Sponsored by :

With the support of:

Organized by :

Nevertheless, as European companies may never have access to sufficient venture capital funding compare to their American counterparts, AIM and AlterNext are necessary to ensure that European Innovation is supported by substantial funding not only from VCs but also from public equity small cap funds. And even if AlterNext is seen more as source of funding than of liquidity, it is still a fundamental tool for Europe.

In private equity, the credit crunch has hampered the growth of LBO funds. Venture seems to benefit from this shift but it remains quite challenging to raise money. State tax incentives and public money are still essential to raise VC funds. The FCPI regulation was finally prolonged in France and that country enjoys a healthy cash flow in favour of Innovative private companies.

At the level of the companies, late-stage business plans are still in favour but valuations are still constrained by the difficulty to exit in Europe. Large, well-funded companies can access the Swiss market where large institutional investors can maintain their holding in the long term. Early stage suffers from this. Venture Funds tend to have a much shorter horizon to exit.

In this context, Medtech is a hot sector. This market is dominated by the trade sales, sometimes at substantial valuation and sufficiently early in the development of the companies. Recent acquisition of the Swiss Precimed, a couple of years after its funding, is a typical example of what can be expected in Medtech. Grenoble is definitely also seen as a medtech hub in the field of computer-Assisted Surgery and Robotics.

The other intriguing source of deals may come from the emerging Central European countries, Israel and Russia. BioData this year will host representatives of these Regions. Moscow, for a hundred years, has developed its own technology that has remained unknown from the West. As this is now revealed, the venture capital industry may find there new concepts and markets.

Western Switzerland and the Rhône-Alpes Region continue to strongly foster life sciences innovation and is open to the rest of the world to share their leadership position. BioData is such communication tools deeply rooted in its Region and very open to the world, for its 7th edition in 2008 in Geneva.


Welcome to BioData2008!

Hervé de Kergrohen,

Chairman