Funds are also investing a greater share in firms founded or led by women
There has been improvement in the representation of women in the investment funds industry in Quebec according to a new report.
The Capital femmes analysis by Réseau Capital reveals that 65% of the surveyed investment firms include at least one woman partner and women partners make up 25% of all the partners in investment firms. The data is cumulative between 2010 and 2022.
The study included 38 venture capital and private equity funds that made 463 investments in 312 Quebec-based portfolio companies.
"Capital femmes allows us to highlight the growth of investments in companies founded or led by women and the increase in women representation in our industry,” explained Olivier Quenneville, CEO of Réseau Capital. “More importantly, this enables us to promote diversity and inclusion within businesses and investment funds in Quebec. The results obtained encourage us to continue in this direction, especially through the various initiatives of our ELLE-Invest committee.”
Wealth Professional’s Women in Wealth Management Summit returns to Toronto on December 5th with the aim of empowering women in wealth, developing the next generation of inclusive industry leaders, and sharing knowledge and best practices.
Connecting women and allies from across financial services and wealth management, the summit will share concrete actions to advance the representation of women in the industry.
Investing in women
The report also reveals that 44% of investments were made in companies with at least one woman co-founder or leader with a total of $2.9 billion invested in these businesses.
This shows a 21-percentage-point increase between 2016 and 2022 and 41% of Quebec-based companies that received investment from venture capital and private equity funds were founded or led by at least one woman.
The Capital femmes indicator is the first of its kind in Quebec and was launched in October 2021 by Investissement Québec and transferred to Réseau Capital in 2022 for them to collect data and annually provide an overview of women representation in investment funds in Quebec.
"This year, the goal was to broaden the scope of the analysis to encompasse the entire investment capital landscape in Quebec. In just one year, we have made remarkable progress, largely thanks to the valuable contribution and joint effort of our collaborators," said Simon Pelletier, Director of business intelligence at Réseau Capital.
