The New Zealand Government has previously announced its intent to create a $300 million venture capital fund of funds – dubbed the Venture Capital Fund (VCF).
Over the last few weeks and months Treasury, NZ Super Fund, Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), NZ Venture Investment Fund (NZVIF) and the government have been working on three key pieces of work:
The first piece of work is the legislation – the Venture Capital Bill. This allocates $300 million to the Guardians of the NZ Super Fund (the Guardians), who will manage and administer the VCF, and also requires the Guardians to contract with NZVIF to run the VCF.
The bill is at the Select Committee stage, and LWCM completed our own Venture Capital Bill Submission last week, and I (Lance) appeared in front of the Committee yesterday (Tuesday 1 October).
Note that submission and my appearance were on behalf of LWCM, not Punakaiki Fund. We did not consult the Punakaiki Fund Board for our submission.
The second is the Policy Statement on the Venture Capital Fund Act 2019. A draft of this Policy was shared with industry, and submissions were made to that draft by last Friday. LWCM’s submission for the draft Policy document is attached to our submission to the Venture Capital Bill. Chris and I also attended a workshop in Auckland facilitated by the players above.
The third piece of work has not been made public, and that’s the draft Contract between the Guardians and NZVIF to manage the investment of the VCF’s capital. We would like to see the contract made public for comment, and certainly once it is in effect. Our understanding is that the Guardians, Treasury, MBIE and NZVIF have been allocating substantial resources to negotiating this document.
As part of the third piece of work the Guardians will review the suitability of NZVIF to run the VCF, and perhaps NZVIF will make internal changes to be ready to run the new fund.
This matters to Punakaiki Fund as some of the VCF funds could potentially be placed with Punakaiki Fund, and VCF funds will obviously be placed with venture capital funds that both compete and collaborate with us.
