The investment in Allegheny Child Care comes from its new venture-capital fund.

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Lofberg is leaving his job as chairman of Merck-Medco to head the new venture fund, effective yesterday.

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To make the conglomerate's new culture more explicit, Mr Zobel recently created a new subsidiary, run as a venture-capital fund.

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As part of the deal, Nottingham City Council will set up a venture capital investment fund for new start-ups.

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The new large fund shows the increasing trend towards top-tier venture firms raising large amounts of capital while lesser-performing funds face a much tougher fundraising environment.

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The approach is akin to that of a venture capitalist spreading his bets among new ideas in fund-management.

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Part of the new venture fund's approach will be to closely manage start-ups.

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Chemist Gregory Verdine was a Harvard professor with a position at a venture fund, but neither job was helping get his new project--building a vast database of natural chemicals that might work as drugs--the money it needed to take off.

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Three-quarters of U.S. start-ups expect to raise capital next year, according to a new survey, but many of them will find doors closing on the fund-raising trail as venture investors experience their own capital shortage.

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Flipkart, an online-commerce site in India founded by two former Amazon employees, has received funding from Tiger Global, a New York-based hedge fund that specialises in this kind of investing, and Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm.

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