Private Equity
Elias Mendoza has joined Union Square Advisors as a partner in its New York office. Mendoza, most recently, was VP and global head of corporate development at IBM.
3 min read · 20 July 2011
It feels like Qatalyst Partners is everywhere these days. This week, Frank Quattrone's investment bank advised on two big-name deals. The most notable was Electronic Arts' proposed buy of PopCap (Quatalyst advised PopCap) and the second was Citrix's acquisition of Cloud.com (Qatalyst provided guidance Citrix). So far, July has been very good to Qatalyst. Earlier this month, GoDaddy finally announced plans to sell itself to some PE firms for $2.25 billion. Qatalyst advised GoDaddy on that deal. Qatalyst's largest deal this year was Texas Instruments $6.5 billion purchase of National Semiconductor. The San Francisco investment bank really set tongues a waggin' when it advised 3Par last year. The data storage company was the subject of a highly publicized bidding war between Dell and HP. Dell initially bid $18 a share for 3Par, but HP ultimately "won" the deal when it paid $32 a share, or $2.4 billion.
5 min read · 14 July 2011
3 min read · 16 June 2011
3 min read · 14 June 2011
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is is on the hunt for its own deal. MSO, which was founded by Martha Stewart, said today that it has hired the Blackstone Advisory Partners to "review and respond to various parties that have expressed interest in potentially partnering with or investing in the Company, as well as exploring other opportunities," according to a statement. This sounds like MSO could be up for sale or is looking for an investor (there is also speculation that Stewart is looking to take MSO private). My coworkers at Thomson Reuters are reporting that Stewart, who is MSO's controlling shareholder, would prefer a transaction other than a sale but is considering all options.
3 min read · 25 May 2011
Shades of the last dot.com bubble, Batman! UPDATE: Shares of LinkedIn nearly doubled on their first trade, opening at $83. The stock hit a high of $122.69 but closed Thursday at $94.25, up 109.44%, on volume of 30.1 million shares. Yesterday, the social network for professionals sold 7.84 million shares $45 each, top of its sweetened price range of $42 to $45 each. Its previous price range was $32 to $35 each. Expectations for LinkedIn had been high, but this high? The Wall Street Journal said LinkedIn's valuation, based on its first trade, was roughly $8.5 billion. This for a company that barely made $15 million in earnings last year.
1 min read · 19 May 2011
(Reuters) - Mobile, biotech and e-commerce all have one thing in common: they are among the next wave of startups that have caught the eye of venture capital. In the past year, social media companies such as Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and LinkedIn have stolen the limelight as the fastest growing space for venture funds. Still, they make up just one area, and even a minority percentage, of investment for a number of venture capital funds. "Social media companies are leading the charge, capturing people's fantasy," Axel Bichara, a partner at Atlas Venture, told a panel at the Reuters Global Technology Summit Venture Capital in New York on Wednesday. "If you look at venture capital companies as a whole, it's a really broad and deep
2 min read · 19 May 2011
Last week, W. Townsend Ziebold jumped to First Beverage Group, a boutique financial services firm catering to the beverage industry. He joined First Beverage from Bruce Wasserstein’s PE firm, Wasserstein & Co. Townsend has over 25 years in investment banking and private equity. He’s been a banker with First Boston Corp. and Wasserstein Perella, which was acquired by Dresdner Bank in 2000 (The merchant bank of WP was spun off in 2000 to form Wasserstein & Co.). Townsend has worked on some major deals, including KKR’s purchase of RJR Nabisco and SmithKline's merger with the Beecham Group. At Wasserstein & Co., he worked on the buys of IMAX Corp., Maybelline Cosmetics and Turtle Mountain, a leading producer of non-dairy desserts. Townsend, 49, officially joined First Beverage on May 9. I spoke to him by phone last week.
4 min read · 16 May 2011
Thoma Bravo has agreed to buy Tripwire, a Portland provider of audit software for businesses and government agencies. Financial terms weren't announced. Original investors include Advanced Technology Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, BA Ventures and Institutional Venture Partners. JP Morgan provided financial advice to Tripwire.
3 min read · 11 May 2011
General Atlantic has made a minority investment in Peixe Urbano, a daily deals site in Brazil. Tiger Global Management, a hedge fund run by Chase Coleman, also invested in the round, says Fernando Marques Oliveira, a General Atlantic MD. He declined to disclose financial terms. Peixe, of Rio de Janeiro, is the first company to launch group buying in Brazil, Oliveira says. The company was started in March 2010 by CEO Julio Vasconcellos, Emerson Andrade and Alex Tabor, who all met at Stanford University, according to MarketWatch. Peixe Urbano now has 9 million users, has sold 5 million coupons and employs about 600 people. The much bigger Groupon is in Brazil but Peixe established its footprint in the country before them, Oliveira says.
2 min read · 06 May 2011
