New Dutch fund, Aescap Venture, raises €100M

Funding opportunities

Aescap Venture, a new biomedical venture capital fund, says it has raised more than €100 million for its first fund. This follows the first closing in August 2006 at €59 million. Final closing of the fund is expected later this year.

Dinko Valerio, General Partner and co-founder of Aescap Venture, claimed this as an “extraordinary accomplishment” saying, “No newly founded biomedical venture fund in Europe has been able to raise more than €20 million since the bubble year 2000.”

The firm attributes interest in the fund to the track record of the team and its experience in the life science industry, but also to the overall increase in money that is flowing into the European biotech industry. In 2006 the amount of private equity raised by European biotech companies reached an all-time high, exceeding €1.5 billion.

Since its first close in July 2006, Aescap Venture has made investments in three biomedical companies, Affectis AG, ActoGeniX NV and ProtAffin AG.

Aescap aims to build a portfolio of 12 to 15 companies and typically invests in companies that are sufficiently mature to yield realistic product-opportunities as well as cash flow from licensing deals.

“Right now, Europe has a strong scientific basis, with insufficient commercialisation,” general partner Michiel de Haan said. “[The] promising biomedical investment climate convinces us that our next investments will be just as lucrative as our previous ones.”

Aescap’s investments spread risk over multiple product/market combinations. “We sincerely believe that we will generate the same top quartile profits for our investors as we have done in the past,” said de Haan.

Michiel de Haan, was the founder of Atlas Venture and CEO of the VC firm until 2000, Dinko Valerio was the founder and former CEO of the Dutch biotech firm Crucell.