Private Equity
3 min read · 22 October 2011
Four former executives of Houlihan Lokey have formed Clearsight Advisors, a McLean, Va.-based merchant bank focused on business services and technology. Clearsight execs include: Joel Kallett, co-founder and MD, Greg Treger, also a co-founder and MD; Bhavin Patel, SVP; and, Bethany Seidler, who is director of administration for the new firm.
3 min read · 19 October 2011
Five firms, including BofA Merrill Lynch, GETCO, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Quantlab Group, have taken a minority stake in Chi-X Global Holdings. Chi-X Global operates a trading platform and is the holding company for Chi-X Canada, Chi-X Japan and Chi-X Australia, which is expected to launch Oct. 31. Instinet, which is owned by Nomura Group, is the largest equity holder of Chi-X. Financial Technology Partners provided financial advice to Instinet and Chi-X global.
2 min read · 18 October 2011
Summit Partners is expected to close its latest growth equity fund at $2.5 billion in a week, several sources say. Boston-based Summit began fundraising for the fund in March with a $3 billion target. The firm decided to reduce the size of the pool long ago, one person says. Summit has enough dry powder from a current PE fund that it felt it had enough capital, the source says. An LP says that Summit's past performance has been strong. However, one PE exec says Summit was seeing insufficient demand for the fund at $3 billion. Summit's last growth equity fund also raised $3 billion in 2005. The fund, Summit Partners Private Equity VII-A LP, has generated an IRR since inception of 1.3%, according to Sept. 30, 2010 data from CalSTRS.
2 min read · 30 September 2011
New York Media, which owns New York Magazine, is selling MenuPages to Seamless. Financial terms weren't announced. New York Media is owned by the Wasserstein family trust. MenuPages provides menu content via mobile and online platforms. Seamless is an online food ordering service.
4 min read · 26 September 2011
Restaurant ordering and delivery service GrubHub has raised $50 million in Series E financing, enabling it to bolster its mobile development efforts and acquire New York-based Dotmenu, the parent company of Campusfood and Allmenus. Lightspeed Ventures led the round, with participation Mesirow Financial, Benchmark Capital, Greenspring Associates and DAG Ventures. Terms of the acquisition were not released.
4 min read · 22 September 2011
2 min read · 21 September 2011
Kirk Dizon has left Hall Capital Partners. Dizon left the LP two weeks ago and will be starting his own venture, persons say. Dizon joined Hall Capital in 2006 where he was a managing director and co-head of the private equity group. Before that, he was a partner at Cooley Godward. "He is a bright guy," one PE exec says of Dizon. Hall Capital has $22.7 billion under management, with about $10 billion in alternatives, according to the firm's web site. The firm has offices in San Francisco and New York. Hall Capital is a "huge multifamily office in many hedge and PE funds, the PE exec says.
1 min read · 13 September 2011
Earlier this month, Bob Flanagan joined Raymond James Financial as head of the firm's hardware technology banking group. He focuses on semiconductors, optical devices, communications equipment and electronics. Prior to Raymond James, Flanagan managed Oppenheimer & Co.'s Silicon Valley office. He actually joined Oppenheimer in 2007 when it was CIBC (Oppenheimer acquired CIBC in November 2007). Flanagan was also a senior tech banker at Cowen & Co. and Thomas Weisel but began his career at Salomon Brothers. Flanagan currently works out of Raymond James' San Francisco office but the IB plans to open a Silicon Valley satellite location later this year. Flanagan spoke to me by phone earlier today.
4 min read · 09 September 2011
Gild, which is backed by Globespan Capital Partners, has acquired Coderloop. Financial terms weren't announced. Coderloop has developed an automated code evaluation and scoring platform.
2 min read · 08 September 2011
