Transport

Separately, Fontinalis, led by Bill Ford, has also backed Nano-C, a US-based developer of nanostructured carbon for use in energy and electronics applications.

As corporations become increasingly open to external innovation and many of their own executives become angel investors themselves, there is a great opportunity to help the nascent start-ups.

Hertz has acquired a 20% stake in Car and a seat on its board in return for the acquisition of all of Hertz's business in China.

Alongside DT's T-Venture in the round was local venture capital firm Innovation Works and angel investors.

This is an analysis of the ten most active units and has attached the main data of our new quarterly reports, the first of which, a 12-page special, can be seen in full, in this month's magazine.

The corporate venturing unit of Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company Unilever has made plans to increase its assets under management with its latest $450m fund from its parent, Global Corporate Venturing can reveal.

Modern consumer corporations generally continue to pump out the kind of products that the world population simply cannot stop buying. Yet these industries, which have been brutally competitive, as well as profitable, since ancient times, are being transformed by a rapidly growing world population, where consumer spending power is truly globalising.

Corporate venturing investments slowed in March by number and value as exits were boosted by three initial public offerings. The slowdown in deal activity came as nerves appeared to creep back into wider market trading, as eurozone country Cyprus negotiated a bailout that involved haircuts for bank depositors.

US-based chip design software manufacturer Tensilica, backed by Japan technology companies Fujitsu and NTT, and US-based technology company Cisco, was the biggest sale of the quarter, in an exit to US-based chip design software manufacturer Cadence Design Systems for $380m. The biggest initial public offering of the quarter was the $108m raised by US-based marketing software company Marin Software.

The number of corporate venturing units, tracked by Global Corporate Venturing, has risen to 971. We examine their development.