Private Equity
January is the cruelest month when it comes to reading. Books from both Christmas and my birthday vie for time and attention like so many petulant, raucous children. David Owen’s Green Metropolis has been a source of some amusement and entertainment for me and I recommend it to anyone looking at the green buildings market. The gist of Owen’s book is simple, the entire world would be better off living in Manhattan. Baring that, they should at least live as those in Manhattan do, stacked on top of each other in high-rise apartments within easy walking distance of shops, offices and restaurants. Perhaps this is the conclusion any staff writer for The New Yorker might arrive at.
5 min read · 20 January 2010
2 min read · 07 January 2010
3 min read · 17 December 2009
4 min read · 18 November 2009
3 min read · 17 November 2009
Endowments have always been the mother’s milk of venture capital and private equity funds, typically allocating 11.8% of their portfolio to these assets, as compared with the 8.8% of all institutional investors. Yet only 33% of endowments have made new PE commitments this year according to a recent survey by Preqin and 35% won’t be making another commitment until 2011. And if you’re getting revved up about pitching one of the big boy endowments on your latest fund, you may be disappointed. The study found that 42% of endowments with over $750 million under management were over-allocated to private equity. That’s nearly three times as many over-allocated funds than the endowments with $350 million or less under management.
1 min read · 29 October 2009
I wrote about Galleon Management’s $300 million move into venture capital in August 2007. The firm had hired half a dozen investment professionals and opened an office on Sand Hill Road to invest in private companies looking to go public. Today’s news that Galleon decided to wind down its funds after getting $1.3 billion in capital calls (thanks to a pesky insider trading scandal) may close the books on the firm’s operations, but its move out of venture capital happened at least a year before.
2 min read · 21 October 2009
When a person becomes known for one thing, it’s easy to forget that he once did something completely different. Few people remember, for example, that before Babe Ruth was a New York Yankees slugger he was a successful Red Sox pitcher, with 94 wins, 46 losses and a 2.28 earned run average. So too, it is hard to remember that Michael Moritz was once a journalist for Time and a good writer before he became “the best long-ball hitter around” in his own right. But if you haven’t had the chance to read Moritz’s work before, you’ll have a chance to pick up a new edition of his 1984 profile of Apple Computer, which is coming out on November 10 from Overlook Press. Moritz’s “Return to the Little Kingdom” will have include “Moritz’s contemporary perspective on the state of Apple and the accomplishments of Steve Jobs in a new Introduction and Epilogue,” according to the publisher. No book signings
3 min read · 23 September 2009
Rennovia, an early-stage chemical development company, recently raised $6 million in startup funding from 5AM Ventures and Versant Ventures, according to regulatory documents. The funding is the first infusion of a proposed $12.3 million Series A round that the company is seeking, documents show. The stealth Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup is working to make specialty chemicals from renewable feedstock. The company has not disclosed what chemicals it will make. A chemical company such as Rennovia is something of an anomaly in Silicon Valley, where information technology and life science companies vie with cleantech for attention from venture capitalists. Still, some VCs are willing to go out on a limb for a compelling chemistry process applied to an industry that has long relied on petroleum as the principle input for its products.
3 min read · 18 September 2009
Michael Marks made the business of manufacture and supply-chain outsourcing safe for Silicon Valley to embrace, by building Singapore-based Flextronics into a global giant. During Marks' reign, Flextronics made products as diverse as Legos to Microsoft Zune to XBox, and few people know more about how technology goes from concept to product. Now he’s turned his substantial expertise, and that of his Flextronics CFO and CTO, toward private equity. Marks is a founder of Riverwood Capital, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm that last year began raising its debut fund with a $1.25 billion target.
2 min read · 02 September 2009
