PARIS
Canadian venture capitalists, pension funds and Crown agencies are meeting with French institutional investors in Paris on Friday to pitch them on investing in Canada.
The breakfast meeting, co-hosted by the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association and Canada’s ambassador to France, Nathalie Drouin, is expected to draw representatives of 17 primarily French investing giants, including Crédit Agricole, Wendel Group, Société Générale Assurances and Ardian, as well as the European Investment Fund.
“The Prime Minister’s investment summit set a clear ambition: Attract more capital into Canada and build it here at home,” CVCA chief executive officer Benjamin Bergen said in an interview. “That is exactly what we’re doing as a next step. We’re putting that ambition into practice.”
The event is an attempt to build on momentum created by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mid-September Canada Investment Summit and a separate conference hosted by the CVCA that both appealed to foreign capital providers to put their money to work in Canada.
Representing Canada will be leaders from Canadian funds Teralys Capital, Inovia Capital, True North Fund and Power Corp. of Canada affiliate Sagard, an alternative asset manager led by Power senior vice-president Paul Desmarais III.
Officials from pension giants Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Crown agencies Business Development Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada are also slated to attend.
Drouin said in an emailed statement that after the September investment summit, Friday’s breakfast meeting “continues to build on that commitment, bringing together leading Canadian venture capital and private equity firms with institutional investors to explore new avenues for investment, co-investment and long-term collaboration between Canada and Europe.”
Carney’s summit brought global investors to Canada to review opportunities to invest mainly in large-scale physical infrastructure projects, while the CVCA’s day-long conference focused on smaller-scale opportunities that dominate the deal flow in Canada.
Bergen said plans are in the works to hold similar gatherings around the world over the next year, starting with a meeting scheduled for next month in Abu Dhabi.
Jacques Bernier, managing partner with Montreal-based fund manager Teralys, said Friday’s event will let him “meet more qualified people in less time” than other meetings he’s held to court European investors.
He said the Canadian government’s involvement “gets us to the next level of discussion and shows that they’re serious to open the relationships” with European investors.
Bergen said plans for the French breakfast stemmed from collaboration efforts that began earlier this year with Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service, which courts global companies and money managers to invest in Canada.
The service has stepped up efforts “to focus more on capital formation” since Carney came to power last year, Bergen said.
Canada is stepping up its long-standing support of the domestic venture capital sector. It kicked off a process two weeks ago to give a $1.75-billion boost to the sector through a program that provides fund managers with capital if they can raise matching capital from private sources.
European investors have participated in earlier versions of the program.
This story was written by the e2gold.ca newsroom from reporting by The Globe and Mail and Rich Picks Daily. Quotes are checked word for word against that reporting.