Dynasties back green giant

Danny Fortson

SOME of Britain’s most prominent business families have led a £57m fundraising to set up Europe’s largest venture-capital fund dedicated to clean technology and renewable energy.
Lord (Jacob) Rothschild of the banking dynasty, Sir Anthony Bamford and family, of the JCB empire, the Goldsmiths, and Simon Robertson, Rolls-Royce chairman and former head of Goldman Sachs Europe, have all ploughed money into the new fund from WHEB Ventures.
The firm, set up in 2002 by Ben Goldsmith, Kim Heyworth and Rob Wylie, hopes to raise a total of £150m for the new fund within the next year.
Having attracted the corner-stone money from family offices, it is now in talks with pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and other institutions to make up the difference. Several of the families invested in the first fund.

James McNaught-Davis, managing partner, said the new cash pool, set to be six times larger than the £24m the fund raised when it launched, will be more diversified.
In the six years since WHEB’s founding, the average financing round for clean tech companies has quadrupled, from less than $5m (£2.8m) to $18m, reflecting the increasing interest of investors in green issues.
Goldsmith, whose brother Zac is an aspiring Tory politician who has advised David Cameron on environmental issues, contributed the largest amount of WHEB’s four partners to the new fund.
The firm plans to open an office in Germany, Europe’s largest clean-technology market after Britain, later this year.