PRESS RELEASE | 26th April, 2006
PORTUGAL TO HOST THE NEXT EBAN CONGRESS
Following the success of the 2006 EBAN Congress in Prague early April, with
over 180 delegates from more than 20 countries attending the 2 day event,
the European Association of Business Angel Networks is proud to announce its
upcoming collaboration with Gesventure and PME Capital for the organization
of 2007 Congress.
The event will take place on April 16 and 17 in Estoril Congress Center, on
the outskirts of Lisbon, and will receive institutional sponsorship from
IAPMEI and the City Hall of Cascais. This will be the first EBAN event
organized in Portugal.
The member’s General Assembly, which met on April 11th in Prague, welcomed
the proposal from the consortium of Portuguese representatives: Gesventure -
Portugal’s first business angel network (www.businessangelsclub.com) and PME
Capital - a growing venture capital firm, sponsored by IAPMEI (Portuguese
SME development agency) and the City Hall of Cascais. This collaboration
between different types of organizations, can only reinforce the visibility
of the business angel market before, during and after the event.
Organizing EBAN’s biggest annual event in Portugal is also supporting the
growth of the business angel culture and market in the country, and this was
clearly a strong point of the Portuguese candidature.
For more information about this event, please contact:
EBAN - Claire Munck, info@eban.org;
Gesventure – Francisco Banha,
fbanha@gesbanha.pt;
PME Capital – António Ferreira Castro,
afc@pmecapital.pt;
IAPMEI – Luís Costa,
luis.costa@iapmei.pt;
City Hall of Cascais – Carlos Carreiras,
carlos.carreiras@cm-cascais.pt .
EBAN
EBAN, the European Business Angel Network, was established by the European
Association of Development Agencies (EURADA) with the support of the
European Commission in 1999. It is a non-profit association which has the
purpose of: encouraging the exchange of experience among business angels
networks and encouraging "best practice", promoting recognition of business
angels networks and contributing to working out and carrying out local,
regional and national programs of assistance to the creation and development
of a positive environment for business angels activities.
GESVENTURE
Gesventure was created in 1999 by Francisco Banha (Gesbanha) and Christophe
Chausson (Chausson Finance). This partnership gathered Francisco Banha
determination in supporting Portuguese entrepreneurs and Chausson’s
expertise in catalyzing projects with venture capital. In this 6 years of
activity, Gesventure has largely contributed to the awareness of
entrepreneurship in Portugal, in result of the annual events realized, books
and articles publishing and conference participation. As a result for all
these efforts, Gesventure as raised 14,4 million euros to 8 projects in
2005.
» Business Angels Club (www.businessangelsclub.com) was created in 1999 by Gesventure and works as an online platform where investors can meet entrepreneurs with innovative projects. Its main effort during these 6 was to spread the word about business angels activity.
PME CAPITAL
PME Capital is one of the most important VC in Portugal. Created in 1989,
PME Capital has as main shareholder IAPMEI, and since the beginning they
have supported more than one hundred companies, in early stage and
development phases and in sectors like communications, textile or food
industry.
IAPMEI
IAPMEI is a public entity that operates in Portugal to help small and medium
enterprises, as a privileged instrument of economic policy to create
favorable conditions to enforce entrepreneurial spirit and competitiveness.
CASCAIS CITY HALL
Cascais City Hall is a local authority committed with initiatives that
relate entrepreneurship, new competence development, creativity and
innovation promotion in order to overcome the new economic paradigm. The
Congress will take place within its area of intervention.