Exit watch, week of March 17, 2008

AOL buys Balderton-backed Bebo

AOL announced late last week that it’s buying U.K.-based social networking company Bebo company for $850 million in cash. In May 2006, Bebo had raised $15 million in Series A funding from Balderton Capital, f.k.a. Benchmark Europe when it was an affiliate of Benchmark Capital.

Balderton says that its 15.7% stake will sell for $140 million. That represents more than a 9x return on Balderton’s original investment, which was done at a post-money valuation of approximately $95 million.

Bebo had been in the market for new funding to support acquisitions, particularly in the contextual and behavioral search markets.

Oracle Healthcare nixes deal
Oracle Healthcare Acquisition Corp. (OTC BB: OHAQ) has canceled its previously announced acquisition of Precision Therapeutics Inc., a Pittsburgh-based oncology services company. The move comes because Oracle says that its lifecycle has ended, and it never brought the reverse merger up for a vote. It is unclear what happens next for Precision, which had been in registration for an IPO at the time that it agreed to the Oracle deal. Precision has raised about $84 million in VC funding since 1996 from such firms as Adams Capital Management (which owns a 39.1% stake), Quaker BioVentures (21.5%), TVM Capital (9.1%), Birchmere Ventures (8.8%), Stephens Group (6.5%) and Draper Triangle Ventures.

DW sells NWT for $76M

DW Healthcare Partners has sold NWT Inc. (a.k.a. Tandem Labs) to Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings (LH) for $76 million in cash. Tandem Labs is a Salt Lake City-based bioanalytical and immunoanalytical contract research organization, supporting pharma and biotech companies. The sale generated a 6.9x return on invested capital for DW Healthcare over a 34-month period.

Qualcomm buys Xiam
Qualcomm has acquired Xiam Technologies Ltd., an Ireland-based provider of wireless content targeting solutions. The deal is valued at $32 million. Xiam has raised more than $9 million in VC funding since 1999 from such firms as Delta Partners, Vertex Management, Add Partners and Enterprise Ireland.

DoubleClick deal done
Google has completed its acquisition of online marketing company DoubleClick Inc. from Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity for $3.1 billion in cash following European regulatory approval last week. H&F led a $1.1 billion buyout of DoubleClick in 2005, with JMI Equity participating as a minority investor. The deal was announced about 11 months ago. U.S. regulators cleared it in December, and approval from the European Union was the last hurdle, having dismissed objections from rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.SunGard acquires Payformance unitSunGard has acquired the corporate payments unit of Payformance Corp., a Jacksonville, Fla.-based provider of payment processing solutions for corporations and health care organizations. No financial terms were disclosed. SunGard was acquired in 2005 by seven private equity firms, while Payformance has raised more than $26 million in VC funding from such firms as ABS Capital Partners, Wachovia Capital Associates and Stonehenge Capital.