Mowbray Capital pulls the plug

It looks like the European venture comeback is going to be slower than some optimists were hoping. Mowbray Capital, which hoped to be the first European venture capital fund-of-funds, has ceased its fund raising efforts.

After nearly two years on the road, the fund had three investors (all from continental Europe) ready to commit, but the team decided the likely size of the fund would not generate sufficient management fee to run the investment programme in what the team would feel to be a proper manner, (despite two of the team members being prepared to take no income from the firm for three years.)

Guy Fraser-Sampson, managing partner, added: “The likely size of the fund? was also going to make it very difficult to satisfy various internal requirements from our prospective investors as to the percentage of any fund which they were allowed to represent. Naturally we are very disappointed by this outcome. We remain convinced as to the outstanding merits of European venture capital as an asset class, and that this will soon become apparent to all.

Fraser Sampson has recently written a book on multi asset class investing, which will be published as part of the Wiley Finance series in June.