Wednesday 14th Jan 2009
Market News
Balderton raises £282m for tech and media investments
Balderton Capital shrugged off the gloom in financial markets by saying it has raised $430m (£282m) for technology and media investments.
Founded in 2000 as the London-based arm of Benchmark Capital, the Silicon Valley venture capital group, Balderton has become one of Europe’s top start-up investors with $2bn of funds. The company spun off from its US parent in 2007.
Barry Maloney, general partner of Balderton, said there were “significant difficulties” in the fundraising market for private equity. But he said his firm had raised the lion’s share of its $500m target in just two months thanks to a strong record. The downturn has made it more difficult for venture capital, as it is harder to float or sell the companies groups have backed.
Balderton enjoyed several profitable exits last year, notably MySQL, a Swedish open source software group bought by Sun Microsystems for $1bn, and Bebo, the social networking website, sold to AOL for $850m. It also sold a stake in Betfair to Softbank of Japan in 2006, in a deal valuing the online betting exchange at more than $1.5bn, and made strong returns from the Nasdaq flotation of Yingli Solar, the Chinese solar power technology company.
Another encouraging sign for venture capital came last month, when Accel Partners, the Silicon Valley-based investor in Facebook and RealNetworks, raised $1bn for two new technology and media-focused funds in the US and Europe.
