NEW HIGH-TECH VENTURE CAPITAL FUND

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NEW HIGH-TECH VENTURE CAPITAL FUND
14 December 2005 - Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.

A new venture capital firm, Munich Venture Partners, is cooperating with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to float a fund for financing high-tech startups. One of its main focuses will be to support Fraunhofer technology spin-offs.

Professor Hans-Jörg Bullinger, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, sees the newly launched enterprise Munich Venture Partners as a way of channeling the innovation potential of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft even more effectively into commercially viable products and solutions. "We have decided to co-operate with Munich Venture Partners because the MVP team, consisting of experienced industry executives and successful venture capital professionals, provides a very good basis for enhancing the value creation out of Fraunhofer technology spin-offs. Germany does need more high tech companies which are successful on an international scale. Together with Munich Venture Partners, we would like to contribute in this regard."

Although this is MVP's first venture capital fund, it held its first closing within a very short time, at a substantially higher sum than originally planned. One of the three partners, Sönke Mehrgardt, sees this as confirmation that the firm has been pursuing the right strategy: "The fact that we could attract internationally leading corporations as investors, proves that we have the right concept: Among them are SAP, Swisscom and the KfW Banking Group, as well as reputable private investors and family offices, such as the Armada Investment Group" Investors were obviously not just looking for technical innovations, he said, but also honoring innovative venture capital approaches such as the contract with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. MVP would now start to invest. "We hope to win further investors for the fund," Mehrgardt continues, "so that we can reach our target volume of 50 to 60 million euros as soon as possible." Along with partners Walter Grassl and Rolf Nagel, Mehrgardt plans to use the fund for investments in information, communication and energy-related technologies, giving special support to start-up companies. The three partners together possess several decades of business experience in the high-tech and venture capital sectors.

The Fraunhofer Venture Group, which is the first point of contact for the spin-off activities of the 58 Fraunhofer Institutes, liaises between MVP and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Offering access to more than 4500 sets of patents, it gives start-up firms a better chance of getting their products quickly established on the market. Its services comprise end-to-end support and consulting from the initial idea through to the setting up of a new company, as well as licensing Fraunhofer technologies and establishing intellectual property rights and usage rights in the start-up firms.

http://www.fraunhofer.de

About: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft undertakes applied research of direct utility to private and public enterprise and of wide benefit to society. Its services are solicited by customers and contractual partners in industry, the service sector and public administration. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains over 80 research units at more than 40 different locations throughout Germany. A staff of some 12,700, predominantly qualified scientists and engineers, works with an annual research budget of over one billion euros. Of this sum, more than € 900 million is generated through contract research. Two thirds of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s contract research revenue is derived from contracts with industry and from publicly financed research projects. The remaining one third is contributed by the German federal and Länder governments, as a means of enabling the institutes to pursue more fundamental research in areas that are likely to become relevant to industry and society in five or ten years’ time.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is also active on an international level: Affiliated research centers and representative offices in Europe, the USA and Asia provide contact with the regions of greatest importance to present and future scientific progress and economic development.

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