About the Index

On this website, we want to present the results of a comprehensive research project on how to measure the attractiveness of a country for investors in Venture Capital (VC) and Private Equity (PE) limited partnerships. The project was initiated at IESE Business School in Barcelona in 2006 with a European pilot study. From the European study we gained experience and the confidence to extend the study globally. Since 2006 two professors, one doctoral student, and many research assistants have worked on the project. We selected and collected more than 300 different data series from all kind of providers – ranging back to 2000. We attempted to include as many countries as possible in the study, and handled more than 200,000 individual data records.

Investors in Venture Capital and Private Equity (VC/PE) funds have a key objective: to get access to transactions with satisfying risk and return ratios. They look globally to achieve their goals, and often set their sights on emerging regions. To find prime investment opportunities, investors generally look several years down the road and focus on specific factors like: economic activity (GDP, inflation rate, unemployment rate); size and liquidity of capital markets; taxation; investor protection and corporate governance; the human and social environment (including human capital, labor market policies and crime); and entrepreneurial culture and opportunities (including innovation capacity, the ease of doing business and the development of high-tech industries). The idea of the Global Venture Capital and Private Equity Country Attractiveness Index is to take into account all of these factors across different nations and to determine the relative positioning of particular economies and regions as they stand in relation with respect to their attractiveness for investment in VC/PE assets.

This is the third edition of the Global Venture Capital and Private Equity (VCPE) Country Attractiveness Index. This is subject to critique and we invite constructive feedback to help us improve future editions. Selected data series may be discarded in future index versions and new and at that time more appropriate data series may be used as a substitute to existing data. The quality of the data and the number of countries covered will increase. As a result, our index is a dynamic product that always considers the most adequate and recent information. We believe this index is unique in providing transparency about the international VC and PE market on such a broad scope and hope that investors appreciate the available information. Politicians may utilize our findings to increase their countries’ attractiveness for international risk capital investors.

Please download (free of any charge) the 2012 annual of the Global Venture Capital and Private Equity Country Attractiveness Index 2012 from this website. In the annual, we comprehensively describe the index structure, the data series, the aggregation approach, and the results. We provide interpretations of the country ranking, a focus on BRIC, and an analysis which reveals that the index scores correspond with VC/PE returns achieved in the past. You will also find summaries of latest academic research on international VC flows and opinions from regional industry experts. In the section “Regional and Country Profiles” of this website, we propose a tool that allows yourself benchmarking all the individual countries and regions covered.

We hope that you find our 2012 Global Venture Capital and Private Equity Country Attractiveness Index of value.

Alexander Groh, Heinrich Liechtenstein and Karsten Lieser