capital

The report found more than $5.5 billion of venture capital was invested in 502 private companies in Q4 2003. This represents the first quarter-to-quarter increase in funding in two years and the largest increase since early 2000. Among major metropolitan areas, the San Francisco Bay Area continued to lead the nation with $1.5 billion in investments, or 27.4 percent of the nations total, and 139 companies securing deals.

The Pricewaterhouse Coopers/Thomson Venture Economics/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree™ survey shows for the first time in seven years, biotech was the leading industry with $873 million. Second to biotech was the software industry, which was down 11 percent from the previous quarter with 160 companies receiving $819 million. Telecommunications fell to a five-year low of $492 million, but remained in third place. The medical devices and equipment sector was fourth with $376 million, and networking was fifth, also falling to a five-year low with $331 million.

The authors examine the dimensions of China’s competitive threat in the 1990s, benchmarking competitive performance by technology and market, and finds that market share losses are so far mainly in low technology products, with Japan being the most vulnerable market. They analyse market share changes and highlight product groups that are directly or indirectly exposed to a competitive threat.

The authors analyze a number of case study communities in both metropolitan and regional urban locations in Australia as test sites to develop measures of ‘community strength on four domains: natural capital; produced economic capital; human capital; and social and institutional capital.

The importance of capital structure is explored by comparing existing archetypes of financial systems through a new methodological application.

The report details the $200 million Invest New Mexico Fund, which enables the state to use interest from its Permanent Fund to directly co-invest, like a private equity fund, into qualifying New Mexico companies.

The authors examine the influence of global and regional factors on the conditional distribution of stock returns from six Asian markets, using
factor models in which unexpected returns comprise global, regional and local shocks. Results of the study indicate that local news reduces mean spillovers but increases variance spillovers. News about regional countries increases skewness spillovers.

The authors analyze venture capital (VC) investments in 23 non-U.S. countries and compare them to VC investments in the U.S. They describe how the contracts allocate cash flow, board, liquidation, and other control rights.

The paper provides an empirical analysis of the factors determining the regional distribution of new economy firms in Germany. Using a count data analysis, the authors find evidence that the number of firms listed in a particular region depends positively on the regions knowledge potential (as measured by the number of patents or by the number of R&D employees) as well as on the regional supply of venture capital.

The paper evaluates the evolution of European venture capital investments since 1990, using the distribution dynamics methodology. It tests and rejects the hypothesis that the international allocation of venture capital investments is driven by a path-dependent process of agglomeration, in which a countrys initial advantage is transformed into a long-term lead.