Venture capital: time to shine?

Venture capital investing has gone through the mill since the collapse of the dotcom bubble wiped out an entire generation of venture investments and gave the sector a bad name. However, after a necessary correction, it may just be time again for this much-neglected sector to step out into the sunshine and be revived

One of the consequences of the collapse of the sub-prime market over the summer is an end to the availability of cheap money to finance management buy-outs. The situation went very quickly from the heady days of the $45bn buy-out of TXU to the failure of deals such as the Cadbury Schweppes beverages disposal. As buy-outs, re-financings and secondary sales become more difficult, there is a real chance that returns from management buy-out (MBO)-type funds are depressed for some time. But there is another area of the private equity market that has been neglected by investors since the end of...