Today, the fund has a widely diversified investment portfolio, the patterns of which are well established according to long-standing criteria.
For instance, the Fonds de solidarité has investee companies in all regions of the province, though the bulk are concentrated in the Montréal and Québec City areas where most commerce and industry is concentrated (and are sources of the majority of financing requests). Undoubtably, the community focus of the Fonds de solidarité will grow as new regional and local funds are initiated and expanded. There are sixteen such funds now in existence and roughly sixty-five expected to materialize within the next five years.
Figure 17 also shows investment diversification by industry. In keeping with its economic development mandate, the Fonds de solidarité invests more widely than perhaps any other labour-sponsored fund. For example, while most financing projects are situated in manufacturing and high technology, the fund also commits resources to primary industries, various service industries, and real estate. The sheer size of the fund allows it play a significant role in each of these mature and evolving sectors. Comparison with data from previous years, also suggests the rapidly increasing presence of specialized, regional and local funds in the portfolio.
Finally, Figure 18 also highlights fund investments by project type. Again, there is diversification, though, out of respect to its job objectives, the Fonds de solidarité has always commited more assets to leveraging restructurings than is true for most other venture capital institutions. In 1994, two such deals were Novabus Corporation and TRIPAP. In general, these tend to reflect large financial stakes — and large establishments, though nearly all investee firms can be defined as small and medium- sized.
The Fonds de solidarité has for some time published its own employment impact analysis of its investment activity. To illustrate, for 1994 fund officers calculated portfolio projects as creating or maintaining, directly or indirectly, over 31,000 jobs.
This positive record was challenged in 1993 by a Université Laval fiscal analysis arguing that the activity of the Fonds de solidarité was costly and inefficient. In 1994, this view was refuted by the INRS which found that government received a substantial payback from fund investments producing 15,372 direct, indirect and induced jobs and $964 million of value-added in the Québec economy. A 1995 CSTIER study confirmed INRS cost-benefit findings.