Organization: Business Development Bank of Canada

Feds name first set of VCCI investments

The federal government is backing five large venture capital (VC) fund of funds (FoF) to boost the much-needed late-stage capital available to Canadian tech firms.

Feds beef up clean tech support with $700 million in BDC assistance

Details of the federal government’s $2.3-billion investment in clean tech – unveiled in the 2017 Budget — are emerging with an announcement by Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) of $700 million over five years to allow the federal banker to assume a higher risk profile in its loans to business. The BDC investment is…

Mike Pedersen

The board of directors of the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) has a new chair, financial industry executive Mike Pedersen. Pedersen will succeed former chair Samuel Duboc and will hold a term of four years starting March 5, 2018. Robert Pitfield, a member of the board since May 2014, will be the interim chair…

Canadian VC investment strategy hurting VCs and Canadian innovation: Report

Innovation in Canada will be seriously compromised unless domestic venture capitalists start throwing  big bucks into Canadian firms, suggests a new report. Big funding is one of the secrets of success of US firms, whether in Silicon Valley, or in other technology hubs in the rest of the US. In contrast, it is a challenge to get large funding tranches from Canadian VCs.

Report calls for data-driven approach to government investing to grow world-class Canadian firms

A report from the University of Toronto’s Impact Centre is calling for a data-driven approach to maximizing the government’s investments in Canadian firms and growing them to be world-class. The report — Government Venture Capital: Can the Public Sector Pick and Nurture World Class Companies? — says that the strategy for venture capital investments of the Canadian government is not to simply copy what venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are doing.

Industry investors, training key to fast-tracking maturation of VC sector: New BDC programs

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is betting that greater corporate involvement in venture capital will bring the know-how, contacts and money needed to move Canada’s VC sector from short pants to full adulthood. Faced with less than satisfactory improvement in Canada’s 30-year-old investment sector, BDC has launched two new programs designed to accelerate the maturation of Canada’s venture capital industry..

MPs see resource industry’s problems as potential boon for clean tech

Clean technology and traditional resource industries like oil and gas may seem like strange bedfellows but federal politicians hope closer ties between the sectors will enable Canada to meet two of its biggest challenges: reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and creating jobs. Debbie Lawes reports