Corporate Venture Capital: Will It Remain A Mainstay If The Markets Improve?

For most of the past year, corporate venture capital has played an essential role in the creation and continued funding of biopharmaceutical companies. In some respects, these strategics were simply filling a vacuum.

Venture-backing endowments and institutions pulled back on their financial commitments at precisely the moment when many venture capital firms were raising new funds. Thus traditional venture groups had little choice but to be more judicious about new investments while simultaneously babying their existing portfolio companies. (See "Reacting to the Crisis: Biotech Venture Capital's Plan B," START-UP, December 2008 Also see "Reacting to the Crisis: Biotech Venture Capital's Plan B" - Scrip, 1 December, 2008..) Indeed venture investing in private biopharma companies fell from $1