News

Issue No. 16 - April/May 2004

capitalWatch

Most of the activity has been focused on SA’s emerging companies with $13 million invested into growth stage companies for the year. This represents 4% of the national total of $316 million invested by venture capital firms into “growth—stage" companies.

Playford Capital’s acting chief executive officer, Amanda Heyworth, announced that Playford Capital had reached a major milestone, securing over $21 million of co—investment from venture capitalists, corporate investors and private individuals. $6 million has been committed to Playford investees in the last three months alone with money secured from private investors, CHAMP Ventures, Foundation Capital, Swiss—based Sustainable Asset Management and Commerce Technology Ventures in Malaysia.

This confirms the success of Playford’s strategy of acting as a ‘money magnet’ for SA’s information and communications technology (ICT) companies.

In a further positive sign for South Australia, newly formed advisory and investment company Inventure Partners Pty Ltd also announced their first investment. Inventure Partners was recently established by David Zundel and Mike Burfield and led the raising of $1.0 million from a select group of private investors into agricultural electronics firm Kee Technologies.

Between October and December 2003 venture capital firms and private investors invested a total of $12.1 million in SA companies:

Source: Playford Capital and Australian Venture Capital Journal/PriceWaterhouseCoopers Venture Capital Survey , quarter ending December 2003