Investcorp raises $300m

Investcorp Technology Ventures (ITV) has reached a final closing of Investcorp Technology Ventures II, LP (ITV Fund II), with $300m in total committed capital. The fund was well oversubscribed at its original target of $250m, and hit its cap at $300m.

This includes a commitment of more than $8m from ITV’s own team. The fund also attracted a diverse group of new limited partners from North America, Europe and Asia in its first formal offering to these markets. New institutional, individual and family trust investors in the fund include Grove Street Advisors in the US and AlpInvest Partners and UBS Sauerborn in Europe.

ITV focuses on venture, buyouts, corporate spinouts and growth capital/expansion stage financing in the technology sector. Fund II will make investments in technology-driven companies primarily in the US and selectively in Western Europe.

The team investing ITV Fund II has already produced top-quartile returns with its Investcorp Technology Ventures Fund I LP (ITV Fund I), which was launched in June 2001 with $210m in committed capital. Of the 16 investments made by the team, seven have been fully realized.

In Fund II, ITV will continue to seek transactions that many traditional venture capital and technology focused investment firms avoid due to their complexity, such as take-private transactions and divisional spinouts of larger companies.

Investcorp Technology Ventures focuses on investments in four key areas of the technology market: mobile data technologies and applications; enterprise software; communications infrastructure products and applications; and digital content enablement.

To date, ITV has completed three investments from ITV Fund II, bringing the total amount invested to approximately $30m. These include; Magnum Semiconductor Inc in June 2005, Trema Holding NV in February 2005, and PanGo Networks Inc in October 2005.

Also in October, ITV announced the signing of a definitive agreement to invest approximately $20m in the recapitalization of Frankfurt stock exchange-listed company, Mania Technologie AG.