Italian venture capital fund Alice Ventures, which manages $150 million capital, opened an Israel branch today. The branch will be managed by Hillel Milo, one of the fund’s three partners. The other two partners are John Gonzales and Edoardo Lecaldano.
Milo was a co-founder of Zoran (Nasdaq: ZRAN) Microelectronics, general manager of Clal Venture Capital Fund, founder and general manager of Infinity Capital Fund, founder of Walden Israel VC Fund and a director of BreezeCOM (Nasdaq: BRZE), RADVision (Nasdaq: RVSN) and other companies.
Alice Ventures is based in Milano. Investors in the fund are European concerns, Generali, Banco di Roma, Pirelli and Fiat, and Alice Ventures has business ties with commercial bank Mediobanca, Bocconi University and Polytechnic of Milan.
Alice Ventures specializes in investments in early stage European technology companies, focusing on telecommunications, media and life sciences.
Milo believes that the crisis facing the industry and US VC funds enables leading European funds to enter the Israeli market and boost its unique and vital research activity. He said the entry of European funds into the Israeli market would balance the country’s US orientation in recent years.
Lecaldano said, “We believe Israel constitutes a current and future technology base and its historical ties with Europe encourage a close and fruitful relationship between European investors, fund experts and Israeli ventures. Israel has been considered a technology center for many years and we believe it will maintain its leading status on the technological front in the future also.”
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 5 September, 2001