Venture capital

Nearly seven years since the first law was introduced on the fast-track process for investments by then state minister Haris Pamboukis, only a handful of the projects that entered the scheme have been completed, and not one has started operating.

Israel’s Mossad spy agency is putting the finishing touches on an investment fund that will invest in local startups starting at the end of this month, bankers told TheMarker.

Making an important change in the points test for the Skilled Migration Program, Australia will now give five additional points to students of Australian institutions.

"Angel investors," a group of wealthy individuals putting up their own money to back small- and medium-sized businesses, are expected to spend $50 billion in the coming years for such purposes, a leading association announced in an Istanbul summit on Feb. 13. 

Despite political turbulence and security worries, Turkey remains an attractive market for venture capital investors thanks to its prime location, its young, educated workforce, and the depth of Turkish entrepreneurship, according to seasoned market-watchers.

Bulgaria is striving to catch up with central Europe and its shift to innovative and creative industries, the Financial Times says in a recent story.

"A generation of westernised engineers and programmers with a global outlook now underpins the country's emergence as the technology capital of the Balkans," FT notes in its Investing in Central & Eastern Europe report.

The first steps have been taken to establish an investment fund that will develop financing for Turkish small and medium scaled enterprises' (SMEs) innovative initiatives on Feb. 15, during a joint meeting with the World Bank in Ankara. 

A number of features such as a financially friendly environment, already flowing investment highly-skilled people are among the factors behind Bulgaria's boomign startup scene as seen in 2015, Inventures magazine says in an article about the counry's emerging startup industry.

Investments in startups in Turkey this year have aimed more at high-tech companies with high-end products for business, experts have told Anadolu Agency.

"The Turkish startup scene is vibrant, but it is changing," said Serkan Ünsal, an entrepreneur and investor who runs the Turkish portal Startups.Watch. 

The Equity Investment Forum, which takes place in Athens in December 7th-8th 2015, is the leading event for all equity financing solutions on venture capital & private equity level, as well as on stock exchange markets level in Greece.