Great news for Canadian start-ups - Government of Canada announced major funding for BDC today:
The Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, today announced that the Government of Canada is providing $450 million to the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) in support of small and medium-sized enterprises and innovative firms.
The funding will include $100 million to establish the Operating Line of Credit Guarantee and $350 million over three years to help drive venture capital investment in promising Canadian technology businesses.
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The $350 million in funding for BDC's venture capital activities will allow it to make additional direct investments of $260 million over three years in Canadian businesses already in the BDC portfolio, as well as investments in new seed technology companies and later-stage technology companies. It will also allow BDC to commit $90 million over three years to private, independent Canadian venture capital funds. This funding is in addition to the $75 million in venture capital funds allocated in the Government of Canada's Budget 2008, which is being used to support the creation of a privately run venture capital fund.
Any thoughts on this ?
BDC Venture Capital is a major venture capital investor in Canada, active at every stage of the company's development cycle, from start-up through... [more]
Varun Mathur
Varun Mathur is the Techvibes Community Manager in Toronto, focused on covering local tech startups, news and events. He is also a Co-founder and Product Manager at Zytran, a Toronto-based web startup which developed and launched Alertle.com - a personal news aggregator (Alertle's version 1.0 got widespread global coverage, with reviews written about it...[more]
