On Monday 14 December 2015, Deputy Prime Minister Étienne Schneider signed a letter of commitment along with the representatives of seven other investors, agreeing to gather public and private funds amounting to €19.2 million to create a structure for financing innovative new high-tech businesses in Luxembourg's information and communication technologies (ICT) sector.
Étienne Schneider, who is also Luxembourg's Minister of the Economy, signed the commitment to constituting a seed fund as part of 'Digital Lëtzebuerg' and with a view to setting up an ecosystem in line with the financing needs of ICT businesses during their initial and start-up stages.
A primary objective of the fund will be to make venture capital investments in projects which have reached the proof of concept stage in fields such as cybersecurity, fintech, big data, digital health, telecommunications and satellite services, and the so-called 'Internet of Things'.
The seed fund will also be used to invest in generating as much beneficial economic impact in the Grand Duchy as possible by facilitating the transfer of new technologies resulting from public-funded research, particularly that carried out by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg. This move could mark an important step in increasing the Grand Duchy's visibility as a hub for launching new innovative activities in the country's ICT sector, after it was revealed that Luxembourg slipped from 5 to 9 in the Entrepreneurship & Opportunity category of the 2015 Legatum Prosperity Index.
The seed fund will be operational from early 2016 and is due to be managed by a team of specialists with the necessary competencies for identifying and selecting projects for innovative businesses with substantial development potential. Stakeholders in the future 'ICT Seed Fund' has been developed through a public and private sector partnership, with stakeholders including Arendt & Medernach, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg SA (BIL), High Capital (BHS Services), POST Capital, Proximus, SES and SNCI.
Photo by Ministry of the Economy (L-R: Guy Harles, Arendt & Medernach ; Marco Houwen, High Capital ; Hugues Delcourt, BIL ; Étienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Economy ; Claude Strasser, POST Capital ; Koen Van Parys, Proximus ; Patrick Nickels, SNCI ; Karim Michel Sabbagh, SES)
