Private Equity Week Wire for Friday 11/23

DUBLIN, IRELAND & RESTON, VA — Openet Telecom, the world leader in convergent mediation, today announced the completion of a $20 million equity fundraising with Benchmark Capital. This second-round funding will accelerate the company’s global expansion and allow foradditional sales and marketing programs to enhance the adoption of Openet’sflagship product, FusionWorks(TM), in its international market. This is thefirst investment in an Irish company by Benchmark Capital and the largestinvestment by its European fund to date.

Established in July 1999 and with world headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and U.S. headquarters in Reston, Va., Openet Telecom is a world leader in providing scalable mediation solutions that enable communication providers with diverse networks to easily implement, manage, and bill sophisticated services.
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — WeSpot receives further venture capital by bringing in 16MSEK, whereof the Swedish Industrifonden invests totally 10MSEK. WeSpot, a subsidiary of C Technologies, has developed a new camera platform for principally surveillance sensors, detection and access control systems. The security market has a global turnover of approx. 2 500 billion SEK yearly.

WeSpot follows its plan to finance its operations and now brings in 10MSEK by Industrifonden in a combination of new shares and a convertible loan. Industrifonden will with the new shares have an ownership in WeSpot of 5,4%. Furthermore, the present investors Malmohus Invest, CRT Ventures, Bure Equity and SEB Foretagsinvest will fulfil their second step in the earlier decided investment in WeSpot.

MUNICH — Wellington Partners is taking a holding in Truck24, a telematics services provider and subsidiary of Höft & Wessel, the Hanover-based IT systems provider. Established in December 1999, Truck24 develops and markets an e-logistics platform for trucking companies with which truck drivers and freight planners can exchange data by wireless transmission. Jörg Überla, partner at Wellington Partners, explains the investment by noting that “vehicle pool management is one of the top applications for mobile integrated communication, and Truck24 has a significant technological lead in this market.” The $2.5 million that Wellington Partners is investing in the form of a share capital increase, will be used to extend the range of services provided by Truck24 and to intensify internationalization of the company’s business activities.

HUNGARY — High Tech Private Equity GmbH today announced that it had acquired a 25.1% stake in medical device company Oncotherm Kft. Oncotherm Kft. is a developer and producer of devices for cancer treatment by hyperthermia (oncothermia).

NEW YORK — Arch Capital Group Ltd., a Bermuda-based insurance holding company (Nasdaq: ACGL), today announced that it has closed $763 million in private equity funding led by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Hellman & Friedman. This financing increases the company’s capitalization to over $1 billion of invested capital. On October 24, 2001, the Company announced the launch of an underwriting initiative to meet current and future demand in the global insurance marketplace.

Altogether the investment totaled $763 million. Warburg Pincus and Hellman & Friedman led the financing, investing $405 million and $225 million, respectively. Other institutional investors included funds affiliated with GE Capital, GE Asset Management, Trident II, LP, and Farallon Capital Management. Included in the financing, management co-invested a combined $13.15 million. The company also announced that Kewsong Lee, a Managing Director at Warburg Pincus, and Jack Bunce, a Managing Director at Hellman & Friedman, will join the board of directors.

BELLEVUE, WA — Performant Inc., a pioneer in the use of real production workloads for the testing and performance management of mission critical application systems, announced today that it has received $7.3 million in its Series B financing led by Alexander Hutton Venture Partners. Joining Alexander Hutton Venture Partners were new investor Washington Mutual, Inc. as well as Series A investors including Madrona Venture Group, Pinpoint Venture Group and WRF Capital, bringing the total amount raised to $9.8 million.
ANDOVER, MA — CMGI Inc. (Nasdaq: CMGI) today announced that it has retired its Series C Convertible Preferred Stock under the terms of an agreement with the Series C stockholders. The agreement represents successful conclusion of CMGI’s focused efforts to eliminate outstanding debt and convertible preferred instruments.

In June 1999, CMGI completed a $375 million private placement of newly issued Series C Convertible Preferred Stock, the June 2002 maturity value of which is estimated to be approximately $398 million. Under the terms of the agreement, the Series C stockholders retired the obligation in full in exchange for aggregate consideration consisting of: 1) approximately $100.3 million in cash; 2) an obligation to deliver approximately 448.3 million ordinary shares of Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCCW) owned by CMGI no later than December 2, 2002, and, 3) approximately 34.7 million shares of CMGI common stock, which shares shall be subject to certain volume and other trading restrictions.

PEMBROKE, BERMUDA — AXIS Specialty Limited announced today that it has raised more than $1.6 billion through a private placement of its equity securities and has been authorized in Bermuda under The Insurance Act of 1978 to underwrite specialty lines of insurance and reinsurance. Axis Specialty, a global insurance and reinsurance company, was formed in response to a significant market dislocation following the World Trade Center disaster. The founding investor in AXIS Specialty is Trident II, L.P., a private equity fund managed by MMC Capital. Other lead investors include private equity funds managed by JPMorgan Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners, The Blackstone Group and Credit Suisse First Boston.

MONROVIA, CA — American Technologies Group Inc. (ATG) (OTCBB:ATEG) announced today a major reordering of the company which, among others, provides for Dr. Gary Fromm, President of Investment Intelligence, making a $400,000 loan to the Company.

As part of the reordering being announced today, a New York based private equity fund has agreed to provide an equity funding facility of up to $10 million to finance the acquisition of new products and technologies. A full and complete explanation of this will be mailed to the shareholders in a proxy statement in the very near future. It is also planned that the Company will move its headquarters to New York City.

REDWOOD CITY, CA — Niku Corp. (Nasdaq: NIKU) and Vector Capital, a leading enterprise software venture capital investment firm, today announced that Val E. Vaden, Managing Partner of Vector Capital, has been elected to the board of directors of Niku.

NEW YORK — Constellation 3D Inc. (“C3D”) (Nasdaq: CDDD) – developer of Fluorescent Multilayer Disc (FMD) and Card (FMC) technologies, today announced that the Company entered into a financing agreement on November 17, 2001, with an overseas investment group (the “Investor”) and C3D’s majority shareholder Constellation 3D Technology Ltd. (“C3D Tech”) for the investment of up to $20 million into the Company. The financing is subject to certain closing conditions. The Investor is purchasing $15 million of convertible debentures with the right to purchase an additional $5 million of debentures on the same terms.

In addition, the Company announced that it has negotiated an extension of its Promissory Note to Sands Brothers Venture Capital LLC (“Sands”). Upon the funding of the Investor transaction, $2 million of existing Sands debt will be repaid and the remaining $2 million shall have a maturity date of September 24, 2003.

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