Private Equity Week Wire for Tuesday 9/4

BERKELEY, CALIF. and NEW YORK — The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia Business School announced today a joint partnership with The Goldman Sachs Foundation to create the National Social Venture Competition. The competition invites aspiring entrepreneurs to develop plans for businesses that have a clear, quantifiable social return as well as a healthy financial bottom line.

The Goldman Sachs Foundation is providing funding for the competition in the amount of $1.5 million to help build a national platform for social entrepreneurship.

The National Social Venture Competition originated in 1999 as a student-organized social venture competition at the Haas School of Business. In the past few years, the competition has attracted more than 100 teams from business schools across the United States and Europe. The new partnership with Columbia Business School and The Goldman Sachs Foundation will expand the competition’s reach and scale.

Throughout the year, the entrepreneurship centers of the two business schools will coordinate with The Goldman Sachs Foundation to organize and promote national events in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. The Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School will host an inaugural Social Venture Symposium on Oct. 5 in New York City. The symposium will feature a public dialogue with leaders in the social entrepreneurship arena to explore the growing demand and marketplace expectations for social ventures. The 2001-2002 national competition finals, hosted by the Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, will take place at UC Berkeley April 5-6, 2002.

SAN FRANCISCO — TVM Techno Venture Management is pleased to announce the promotion of Devon Giacalone to partner. Devon came to TVM in October 2000 and now leads the new office in San Francisco. She has over 25 years of experience as a venture capitalist, investment banker, and senior executive in biotechnology. She was the president and chairman of Dallas Biomedical, a seed venture capital fund that worked closely with Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

BOSTON — Exchange Applications Inc., doing business as Xchange(TM), Inc. (Nasdaq: EXAP), announced that it has received $20.5 million in financing from Insight Venture Partners, THK Private Equities, and other investors including Andrew Frawley, chairman of the board of Xchange. The financing is in the form of Senior Secured Subordinated Convertible Debentures. The Debentures mature in January 2005 and bear interest at 12% per annum, payable quarterly, at Xchange’s option, in cash or additional convertible debentures and are secured by a security interest in Xchange’s assets. The Debentures are convertible into shares of Xchange’s common stock in an amount equal to 103% of the principal amount being converted divided by $.3183. The Debentures do not have voting rights. DUBLIN, IRELAND & BOSTON — Vordel, whose flagship product TalkXML provides a secure framework for Web services, today announced that it has successfully completed a second round of funding of up to $10 million. The round was led by Elderstreet and includes new investments from DrKW (through a fund managed by its OM Investments team), ICC Venture Capital, Intel 64 Fund and Powerscourt Nominees Ltd., who is an existing investor in Vordel. Vordel also announced the appointment of Simon Cook of Elderstreet and Anne Bannon of ICC to the company’s board of directors.

MANSFIELD, MA & LOS ANGELES — Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT) and Platinum Equity LLC, a leader in acquiring and operating mission-critical technology companies, today announced that Platinum Equity has acquired the Canadian and United States operations of Motorola’s Multiservice Networks Division, which will be known as Vanguard Managed Solutions (VanguardMS). The Latin American and European operations are expected to be acquired within the next 30-45 days. VanguardMS will operate as a stand-alone company focused on the managed network solutions market. Current plans call for the U.S. operations to remain headquartered in Mansfield, MA.DOWNERS GROVE, ILL — The ServiceMaster Co. (NYSE:SVM) announced today that its Terminix business unit has agreed to sell certain subsidiaries of its European pest control and property services operations to Nordic Capital, a Stockholm-headquartered private equity investment firm. Included in the sale are operations in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, where the business is operated under the Anticimex brand name, and Terminix operations in The Netherlands and Germany. Not included in the sale are Terminix operations in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The sale price of the transaction is approximately $93 million in cash and $7 million in seller financing. Proceeds will be used to repay debt and fund the acquisition of Sears Termite and Pest Control business, previously announced on August 20.