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U. of I. puts tech venture back in play, names exec

A year after controversy stalled a University of Illinois initiative to promote high-tech start-ups, trustees have hired a new executive to launch the program.

By Barbara Rose
Tribune staff reporter

Chicago businessman John Banta, 41, was approved Thursday as CEO and managing director of IllinoisVentures LLC, a wholly owned university subsidiary.

The entity, operating with $1 million in seed money from the state, will help inventors and entrepreneurs create companies based on university technologies. The goal is to create jobs while discouraging talented professors and graduates from leaving the state to start firms.

Banta, currently president and chief operating officer of DigitalWork Inc. in Chicago, is scheduled to start Oct. 1 at an annual salary of $200,000, working out of offices on the university’s Chicago and Urbana campuses.

Last year, IllinoisVentures’ board of private business leaders hired Douglas Colbeth, CEO of former software firm Spyglass Inc. in Naperville, to raise and manage a venture capital fund while also providing services to entrepreneurs.

Colbeth, who was put on the university payroll at $300,000 annually, and his three-person staff voluntarily resigned after working less than four months after university trustee Gerald Shea raised objections to the venture fund and such issues as Colbeth’s salary. The episode cost the university about $400,000 in salaries and severance pay.

IllinoisVentures was revamped, dropping the venture fund, and search firm Egon Zehnder International Inc. was retained to screen CEO candidates.

"The opportunity is here now to put together an entity with John’s talent and know-how in building companies," said David Chicoine, university vice president for economic development and corporate relations.

He said the first job for Banta, who earned a degree in finance from Illinois in 1983 and an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1994, will be to write a business strategy "to sustain and grow [IllinoisVentures] over time to provide the services we know are going to be needed."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0209130162sep13.story?coll=chi%2Dbusiness%2Dhed

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