Private Equity
1 min read · 27 February 2009
1 min read · 27 February 2009
Bessemer Venture Partners this morning announced "the closing of a $350 million supplement to its current fund." But that's not really true. At least not in the traditional sense. The fund in question is Bessemer Venture Partners VII, which closed in June 2007 with approximately $1.1 billion in capital commitments. It was the first BVP fund open to institutions other than family office Bessemer Securities, although BS still took a very large stake. Too large a stake, perhaps, as the new "supplement" is mostly a transfer of unfunded capital from Bessemer Securities to other limited partners.
2 min read · 26 February 2009
Bessemer Venture Partners has raised a $350 million annex fund for its seventh fund, which closed in June 2007 with more than $1 billion in capital commitments.
2 min read · 26 February 2009
Lehman Brothers Venture Partners has been sold to its current management team and funds managed by HarbourVest Partners. It will be renamed Tenaya Capital. No financial terms were disclosed. The group’s most recent fund is a $365 million vehicle raised in 2007, to invest in mid-to-late-stage technology companies.
3 min read · 24 February 2009
Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners and Accel's Jim Breyer are "strategic partners" in the new venture capital fund being raised by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, peHUB has learned. Andreessen and Breyer both sit on the board of social networking company Facebook. Andreessen joined the board last June, while Breyer led the company's first venture investment back in April 2005. Andreessen first disclosed his venture effort, called Andreessen Horowitz, last week on the Charlie Rose television talkshow. His partner is former Opsware executive Ben Horowitz, with whom Andreesen has a history of angel investing.
1 min read · 23 February 2009
The morning after Barack Obama was elected president, I wrote that the debate over carried interest taxation was effectively over. Obama had promised on the campaign trail to change the treatment of carried interest from capital gains to ordinary income -- which in most cases would raise the rate from 15% to 35 percent – and I saw little chance that he’d go back on that word. I also assumed that most people agreed with me, until the following exchange with NVCA chief Mark Heesen, during a 5 Questions here at peHUB: Dan: One of your big issues over the past two years has been tax treatment of carried interest. Is that still a big priority? Mark: I think it continues to be an issue, but you were dead wrong when, the day after the election, you basically said that a change to the carried interest tax was fait accompli. We got lots of calls after that column, saying “Oh my God.” We knew it wasn’t going to happen at that point. You’ll see it brought up again, but in this environment it’s very unlikely you’ll see Congress working on issues that are not huge revenue-raisers. They will not be out there trying to slap the wrists of people they shouldn’t be slapping the wrists of, because there are more important issues to work on at this point. Well, today's Wall Street Journal reports that Obama will indeed include the carried interest tax change as part of the budget blueprint being unveiled later this week.
2 min read · 23 February 2009
I respect Tom Friedman. Hell, I envy him. But the man has taken temporary leave of his senses, by repeatedly arguing that some sort of venture capital bailout is in order. First, he penned a piece arguing that VC-backed cleantech companies were "dying like flies," due to a lack of capital. I’ve repeatedly written about the lack of project finance for the handful of VC-backed startups that need it (mostly facility-heavy electric vehicle and biofuel producers), but Friedman vastly overstates the problem. Moreover, he fails to note that a number of firms rushing in to fill the void, including Blackstone, C Change, CMEA and Kleiner Perkins. Then came a follow-up column, in which he wrote:
2 min read · 23 February 2009
Add Appian Ventures to the (growing) list of venture capital firms that do not expect to add new portfolio companies in 2009. Chris Onan, a partner with Denver-based Appian, says that the firm simply needs to reserve remaining dry powder to support its 18 existing portfolio companies. At the same time, Appian doesn't want to begin raising a new fund without a few more exits under its belt.
1 min read · 20 February 2009
Want an illustration of the dreaded denominator effect? Just take a look at some new numbers from the Pennsylvania Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS), which last week released its 2009 Supplemental Budget Information. It shows that PERS had a 24.2% exposure to alternative investments at of the end of 2008. This compares to just a 15.6% exposure to alternatives at the end of 2007 (which was already higher than the system’s 14% target allocation). We asked PERS spokesman Robert Gentzel about the situation, and he replied: "As you noted, the current actual allocation is well above the target. Until it is brought more into line over time, we would expect few, if any, further commitments." The PERS document also includes details of fees paid to VC and buyout managers last year, and some fund-specific cash in/cash out information. We’ve posted it all here, in .pdf form (we wanted to use Scribd, but it seems SERS encrypted the file).
1 min read · 20 February 2009
