TY  - JOUR
AU  - Mayer,Colin
AU  - Schoors,Koen
AU  - Yafeh,Yishay
TI  - Sources of Funds and Investment Activities of Venture Capital Funds: Evidence from Germany, Israel, Japan and the UK
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9645
PY  - 2003
Y2  - April 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9645
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9645.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Colin Mayer
Said Business School
University of Oxford
Park End Street
Oxford OX1 1HP, UK
Tel: 44-1865-288919
Fax: 44-1865-288805
E-Mail: colin.mayer@sbs.ox.ac.uk

Yishay Yafeh
School of Business Administration
The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus
Jerusalem 91905, ISRAEL
Tel: fax 972-2-588-1341;  msyafeh@mscc.huji.ac.il
E-Mail: msyafeh@mscc.huji.ac.il
AB  - We compare sources of funds and investment activities of venture capital (VC) funds in Germany, Israel, Japan and the UK using a newly constructed data set. The data provide a rare opportunity to evaluate relations between funds' sources of finance and activities. We find that sources of VC funds differ significantly across countries, e.g. banks are particularly important in Germany, corporations in Israel, insurance companies in Japan, and pension funds in the UK. VC investment patterns also differ across countries in terms of the stage, sector of financed companies and geographical focus of investments. These differences in investment patterns are related to the variations in funding sources - for example, bank and pension fund backed VC's invest in later stage activities than individual and corporate backed funds. The relations differ across countries; for example, bank backed VC funds in Germany and Japan are as involved in early stage finance as other funds in these countries, whereas they tend to invest in relatively late stage finance in Israel and the UK. We consider the implication of this for the influence of financial systems on relations between finance and activities.
ER  -