As revealed by Global Corporate Venturing in June, the talks between the two managers running the corporate venture-backed BlackBerry Partners Fund have led to a merger.
The merger of Canada-based venture capital firms RBC Venture Partners and JLA Ventures will form ATP Capital Management as an independent venture capital firm. The ATP managers have bought out Royal Bank of Canada as the shareholder in RBC but will still manage its legacy, C$250m ($244m) portfolio under a subsidiary called Clairmont Capital. The JLA legacy portfolio of C$220m will also be managed through ATP.
The merger will streamline the management of the $150m BlackBerry Partners Fund that had been co-managed by RBC and JLA. This fund was started two years ago and has invested $50m in 12 deals, including social gaming company SocialDeck that was sold to search engine company Google in August.
Led by co-managing partners Kevin Talbot and John Albright, ATP’s team of 12 will invest in nascent companies with products and services for all mobile devices, instead of concentrating primarily on the BlackBerry smartphone.
The merged firm will also start a $150m fund for emerging markets and abandon plans to raise $100m for BlackBerry Partners Fund China, which would have been an affiliate managed autonomously by China Broadband Capital Partners (CBC), a venture capital firm focused on media and communications investments in China.
The second BlackBerry fund will start early next year with offices opening in China, Europe and Latin America after one is set up in California in the first quarter of next year.
The three backers of the initial BlackBerry fund, Canada-listed companies Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry phones, media company Thomson Reuters and Royal Bank of Canada, are also expected to invest in ATP’s emerging markets fund.
Talbot said it had decided against the China affiliated structure as investors – called limited partners – of the proposed second BlackBerryfund had favoured a single pool of capital rather than multiple ones and it was quicker to expand into other markets.