Angel investors find sweet spot in TMT

Private equity and venture capital investment in China’s telecommunications, media and technology industry, or TMT, reached a historic high of $15.9 billion in 2014, and the trend is likely to continue this year, said an industry report.

The report, released by global consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers on Thursday, said about 1,241 PE and VC deals were conducted in the Chinese TMT sector in 2014, a 47 percent year-on-year growth. Both the investment value and the amount have broken the previous records set in 2012, it said.

“The reason why investment in the TMT industry saw this growth spurt is a series of incentive policies for entrepreneurship and innovation introduced by the government,” said Gao Jianbin, PwC China technology leader.

“The booming A-share market and the National Equities Exchange and Quotations, an over-the-counter market that is China’s third national equity exchange, also called the Third Board, also brought about a wealth effect, which encouraged increased investment in high-growth enterprises.”

The Third Board is popular among micro-sized, smalland medium-sized compa- nies with high growth.

Looking at sectors within the TMT industry, the Internet remained the most dominant business in terms of deal amount, but the deal value in telecommunications and mobile Internet investment in the fourth quarter reached $2.5 billion, surpassing even the Internet sector.

“As the pace of people’s lives increases, along with a continuous rise in the ‘fragmentation of time’, mobile devices will replace personal computers and become the main interface for accessing the Internet,” said Amanda Zhang, PwC China technology partner.

Investments in the technology sector during the second half of 2014 hit their highest level 2012.

Zhang said the cycle for technology investment is longer than that of the Internet, but Chinese PE and VC investors have become more prudent.