2011 BVA Essay Award Winner
The Belgian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (BVA) granted its BVA Essay Award for the 5th time, in co-operation with Deloitte.
For the 5th time the Belgian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (BVA) granted its BVA Essay Award in cooperation with Deloitte. This year, the award for best essay about the Private Equity and Venture Capital industry went to Ms Annelore Huyghe of the Universiteit Gent, Economics and Business Administration, with her dissertation “The importance of protection ability as a selection criterion for Venture Capitalists”, under the direction of Professor Dr. Mirjam Knockaert.
The winning essay was presented for the degree of Master in Applied Economics at the UGent (Year 2009-2010) and investigates the different selection criteria for venture capitalists, in particular the importance of the protection of Intellectual Property by patents.
The essay focuses on the Venture Capital industry and in particular concentrates on the investment criteria of European VCs investing in high tech companies at early stages. VCs are crucial for the funding of new technology-based firms, as previous academic studies have already indicated that start-up companies with VC funding tend to outperform non VC-backed ventures in terms of a higher survival rate, growth, innovative activity and the time to bring a product to the market. This essay addressed the research question: “what is the importance of protection ability of the IP, as a selection criterion across early stage high tech venture capitalists?” The research covered a sample of 68 European early stage high tech VC investors, drawn from the seven regions across Europe with the highest R&D intensity and VC presence.
The outcome of the research model on the VC decision criteria indicated that:
• Public funded VCs attach more importance to protection ability as a selection criterion than private VC funds.
• VC funds with larger investment activity put less emphasis on the protection of the technology than less experienced VCs.
• No significant relevance is attached to the academic experience nor for the technical education of the investment manager of the VC, although the model shows significant impact of the investment manager experience, indicating that investment managers with prior VC fund experience put a higher value on the tech-related selection criterion of patents and trade secrets.
The BVA-jury, which consisted of two professors and five representatives of the Private Equity and Venture Capital industry, selected the essay of Ms Annelore Huyghe because she showed a good understanding of the sector and the conclusions of her essay were very practical.
The results of the study contribute to the literature and have some important implications for high tech VC funds and their investment managers, as well as for high tech entrepreneurs looking for early stage financing. “Through this award, the Belgian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (BVA) and Deloitte wish to stimulate the academic research into private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC). This should lead to a better understanding of the discipline and its added value to society,” says Lieve Creten, Managing Partner Financial Advisory Services at Deloitte Belgium.
2010 BVA Essay Award Winner
The Belgian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (BVA) granted its BVA Essay Award for the 4th time, in co-operation with Deloitte.
This year, the award for best essay about the Private Equity and Venture Capital industry went to Vivian Mathieu of the Louvain School of Management, Université Catholique de Louvain, with his dissertation submitted for the degree of Master in Business Engineering “Value creation in Private Equity backed Buyouts”, and this under the direction of Professor Armin Schwienbacher.
The winning essay was presented for the degree of Master in Business Engineering at the UCL (Year 2008-2009) and investigates the different drivers creating value in companies after their buyout through Private Equity investment.
2009 BVA Essay Award Winner
This year, the award for best essay about the Venture Capital - Private Equity industry went to Pieterjan Behaeghe and Tim Delameilleure of the University of Ghent. The authors were granted the prize money for their essay “Determinants of the Valuation of Venture Capital Transactions”.
The winning essay was presented for the Master degree in Applied Economics at the University of Ghent (Year 2007-2008) and investigates in detail which elements determined the valuation at the time of entry of Venture Capital in new and innovative companies. The paper is the outcome of an intensive research whereby 126 Venture Capital transactions In Belgium, UK, France and Germany, were analysed.
The essay confirms by statistical methods that Venture Capitalists rate a higher value to companies in high technology sectors, and this in correlation to their higher incurred costs (losses) and their growth. Also larger companies, in Assets and Net Book Value, score relatively higher in their valuation.
2008 BVA Essay Award Winner
The jury selected as winner of the BVA Essay award 2008: "De rol van Venture Capital in het groeipad van early stage high tech ondernemingen" (Essay to qualify for the grade of Master in Applied Economics, University of Gent). Please click the hyperlink above to view the winning thesis of 2008.
Author: Annelies Bobelyn
The main conclusions of the winning thesis were that:
- companies that received VC showed a higher growth in number of employees, total assets and turnover (if financing was done by a large or super sized fund)
- companies that did not receive VC, showed a higher growth in P&L and cashflow
- these effects were often enhanced by the size of the investment fund.
2007 BVA Essay Award Winner
For the first BVA Essay Award, the BVA received six valid essays which passed the selection criteria. The members of the jury consisted of two Academic Members (professors Th. Peeters and J.-P. Couvreur) and three Industry Members (Hilde Famaey, André-Xavier Cooreman and Ludo Verbist), whereby the jury’s Chairman was André-Xavier Cooreman, chairman of the BVA.
The jury selected as winner of the BVA Essay award 2007: "The Performance of Business Angel backed companies" (Essay to qualify for the grade of Master in Applied Economics, University of Gent). Please click the hyperlink to view the winning thesis of 2007.
Author: Frank Ceenaeme
The main conclusion of this essay is that no real –positive - difference could be noticed in performance between BA companies and NBA companies, except that many BA companies would not have existed without Business Angels’ financing.
The BVA Essay Award
In cooperation with Deloitte, the Belgian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association vzw/asbl (“BVA”) wants to promote academic research concerning venture capital and private equity, which in turn should lead to a better understanding of these activities and their added value.
A first initiative towards this goal is the organisation of an annual BVA Essay Award for the best student paper on a masters or doctoral level, with a subject relevant to the risk capital industry (in its broadest meaning). The aim is to present this award each year during the annual BVA congress, for the first time on 8 March 2007. Besides the financial reward, the best papers will also be more broadly distributed in the press and among BVA members.
The papers will be judged on 4 criteria :
- Academic quality
- Originality of the approach
- Accessibility and practicality of the subject
- Relevance of the study for the venture capital and private equity sector
€1,500 is awarded to the winning thesis.
Please click here, to find a link to the Rule Book for this contest. The main elements of this rule book are:
- The thesis has been written to get a Master degree (or equivalent, or higher) from a Belgian university.
- The candidacy for the BVA Essay Award has to be accompanied by a recommendation letter from at least 1 professor or lector.
- The thesis must not be older than 2 years.
- The thesis has been graded “with honours” or higher.
Good luck!