Universities make hay from LSIF VC win

Later today, four Ontario Universities will receive their share of a $1 million gift from VentureLink Funds. The Universities are McMaster, Queen’s, U of T and Waterloo. The event is taking place at the Mars Centre at 4 p.m. in Toronto, and is a celebration of what VentureLink’s calling “Investment Returns from Research Commercialization”.

VentureLink is a regular deal syndication partner for our fund (and helped us get Fund II off the ground), and this million dollar gift was derived from a portion of the money that VentureLink made on the recent $124 million sale of wind farm developer Ventus Energy to Suez (see prior post “Ventus Energy to be acquired by Suez SA of France“, July 25-07). Ventus was a portfolio company in our Fund III, thanks to a referral from VentureLink.

The next time someone asks you what the labour-sponsored fund industry has done for the Province of Ontario, think of today’s cheque presentation. And VentureLink’s unit holders made out well, too, on this deal.

MRM