UK trade body British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) has set up a corporate venturing group to be chaired by Tony Askew, head of Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier’s Ventures unit.
The inaugural meeting of the group will be on October 19, after the BVCA’s annual conference in London.
Askew said the meeting would look to set out two to four action points the group will work on with one to two outputs expected during next year.
Askew said: “The time is right for the trade body [BVCA] to embrace corporate venturing and bring together the corporations with venture capitalists. The BVCA is excellent at representing the industry to government and connecting corporate venturers with each other and VCs and entrepreneurs so there is better understanding between all parties.”
Reed Elsevier Ventures (REV) has been one of the UK’s largest and most influential corporate venturing units over the past dozen years having struck deals across the US, UK and Israel.
Askew and his partner Kevin Brown co-founded the unit in 2000 and since then have helped lead notable deals, including Palantir in Silicon Valley, Babylon in Tel Aviv, Struq in the UK, SpaceCurve in Seattle and Intelligize in New York City.He added: “We spent 12 years investing in the major western ecosystems and it is clear that via the internet and software-as-a-service the world is now a level playing field. The UK has huge potential to unlock its native creativity and technological talent and leverage its language and time zone to tap into the global innovation ecosystem.”