Keswick Capital Sees Life Sciences Venture Capital Investing Leaping 37% in Q2 2011

Sept. 6, 2011 - PRLog -- Keswick Capital saw Venture capital (VC) funding in the Life Sciences sector, which includes the Biotechnology and Medical Device industries, leapt 37 percent during the second quarter of 2011.

Venture capitalists invested $2.1 billion in 206 Life Sciences deals. Despite the quarter's strong performance, dollars invested in Life Sciences declined 3 percent when compared with the same quarter of 2010. Deal volume also decreased year over year, but by a greater margin of 21 percent. Compared with the first quarter of 2011, deal volume looked more positive, showing an increase of 12 percent.

For all sectors, venture capitalists invested $7.5 billion in 966 deals in Q2 2011, a 5 percent increase in dollars and a 3 percent decrease in deals, compared to $7.2 billion going into 998 deals in Q2 2010. The Life Sciences share of total venture capital dollars invested slipped slightly to 28 percent in the second quarter of 2011 from 30 percent in the second quarter of 2010. The average deal size for all industries, although not as high as life sciences, increased for the third consecutive quarter and stood at $7.8 million.

In Q2 2011, Biotechnology investing declined by 9 percent in dollars and dropped 24 percent in deals year over year with $1.2 billion going into 116 deals. Medical device investments increased 9 percent in dollars and declined 17 percent in deals in Q2 2011, compared to the same quarter a year ago. With $841 million going into 90 deals, this was the highest level of funding for the Medical Device industry since the third quarter of 2008 and the seventh highest quarterly funding during the last 16 years.

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