committed to Advent Life Sciences, Advent Venture Part-ner’s (AVP) first fund totally focussed on life sciences.

AVP have been involved in SME financing in the ad-vanced technologies sector for over 20 years and have extensive market knowledge, experience and recognition which make them one of the major and most established players on the UK venture capital market.

Advent Life Sciences’ investment strategy is a perfect fit with UK FTF’s stage and sector target: it particularly con-

centrates on innovative early to mid-stage UK and Euro-pean companies that provide technologies or products in a range of sectors within life sciences.

With this new fund focussing solely on life sciences Advent aims to respond to the sector’s increasing need for resources and for help to develop, being insufficiently served by private and institutional investors.

Added value

UK FTF’s involvement in Advent Life Sciences gives a strong positive signal to the market and raises interest of other investors that may not have been attracted to a sec-tor that was particularly hard hit by the crisis.

The transaction underlines EIF’s engagement to innova-tion, particularly in the life sciences sector. In addition, the investment contributes to EIF’s aim of driving economic growth and making an impact on the development of Europe’s future technologies.

Bringing life to future technologies