http://www.wellingtonfund.com/blog/2010/01/10/uaes-sheikh-khalifa-fund-vs-ontarios-ovcf/ News, Views & Purviews Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:44:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v= hourly 1 http://www.wellingtonfund.com/blog/2010/01/10/uaes-sheikh-khalifa-fund-vs-ontarios-ovcf/comment-page-1/#comment-2244 corporate governance Ukraine Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:25:44 +0000 http://www.wellingtonfund.com/blog/?p=3152#comment-2244 I always read blogs in similar topic, but I never visited your blog Mark. bookmarked and i’ll be your constant reader. Thanks

]]> http://www.wellingtonfund.com/blog/2010/01/10/uaes-sheikh-khalifa-fund-vs-ontarios-ovcf/comment-page-1/#comment-2090 Ian Graham Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:31:03 +0000 http://www.wellingtonfund.com/blog/?p=3152#comment-2090 Excellent post Mark. Have also blogged about funding challenges in Ontario Funding for many years, particularly with the cancellation of the LSIF … but don’t get me going on that.
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I have always found significant room for improvement in the way Ontario sets up and manages funding mechanisms for knowledge based businesses. Have been doing some research in this area myself.
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Scottish Enterprise Investments (in Scotland as the name suggests; http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/) is probably the world leader. They have a fund structure almost an identical OCE; Investment Accelerator Fund, Ontario Emerging Technology Fund and Ontario Venture Capital Fund. The key difference IMHO is the model and results.
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SEI has 1/5th of the employees (compared to OCE) and allocates 10X as much funding which if my math is correct is about 5000% more efficient. Based on your comments it sounds like the Sheikh Khalifa Fund has a similar order of magnitude performance difference compared to Ontario.
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Now back to the model. SEI has a linear model where the only interface to the knowledge based company is the investor. (ie. SEI — Investor — Company). The government matches funding (which scales back as the company business risk decreases) and only the investor has an equity stake not the government.
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In the Ontario the model is more parallel with government taking an equity stake along side (sidecar)in the knowledge based business. Both government and investor interface to the company. I don’t know about most of your readers but, IMHO that last thing that a quick and nimble knowledge based start-up needs is the government “helping” them as an owner and decision maker. Significantly flawed model IMHO.
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Ontario’s performance in the arena as a province (when compared to Quebec and BC) has been significantly impaired by the current policy and implementation.

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