Interesting data coming out of Dow Jones VentureSource today with regards to investments in European technology companies.
Informilo's Ben Rooney took a good look at the figures and concludes that there are not only more deals happening these days, but the average sizes of the rounds are also getting bigger (still nowhere near US averages).
Financial News noted the rise in investments in fintech, particularly, pointing out that VC investment in European fintech startups reached its highest level in more than 10 years in Q1 2014. WSJ's Digits offers more detail, saying 14 businesses that can be classified as 'fintech' raised 166 million euros ($230 million) over the three-month period.
The last time the sector attracted such levels of investment dates back to the dotcom bubble days.
As former VC Paul Jozefak noted recently in a tech.eu guest post, a report by Accenture highlighted London’s position at the forefront of Europe’s fintech surge (although he also posits that Berlin and other cities are poised to give it some competition over the next few years).
Going back to the full picture on EU tech investments, Rooney writes that "the first quarter of 2014 paints a very encouraging picture in Europe", which is a plausible conclusion considering that 2014 could be the first year that more than $5.3 billion in venture money will be injected into European tech startups if the pace continues. The projection shouldn't be far off the mark.
All in all, EU tech funding in Q1 2014 came in at more than $1.2 billion, spread across 261 deals.
Rooney also compared the tech investment figures from the US with those of Europe, and unsurprisingly came to the conclusion that the former is still far ahead of the latter in terms of number, overall and average sizes of deals - and that the gap is in fact widening ever more.
Also read our report on EU tech exits in Q1 2014 - it's promising to be a very interesting year.
Featured image credit: vetkit / Shutterstock
