CVC deals reached their peak  during the dot.com craze about ten years ago, when many companies invested in new high-tech enterprises. After the bubble burst, many corporations disbanded their CVC departments. According to the German industry association BVK, only 19 companies still provided corporate venture capital in Germany at the end of 2008. What’s more, these companies invest primarily in the U.S., where corporate venture capital is more common than in Germany.

One of these companies is Merck Serono, which created a venture capital fund in 2009 in order to fund new firms in the biotechnology sector. Merck Serono has a budget of EUR 40 million for purchasing shares in start-up enterprises until 2015. “We want to make two or three investments per year, whereby we will invest between EUR 500,000 and EUR 2 million on average in a company per financing round,” explains the head of the fund, Christoph Hüls. The fund currently owns shares in the U.S. company Anaphore and F-Star, a biotech firm based in Vienna Austria, and it plans to make more investments later this year. Hüls points out that “the investments have to generate a good return, but it’s even more important for us to establish good relations with the young companies.”