Truffle Capital

Philippe Pouletty, a French trained medical doctor and general partner at Paris-based Truffle Capital has reason to look especially cheerful these days. Carmat, a company building an entirely artificial human heart, is planning an initial public offering in June - the  third company in Pouletty's portfolio to go public in as many months. Though no one expects 2010 to look like 1999 the market for IPOs - particularly in biotech - appears to be open once again.Read more

France's Carmat, a company that is building an entirely artificial human heart, is planning an initial public offering on the Alternext market of NYSE-Euronext Paris in June. The company, co-founded by renowned French heart surgeon Alain Carpentier, is leveraging the aerospace industry's expertise in modeling, stress testing, miniaturization and design for severe environments as well as the latest advances in software, medicine, biology and materials science. Click to read the story and see the video. Read more

French medtech start-up Theraclion is poised to commercially launch what is being billed as the first device capable of performing ultrasound non-invasive surgery on the neck. The device, which uses high intensity focused ultrasound to zap diseased tissue, promises to allow tens of thousands of patients suffering from a common disease of the parathyroid glands to avoid going under the knife.Read more

Weakened by the global financial crisis and American rivals who continue to acquire the Continent's best companies, Europe's software sector is calling on local governments to take urgent measures.  A recently released annual ranking of Europe's Top 100 software companies  found that the mean increase in turnover for Europe's software companies in 2008 was 3%, down sharply from 10.3% in 2008. The survey is seen as a key index of the industry's health on the European level.Read more