€11m From Taxpayer For Frontline Ventures

/ 21st December 2015 /

Frontline Ventures, the venture capital fund led by Shay Garvey and Will Prendergast, has secured €11m from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) to invest in early stage software companies primarily in Ireland but also in the UK.

ISIF is the entity that replaced Charlie McCreevy’s rainy day national pension fund. Instead of having billion tied up in blue chip equities and bonds, finance minister Michael Noonan ordered the National Treasury Management Agency, which manages ISIF, to invest in Ireland enterprise and infrastructure.

Garvey (right in photo) was a former principal in Delta Partners before setting up his own VC operation with Prendergast a few years ago. Frontline had a notable exit in 2015 when UCD startup Logentries was acquired by Rapid 7.

ISIF says that it has committed €2 billion to investments in Ireland. From January to November 2015, €613m was committed to Irish projects. The fund said that it is is close to completing negotiations in respect of six additional investments with a combined value of approximately €200m. Another 44 investment proposals are being examined.

Besides Frontline Ventures, ISF’s 2015 commitment are:

• Activate Capital (€325) – housebuilding finance joint venture with investment group KKR.
• Irish Water (€150m) - senior debt to fund the capital programme.
• Malin Corporation plc (€50m) – 15% stake in one of Europe’s biggest life sciences IPOs.
• Quadrant Real Estate (€50m) – platform for financing Irish office development projects.
• Swrve (not disclosed) – leader in the mobile marketing engagement market.
• AMCS (not disclosed) – global leader in end-to-end, integrated software solutions for the waste and recycling industry.
• Highland Europe II (€10m) – a growth equity fund managed by a longstanding firm that supports rapidly growing European technology businesses from its offices in Geneva, London and Dublin.

ISIF director Eugene O’Callaghan said: “The major advantages of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund are its ability to provide long-term patient capital and its flexibility to consider a wide range of transaction types and sectors. We are also an attractive local partner for third-party investors interested in the Irish market. We intend to capitalise on these advantages as we deploy the Fund’s resources in the years ahead.”