ABSTRACT

As is evident from the central theme of this volume, venture capital is no longer an American monopoly. Today the concept is truly a mechanism for the flow of capital and ideas on a global basis. As one might expect some of the fastest growth over the past 5 years has occurred in Europe where in 1987, according to the European Venture Capital Association, $5.1 billion was raised for venture capital. To mark the importance of that figure in the industry we need only to compare it with funds generated within the United States in the same year - $4.9 billion. This development is all the more striking given the lack of a recent tradition of entrepreneurial risk taking throughout Western Europe (Patricof 1989; Thompson 1989a).