Twitter is too secretive for its own good. Last month, I noticed that the company had filed a Form D with the SEC, indicating that it had called down just over $17 million of a $22 million Series C round (download here). This is the same round that Twitter had previously announced without a dollar amount, and the one that Om Malik pegged at $15 million. So I made some calls to see if this was really a $22 million deal (disclaimer: I cared because such minor revelations seem to get peHUB Techmeme love). A knowledgeable source insisted that the filing was incorrect, although he/she acknowledged that the actual round size was a bit closer to $17 million than to $15 million. But that source was on background, and I’ve got a legit SEC doc in my hand. So I tried getting in touch with the company. After a few days, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone replied with
2 min read · 02 October 2008
* Does venture capital spur innovation, or is it the other way around? * Christine Williamson on the hedge fund bloodbath to come. * Barry Ritholtz takes on the meme that all of our troubles were caused by the Community Reinvestment Act and the GSEs. * A big win and a big loss yesterday for those pushing for greater privatization of U.S. infrastructure. The win was in Chicago, which agreed to lease its Midway Airport to a group of investors led by Citigroup. The loss was in Pennsylvania, where Abertis (Spain) and Citi bailed on a $12.8 billion deal to lease and operate the Pennsylvania Turnpike. * In case you fell asleep (or were watching the Sox shut down the Halos), the Senate passed its version of the bailout plan. Hey House, the ball is back in your court. * M&I answers 10 questions about the future of investment banking. * peHUB reported in June that former CalPERS CIO Russ Read was raising a cleantech-focused private equity fund, and that his partner would be John Preston, former head of MIT's tech transfer office. The firm is being called C Change Investments, and now has a website.
1 min read · 02 October 2008
1 min read · 01 October 2008
1 min read · 01 October 2008
The third quarter ended yesterday, and the numbers were not pretty when it came to private equity deal-making or fund-raising. Both sets of numbers were down from Q2, both domestically and globally. A few quick figures after the jump, courtesy of Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB).
1 min read · 01 October 2008
4 min read · 30 September 2008
1 min read · 30 September 2008
If you need some gallows humor, a friend sends this: Dear Excellent friend: I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion USD. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who (God willing) will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a former U.S. congressional leader and the architect of the Palin / McCain Financial Doctrine, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. As such, you can be assured that this transaction is 100% safe. This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me
2 min read · 29 September 2008
I'll be on tonight's edition of NewsNight with Jim Braude, which airs at 8pm on New England Cable News (NECN). We’ll be chatting about the financials and politics of the (failed) bailout package, and what it all means. Newsnight is a good show if you're a New Englander who hasn't seen it. Plus, Jim Braude was my boss for a few short months, many moons ago. Then he laid me off (actually, it was a losing political campaign, which meant everyone got laid off). So change over from sitcom reruns at around 8...
1 min read · 29 September 2008
1 min read · 29 September 2008
