Offentliga venture capital-bolags motiv till att syndikatinvestera

Abstract

This paper examines the incentives among governmental venture capital-firms in Sweden to syndicate their investments. The results are based on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with investment managers at six different public venture capital firms. The interview questions are derived from five different perspectives on syndication that are frequently described in finance literature; the risk spreading- and risk reducing perspective, the capital perspective, the value-added perspective, the screening- and selection perspective and lastly the deal-flow perspective. The existing literature on syndication is primarily based on quantitative studies, which this paper aims to complete by providing a qualitative view on syndication. In addition, previous studies mainly focus on private venture capital firms, from which public firms differ for two main reasons; firstly they are financed by public funds and secondly they are established to fulfil certain purposes, such as investing in a specific sector. This paper therefore aims to examine the applicability of finance theory on public venture capital firms, in light of their distinctive role on the market. The empirical evidence shows that all perspectives are of importance to public venture capital firms in Sweden, but to various degrees. The conclusion has been drawn that the capital perspective and the valueadded perspective are portrayed among the respondents as major reasons for syndicating investments. The risk spreading- and risk reducing perspective, the screening- and selection perspective and lastly the deal-flow perspective on the other hand are portrayed as relatively weak motives for syndicating investments. This result can be partly explained by the public firms’ distinctive role on the venture capital market.