Le capital-investissement

Venture capital is typically defined as the investment by professional investors of longterm, unquoted, risk equity finance in new firms where the primary reward is an eventual capital gain, supplemented by dividend yield. The problems of asymmetric information are greater in venture capital investments than in listed companies. This article reviews the literature on the venture capital life cycle focusing in turn on issues concerning deal generation, initial and second screening (pre-contracting problems), deal valuation and due diligence, deal approval and structuring, post-contractual (general and restructuring and failure), syndication and investment realization. An important lesson that emerges from the synthesis of the management and finance streams of research that have focused on venture capital is the need for a combination of contractual and relational approaches.