Private Equity
Award-winning poet Sophie Cabot Black has some verse featured in an upcoming issue of The New Yorker, but her subject matter isn't love, grief or epiphany. Instead, she takes an odd turn toward private equity. Her conclusion: Used. To draw out more than what is put in. Everyone wants beyond; even with the one last page As exit plan it is the return that is watched and how We will be known. To end up where we start Again, and to look as if we gained. Read the entire poem here
1 min read · 10 May 2010
2 min read · 10 May 2010
The Riverside Company just announced that its Microcap Fund has bought Mansell Group, an Atlanta-based email marketing company. No financial terms were disclosed, except that fifth Fifth Street Capital provided debt financing. Not the sort of thing that typically gets a stand-alone blog post, but Mansell isn't just any virtual postmaster. For the past five years, it's been responsible for sending out peHUB Wire each morning (58k subscribers and counting... join here).
1 min read · 10 May 2010
Chipmaker Wintegra filed for an IPO on Friday, making it the sixth VC-backed company to do so since we last looked at the VC-backed IPO pipeline. The other newbies were Ellie Mae, RealPage, Tangoe, Amysis Biotech and Neophotonics). There also have been five VC-backed companies that went public during that time period -- Convio, Alpha & Omega, Codexis, Alimera Biosciences and SPS Commerce -- and one that canceled its offering (Telegent). That means the VC-backed IPO pipeline remains static with 42 registrants, although the net targeted raise increases by $36 million. Overall, VC-backed companies in registration to go public are aiming for more than $4.6 billion. Get full pipeline after the jump...
10 min read · 10 May 2010
2 min read · 10 May 2010
Last month we wrote about Corefino, an outsourced accounting company that was heading toward a divorce with its venture capitalists. And, like with most splits, each side blamed the other (CEO felt VCs didn’t understand the biz, VCs felt CEO couldn’t run lean enough ship). Now we have resolution. The company today will announce that most of its assets have been acquired by a group of private investors led by Virginia Turezyn, a former venture capitalist with American Capital Strategies, Constellation Ventures and Infinity Capital. Also participating is Corefino CEO Karen Watts and Renee Courington, founder of IT support company All Covered. Both Turezyn and Courington will join the Corefino management team.
1 min read · 10 May 2010
California AG Jerry Brown yesterday filed civil charges against former CalPERS CEO Fred Buenrostro and ex-CalPERS board member Al Villalobos, alleging fraud related to CalPERS investments in private equity firms Apollo Management and Aurora Capital Group. No charges against the firms -- both of which had hired Villalobos as a placement agent to secure fund commitments from CalPERS and other public pension systems. This news should not come as a surprise to peHUB readers. We've known for quite some time that Brown was investigating CalPERS, and also that there were some obvious problems with the Villalobos-CalPERS relationship. For example, we reported last October that Villalobos was not a registered broker-dealer when pitching Apollo funds. Seems that's in violation of California law. We also wondered about a series of placement agent disclosure forms, which CalPERS released last year with Buenrostro's signature. More specifically, we wondered why they had a fax stamp from Apollo, as if CalPERS didn't have its own copies. According to Brown, they didn't (and never did).
3 min read · 07 May 2010
I feel a bit like Lloyd Bridges in Airplane, when he picks the wrong day to quit drinking, quit sniffing glue, etc. Seems I picked the wrong day to take an afternoon drive from New York to Boston. At around the time I was cruising past Bridgeport, California AG Jerry Brown filed a civil suit against for CalPERS CEO Fred Buenrostro and his placement agent pal Alfred Villalobos. In related news, CalPERS private equity chief Leon Shahinian has been placed on "administrative leave." This information comes from a memo sent by CalPERS CIO Joe Dear to private equity and venture capital firms in which CalPERS has invested. It also said: "If your organization has given permission to Leon Shahinian to access any CalPERS related information via the web or any other remote access, please have his account suspended." Shahinian is not being charged in the civil complaint, but is cited repeatedly for accepting gifts from Villalobos. I'm just now beginning to piece some things together, and will have a full report either later tonight or tomorrow morning. Suffice to say, this has been a long time coming. In the meantime, you can download the complaint.
1 min read · 06 May 2010
PricewaterhouseCoopers has released its quarterly report on technology M&A within the U.S. The lead: As the first quarter of 2010 ended, the seeds of optimism that began to spread through the technology industry at the end of 2009 appeared to have firmly taken root. Record profits, renewed order backlogs, and a return to hiring pointed to a recovery that prompted industry analysts to revise their 2010 forecasts upward. Download the entire report here.
1 min read · 05 May 2010
Last year we reported that Madison Dearborn Capital Partners was stuck at "just a tick above $4 billion," in its efforts to raise a sixth fund. Erin followed up in February, saying that a final close was expected by the end of April. Now comes word, via Dow Jones, that the final close has indeed occured with $4.1 billion in capital commitments. This is well below Madison Dearborn's original $10 billion target, and not even close to its revised $7.5 billion target. More importantly, it signals that the Chicago-based firm hasn't secured any significant new commitments in nearly a year (despite having hired Credit Suisse placement vet John Knutsen to succeed retired investor relations chief David Mosher).
2 min read · 05 May 2010
