Private Equity Week Wire for Tuesday 2/27

NEW YORK — Pequot Private Equity Group, the direct venture investment arm of Pequot Capital Management, Inc., today announced the final closing of its $725 million Pequot Private Equity Fund III, L.P. (“PPE III”), Pequot’s third expansion-stage venture fund and its fifth venture fund overall. PPE III will finance companies with high-growth business models in the telecommunications infrastructure, e-business and healthcare markets.

DOWNERS GROVE, IL — WeServeHomes.com announced today that it had secured $15 million in additional financing from its two initial investors, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the nation’s most respected and successful venture capital firms, and ServiceMaster, the world’s largest and most admired Fortune 500 commercial and residential outsourcing company. The money will be used to support the company as it launches nationally in the spring of 2001.

WESTMINSTER, CO — Finali Corp., the premium provider of automated and live online customer care solutions, today announced it has closed $20 million in Series B funding from leading venture capital firms. Finali received funding from new investors, The Hillman Company, Hexagon Investments and Tucker Anthony Sutro alongside additional funding from previous investors including SOFTBANK Venture Capital, Sequel Venture Partners and Boulder Ventures, Ltd.

RESTON, VA — SevenSpace, a provider of advanced management and monitoring services to corporations deploying Internet-based applications, today announced that it has secured new capital — totaling $45 million — from an elite group of private equity investors led by Lehman Brothers Communications Fund L.P. and Greenbridge Capital. Returning for this second round of Series B financing are Spectrum Equity Investors and Trinity Ventures, both lead investors in SevenSpace’s initial round of funding. As part of this new financing, SevenSpace’s Board of Directors will grow to include Michael Yagemann, founder of Greenbridge Capital LLC and James Peet, Managing Director at Lehman Brothers.

HERNDON, VA — Certia Incorporated, a leading provider of solutions for securing and controlling e-business transactions, communications and content over the Internet, announced it has received a commitment of $6 million in investments. In a third round of funding led by ABS Ventures, Certia will use the most recent investment to further extend deployment of Certia products.

TORONTO — Jefferson Partners, one of Canada’s leading venture capital companies, announced today that one of its investee companies, Aquilium Software Corp., has completed a $19.6 million private placement, including a $5.0 million investment from Jefferson through its Jefferson Partners TechnologyFund. The private placement was completed for Aquilium’s coincident acquisition of MDR Technologies Inc. of Oakville and their amalgamation with Switchview Inc. of Waterloo to form MDR Switchview Global Networks Inc. MDR Switchview began trading yesterday on the Canadian Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol MSW.

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO — USA.NET, the global eMessaging Service Provider, will provide corporate messaging services to several venture capital companies including Applied Tech Products, Chazen Capital and IDG Venture Investment. By outsourcing their mission-critical eMessaging needs to USA.NET, these companies are able to focus on their core business initiatives instead of worrying about the hassles associated with managing an in-house email system.

WITTERSWIL, SWITZERLAND — Zeptosens AG announced today that it has secured CHF 14 million (Euro 9,1 million) of second round financing. The transaction was led by TVM Techno Venture Management and joined by Swiss Life Private Equity Partners as well as private investors. The capital raised will fuel the company?s accelerated development and production program for its novel ultra-sensitive, proprietary microarray readout system, ZeptoREADER, and will catalyze the development of the ZeptoGENE DNA and the ZeptoMARK protein microarray product family.