OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), announced the successful closing of Fund II earlier this month, with $260 million in commitments.
“We are proud to be working with BMO and Cisco Investments, our valued co-investors in Fund II. The closing of the fund is a positive signal for Canada’s tech sector, and shows the strong interest of private capital in partnering with innovative technology entrepreneurs,” said John Ruffolo, CEO of OMERS Ventures.
Speaking to Techvibes, OMERS Ventures Managing Director Jim Orlando and Director Sid Paquette discussed the vision behind the fund, opportunities and domains of interest for them, and their thoughts on the Canadian tech sector.
Paquette spoke about the potential of financial technology sector and said, “If you were to take a holistic view and look at Canada as a whole, areas of opportunity where we could be world-leading from a tech perspective, is in the FinTech sector… There is a need and a desire amongst our banking groups now to actually expedite that process and incorporate a lot more technology than they have historically, and given our position globally in the financial sector, there are many opportunities for entrepreneurs.”
Pointing out OMERS Ventures’ interest in cybersecurity, Orlando said, “Cybersecurity is another area we have been looking at, specifically in FinTech as Sid mentioned, and in particular what bitcoin and block chain capability bring in terms of differentiated opportunities. We hope to find a couple of investments for Fund II related to bitcoin and the block chain, and the security side of that whole paradigm.”
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