87% of Israeli venture capitalists predict reduced activity in 2012, reports the VC Indicator survey for the fourth quarter of 2011 by Deloitte Brightman Almagor Zohar. No venture capitalist expects to see increased activity in the coming year.
39% of respondents said they would invest less in start-ups in the next six months, compared with 13% of respondents in the survey for the corresponding quarter of 2010. Only 10% of respondents believe that they will increase investments in start-ups over the next six months.
69% of venture capitalists believe that it will be harder for start-ups to raise capital in the first half of 2012 than in 2011, and just 6% believe that it will be easier to raised capital. 22% of the respondents said that they would target investments in late-stage companies, compared with fewer than 6% who said this during 2011.
22% of venture capitalists said that the current economic climate would have a greater effect on high-tech companies than the global economic crisis of 2009. 53% of respondents say that the two crises would have similar effects on companies, and 25% said that the current crisis would have a smaller effect than the 2009 crisis.
Venture capitalists reiterated that the internet would attract the bulk of investment. 79% of respondents also said that most mergers and acquisitions would take place in this industry, and 68% believe that there would be an increase in deals in it over the next six months. Cleantech was at the bottom of the list, with only 11% of respondents predicting mergers and acquisitions in this industry.
Half of the respondents said that cloud security and big data analytics would be the main investment opportunities, followed by 46% of respondents who cited social networks e-commerce and marketing companies.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 5, 2012
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