Fabrice Delaye

A venture capital company based in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands has raised €45 million, a record for a VC devoted exclusively to emerging nanotechnology.

In 2005, France launched competitive clusters to encourage research universities to support innovation. The same philosophy is driving universities to pool their R&D competencies, restructure – and even merge.

The French presidential election is unlike any previous one: this time, both right and left are hoisting research policy to the top of their agendas.

Just few days after the announcement of cut in its biology budget, France’s leading public research organisation is going flat out for industrial contracts.

The League of European Research Universities wants public services to put 2.5 per cent of their external R&D budgets into start-ups.

French president Jacques Chirac pledged €3 billion for innovative start-ups. But can France’s venture capital community manage this largesse?

A French start-up is joining forces with Microsoft to enlarge its innovative multiplatform datas and services engines to .Net environment.

Microsoft France's support scheme for start-ups has begun its second year, with success at just one of the 25 companies it has helped covering the costs of the programme over two years. And now Microsoft’s subsidiaries in Germany and the UK are joining in.