Clipperton Finance, active member of the French Tech Tour 2009 leading team

Date: July, 1st, 2009

Paris, France – July 4, 2009

For its 30th edition, the Tech Tour visited France a third time and showcased its rich culture of technology and innovation. The French Tech Tour highlighted the strong potential and depth of the French high-tech ventures during its unique two-day tour across the country via Paris and Strasbourg.

Participation was limited to 60 invited international professionals featuring a broad spectrum of senior representatives from VC funds to leading corporations and institutional investors. The French Tech Tour followed a double agenda, firstly to showcase 24 of France’s most promising technology companies for potential investment or partnership and for the delegates to extend their local networks in France; secondly, to promote France’s recent decision to accelerate innovation, research and economic growth by investing in nationwide competitiveness clusters.

Furthermore, the agenda included interactions and meetings with a range of key figures from various disciplines including venture capital, corporate, entrepreneurial and academia.
Clipperton Finance was involved in all steps of the organization of the French Tech Tour 2009, as a member of the selection committee, with the seat of VP of Sponsoring. Clipperton Finance is also very proud to have seen 3 of its clients selected in the top 24 most promising privately held technology companies in France.

You will find here the presentation given by Clipperton Finance during the opening dinner at Pavillon Gabriel, regarding the outcome of companies selected for the previous French Tech Tour in 2005. This look back at the past 3 years shows a maturing French investment market with strong domestic French VC investment but also a significant percentage of foreign participation in investment rounds (40-50% of rounds over the period included 1+ non-French VCs). Clean-tech has also emerged as a significant investment category, jumping from €8m in 2005 to €80m in 2008. Since 2005, for the 25 Tech Tour companies listed then, a total €263m of additional funding has been raised. As of June 2009, 19 of these companies were still independent, 12 of which showed mature revenues (i.e. over €5m), and 5 of which were acquired by international players (ARM, Intercim to name a few). Moreover, since 2005 the still independent companies have seen their cumulated revenues grow by 78%, with the top 5 performers growing at 92% CAGR over the period.

For more information, please contact:
Clipperton Finance
Nicolas von Bülow, Partner, nvonbulow@clipperton.net
Thomas Neveux, Partner, tneveux@clipperton.net

About Clipperton Finance
Based in Paris and London, Clipperton Finance is a European corporate finance boutique dedicated to the High Tech and Media industries. Clipperton is focused on start-up and high-growth companies in the Internet, Software, Telecom, Components, CleanTech, MedTech and Media spaces, advising them in their financial transactions: fundraising/capital increases and Mergers & Acquisitions. Over the past years the company and its team have successfully structured numerous high level international transactions in the European High Tech sector.

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