Balderton in $485m raising for new fund

BALDERTON Capital, the venture capital firm which had a 20 per cent stake in failed sports broadcaster Setanta, is about to close the biggest venture fund raised in the UK in the last 12 months.

The fund, which has fallen just short of its $500m (£308m) target, will look for investment opportunities in the telecoms and technology sectors.

Balderton founder Barry Maloney is expected to announce imminently that he has closed the fund to new investment having raised $485m – just three per cent off target.

The successful fund raising will offer some welcome respite to Irish tycoon Maloney, who recently stepped down from the board of Setanta shortly before the sports broadcaster’s UK operations fell into administration, leaving Balderton with huge losses.

Maloney spent five years as chief executive officer of Esat Digifone, Ireland’s second-largest mobile operator, which was later bought by British Telecom and became part of Cellnet and then O2.

Joining Maloney at the helm of the fund will be Mark Evans, who formerly spent 15 years at Goldman Sachs in Europe Asia and the US.

French heavyweight Bernard Liautaud, who founded Business Objects in 1990 and grew it into a $6.8bn global software giant in 15 years, will also be making investment decisions.

And Tim Bunting, a former partner at Goldman Sachs and current non-executive director at Yell Group and Sepura, will also take up a senior role at the group.

Balderton takes a “teamwork approach” to managing its funds, and insists its partners are financially invested in investment vehicles they manage.

This fund is the group’s fourth. Its others have invested in a variety of technology-based companies like social networking website Bebo, online betting exchange Betfair and LoveFilm.com.

However, in January this year Balderton said that there would be ‘‘some casualties’’ among the 80 or so companies it has chosen to invest in.