News Archive

Jose Manuel LECETA - EIT Director, Richard PELLY - EIF CEO and Willem JONKER - EIT ICT Labs CEO

EIT ICT Labs organised a high level strategic meeting with the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) on May 8th at the headquarters in Luxemburg. It was the first time that parties from all organisations met to discuss the challenges to commercialize innovations from research, especially the early stage financing where there is shortage in Europe. Questions were raised about how EIF looks upon these problems and what is being done to tackle challenges.


EIT ICT Labs CEO Willem Jonker presented the EIT’s concept covering the approach from both EIT and EIT ICT Labs and EIT ICT Labs Business Director Klaus Beetz, continued by describing the on-going business activities within EIT ICT Labs. Pär Hedberg, CEO of STING and leader of the Access-to-Finance catalyst at the EIT ICT Labs showed what has been developed within EIT ICT Labs to close the equity gap for start-ups coming from the EIT ICT Labs partner network.

Jacques Darcy and Matthias Ummenhofer presented the EIF point of view and the approaches and activities running by EIF to address these challenges. There was common understanding of the situation and challenges concerning seed funding and the equity gap in Europe and the need to boost creation and expansion of growth companies in Europe. 

"This meeting really showed the importance of alignment on a European level and morover the potential impact we have when joining our forces" explained Klaus Beetz.

EIF and EIT ICT Labs will further drive collaboration to synchronize activities within the area of “Access to Finance”. 

Participants from EIF/EIB included:
Richard PELLY, EIF CEO
Marc SCHUBLIN, EIF MMPDI Director Product Development & Incubation
Rémi CHARRIER, EIF MMPDI Head of Product Development
Matthias UMMENHOFER, EIF MMPDI Head of Venture Capital
Jacques DARCY, EIF Head of Technology Transfer & Intellectual Property
Rémy JACOB, Director General and Chief Information Officer - EIB Innovation Institute 
Harald GRUBER, EIB Head of ICT and e-Economy Division

From EIT and EIT ICT Labs participated:
Willem JONKER, EIT ICT Labs CEO
Klaus BEETZ, EIT ICT Labs Business Director
Pär HEDBERG, EIT ICT Labs Access to Finance
Jose Manuel LECETA, EIT Director
Szabolozs BORDA, EIT Finance Officer

For more information on EIB go to http://www.eib.org/
For more information on EIF go to http://www.eif.org/index.htm

Continue reading

Scroll up

Co-Funded by the European Union