Private Equity Week Wire for Tuesday 1/8

MENLO PARK, CALIF. And GREENWICH, CONN. — The Wall Street Journal is reporting that The Barksdale Group has decided to shut it doors. Founded in 1999, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm tried, unsuccessfully, to raise a second fund last year. Former Barksdale Partner Peter Currie will join General Atlantic Partners LLC as a partner. Currie will be based in General Atlantic’s Palo Alto office. Previously, he was the chief financialofficer of both Netscape Communications Corp. and McCaw CellularCommunications Inc. (currently AT&T Wireless). General Atlantic now has 18 Partnersand more than 130 employees in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America.The firm also announced today that James L. Barksdale, a co-founderof The Barksdale Group with Mr. Currie, and formerly the president and chiefexecutive officer of Netscape, has been named a Special Advisor. Danny Rimer, who was an analyst at one of the investment banks that took Netscape public, will set up a London office for Index Ventures, a Geneva, Switzerland, venture firm co-founded by his brother Neil Rimer. Quincy Smith, who was director of corporate development and investor relations at Netscape, says he hasn’t decided what he will do next, the Wall Street Journal article said. HONG KONG — Baring Private Equity Partners Asia, recently nominated as one of the “Firms of the Year 2001” by the Asia Venture Capital Journal, announced today the appointment of Mr. Edward Yang as Operating Partner for their Baring Asia Private Equity Fund II. Mr. Yang will work with the team led by Jean Eric Salata, Managing Partner of BPEP Asia. Mr. Yang is a veteran of the IT Services industry, with 28 years experience, including serving as EDS Corporate Senior Vice President and President of EDS Asia Pacific Operations from 1992 to 2000. Prior to that he served as Senior Vice President and President of Wang Asia Pacific and Latin America Operations. Mr. Yang?s primary responsibility will be to use his managerial and operational expertise and experience to advise the CEO?s of BPEP Asia?s investee companies. Initially, he will join the board of Accellion, a portfolio company in which BPEP Asia has a controlling interest.AUSTIN, TEXAS — Austin Ventures, one of the nation’s largest venture capital firms and most active semiconductor investors, today announced the addition of Mark Melliar-Smith as a venture partner. Melliar-Smith, who has 20 years of operational experience in the semiconductor industry, joins general partner Stephen Straus and venture partner Jim Clardy in the firm’s active and growing semiconductor practice.SANTA CLARA, CALIF. — Covigo, Inc., the emerging leader in multi-channel application platforms, today announced the completion of an additional round of financing. This latest $4 million infusion led by existing investors, Nokia Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, will enable the company to achieve profitability.

Covigo will continue to be highly focused on its partner-based business model, including licensing the Covigo Platform(TM) to infrastructure software and enterprise applications vendors. In addition, Covigo will continue to provide its software to leading systems integrators for use in multi-channel implementations. The Covigo Platform(TM) is used to deploy applications spanning multiple channels (Web, wireless, voice) and multiple modes (real-time, offline, alerts), leveraging standards such as Java, J2EE and J2ME. Covigo enables software vendors and systems integrators to provide enterprises and carriers with workflow-based multi-channel applications without having to build separate applications for voice, wireless, offline or Web.MENLO PARK, CALIF. — Foundation Capital, a venture capital firm committed to supporting high technology entrepreneurs, today announced that Michael F. Armistead has joined the firm as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Armistead brings over 15 years of senior management, marketing and operational experience in the enterprise software, and Internet industries to Foundation Capital.SINGAPORE — Venture capital company Vertex Venture Holdings Ltd said on Tuesday it expected to suffer losses of between S$140-S$150 million ($75.7-$81.1 million) for 2001.Vertex, the product of a merger between Vickers Capital and Vertex Venture Holdings, said the loss came from lower divestment profits and significant provisions for its portfolio investments.The venture capital arm of government-controlled conglomerate Singapore Technologies forecast a loss of about S$160-S$170 million for the second half of 2001.TEMPE, ARIZ. — Primarion, the IC company that brings wideband power and optical datacomm to microprocessors to unleash system performance, today announced that it completed a $47 million Series C equity financing on December 31, 2001. The round was led by the venture capital group of Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH), one of the leading global investment banks, and Intersil Corporation (Nasdaq: ISIL), a leading provider of power management solutions for PCs, file servers and portable information appliances. The round included continuing investments from venture capital firms Accel Partners; APV Technology Partners; as well as Intel Capital, the venture capital group of Intel; and Koch Ventures, the venture capital group of Koch Industries.

Primarion will use these investments to fund continued development of technology and the productization of wideband power and optical I/O for advanced processors in servers, desktop, and mobile systems.WAYNE, PA. — FreedomPay, Inc., a leading provider of point-of-sale cashless payment and rewards network, today announced that the company has received $8 million in funding from Nokia Venture Partners. This new infusion of capital will be used to support FreedomPay’s continued national expansion of its cashless network for small payment transactions, including the launch of its new system in Canada.SAN FRANCISCO and TARRYTOWN, N.Y. — Bayer Diagnostics, through Bayer Innovation BmbH (a subsidiary of Bayer AG), and Burrill & Company today announced the formation of the Burrill Diagnostics Capital Fund, a new $50-million venture capital fund with an initial closing of $25 million. Additional fundraising for the fund is expected to be completed by June 2002.For yesterday?s Wire, click here

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