IP Group and the European Investment Fund (EIF) are partnering through a £30 million investment fund to back new spin-out companies.
The IP Venture Fund II will back businesses from IP Group’s university partnerships and features £20 million from the EIF and £10 million from IP Group.
Alan Aubrey, chief executive of IP Group, says that his firm and the EIF share a ‘similar view’ on the importance of providing long-term ‘patient’ capital to intellectual property commercialisation.
He adds, ‘Finding like-minded partners to invest alongside us remains an important component of our model; ensuring our most promising companies have access to patient capital as well as delivering synergistic value to both shareholders and partners.’
The collaboration between IP Group and the EIF is the second time that the two organisations have partnered on a fund. Previously, the £31 million IP Venture Fund was created in 2006. In line with the governance of the 2006 fund, IP Venture Fund II will be managed by Top Technology Ventures, a subsidiary of IP Group.
More on deals by IP Group:
- Magnomatics gets IP Group and Fusion IP as backers
- Spin-out business Glythera secures IP Group support
- Fund backs two North East businesses
Piyush Unalkat, principal (equity investments) at the EIF, comments, ‘We have been working with IP Group since 2006 and have been impressed by [its] ability to build valuable companies from the best of British intellectual property and evidence returns to co-investors and shareholders.’
The fund will co-invest with IP Group in such a way that the effective investment ratio between IP Group and the EIF will be 4:1, due to the fact that IP Group will also directly provide capital to companies alongside the fund.
IP Group’s 2013 dealmaking has seen it take part in a £10 million funding round for portfolio company Xeros and £9.7 million round for fellow portfolio business Ceres Power. It currently has 70 companies in its portfolio including removable chewing gum business Revolymer and DNA sequencing developer Oxford Nanopore.
