Reuters Venture Capital

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Reuters is the world&s;s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. They combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax &a; accounting, scientific, healthcare and media markets, powered by the world&s;s most trusted news organization. RVC, the former venture capital arm of Reuters, was set up in 1994 and began investing RVC I (originally known as The Greenhouse Fund) in Palo Alto, California in 1995. In 1997, RVC expanded the focus of its operations to Europe, bringing its significant Silicon Valley experience to a market with relatively few venture capitalists focused on early stage information technology companies. In September 2001, RVC became independent from Reuters and is now wholly owned by its Investment Partners and Chairman. It was awarded the contract to continue managing RVC I on behalf of Reuters. In establishing its investment independence, RVC has retained its strong relationships with Reuters, its affiliates (Tibco, Factiva, Instinet, Radianz) and its customers, which are primarily financial services and media companies who were amongst the first to be impacted by and adopt new technology. Building on RVC’s relationship with Reuters in financial services, RVC is developing similar relationships with leading corporations in other verticals, and acquiring deeper understanding of the needs and challenges CIOs and business decision makers have in increasing efficiency and/or revenues through their leverage of IT investments. In early 2004, after 10 years of successful technology investments, Reuters announced a strategy of refocusing on its core activities and away from venture technology investments. Over the ensuing few months, the partners at RVC explored the opportunity of buying RGF and successfully obtained debt financing for the purchase. On 22 June 2004, Norman Fiore, Martin Stapleton and John Taysom along with Chairman Sir David Walker became the new owners of RGF via their new vehicle Sofius Capital. RVC will remain the manager of the RGF and will continue to invest in RGF portfolio companies to maximise the overall return on the committed capital of the fund. Since inception, RVC I has invested €449 million in 82 companies, including Yahoo!, Verisign, Phone.com (now Openwave Systems), Digimarc, Infoseek, Orchestream, and Metamerge, amongst others. With 16 IPOs and 27 trade sales or other cash realisations, and a first fund that is 94% returned, they believe they have one of the strongest track records in Europe. Today, RVC has 11 staff located in London and the Silicon Valley.

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