Europe’s venture capital industry received new entrants yesterday, with seven German investment companies banding together to form a new VC firm specifically to provide funding for internet and multimedia companies, while the Paris-based Groupe Arnault announced plans for an identical venture in France.
The new German fund, based in Hamburg, is called The Internet.z AG and is made up of seven VC firms from Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt. Among them is merger and acquisition specialist Muenchmeyer GmbH and one company, Prime Asset Management AG, which will be responsible for contacts with the US market.
The company has been set up with an initial 5m-euro ($5.15m) fund. It plans to make strategic investments in start-ups of between 0.25m euros and 1.5m euros ($0.26m-$1.55m). In announcing the new company’s foundation, Olaf Hein, head of one of the shareholder VCs, Sparta Beteiligungen AG from Hamburg, said the first investment would probably be in an online auction house for machines and industrial equipment.
Meanwhile Groupe Arnault, best known for its hostile bid for Italian fashion house Gucci, said yesterday it will be setting up a venture capital company called Europ@web, into which it plans to inject an initial 500m euros ($516m). Group owner Bernard Arnault himself is expected to head the new company.
