Private Equity Week Wire for Wednesday 5/2

WASHINGTON — William E. Kennard, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will join The Carlyle Group, one of the leading private equity firms in the world. Kennard, who was FCC chairman from November 1997 through February 2001, will serve as a managing director of Carlyle’s global telecommunications and media investing strategy. He assumes his new position May 14th. Kennard presided over the FCC at a momentous time in the agency’s history. During his tenure, he shaped policies that created an explosion of new wireless phones, brought the Internet to a majority of American households, and resulted in billions of dollars of investment in new broadband technologies. At the same time, he implemented bold new policies to bridge the digital divide in the United States and around the world.

WOODLAND, CA — Captus Networks, the leader in protecting networks from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, today announced that it has raised $16.1 million in second-round funding. The round was co-led by St. Paul Venture Capital and first round investor GMS Capital Partners with additional participation from new investor Celerity Partners. Additional funding was provided by several individual investors.

DURHAM, NC — The Aurora Funds Inc., the RTP-area’s leading early stage venture fund, announced today that it has hired Douglas Gooding to its permanent staff of investment professionals. Gooding was most recently employed with Paradigm Genetics (NASDAQ: PDGM), a publicly traded functional genomics company located in Research Triangle Park. While at Paradigm Genetics, Gooding was involved in business development activity, resulting in significant research deals and collaborations and helped to identify significant strategic growth avenues for the company. Prior to his work at Paradigm Genetics, Doug worked at Incyte Genomics (NASDAQ: INCY) and Stratagene Cloning Systems, both leading genomics companies in California, where he spent five years in research, genomic technology development, and management roles.

FREMONT, CA — Actelis Networks, the first company to boost copper performance to fiber-quality speed and reliability, raised $26 million in its third round of funding, led by Carlyle Venture Partners. Earlier Actelis investors, New Enterprise Associates, U.S. Venture Partners, Walden International, Global Catalyst Partners, and Vertex Management were all repeat investors in the series C round.

SAN DIEGO — WEBcard Technologies, Inc. has just completed its first round of venture capital financing, receiving $500,000 to help the company expand the market presence for its patented WEBcard CD, WEBcard CD-ROM and WEBcard DVD products. Financing was provided by Sunrise Ventures, LLC, a venture capital firm which invests in early stage private companies focused on utilizing the Internet/Intranet infrastructure, enabling technology, e-commerce, enterprise application software, and service and content sectors. A member of the San Diego Tech Coast Angels, a private investor group, provided additional funding.

COSTA MESA, CA — Tickets.com Inc., a leading ticketing solutions provider for live events, today announced it has completed definitive documentation on a $15.0 million, private, preferred equity financing that is expected to fully fund the company through and beyond its achievement of cash flow profitability in late 2001. General Atlantic Partners, LLC and International Capital Partners (ICP), both early investors in Tickets.com, will provide the $15 million subject to shareholder approval.

ATLANTA, GA — Knowlagent, the software company that improves customer contact center performance through its integrated e-Learning platform, announced today that it has closed a $11 million round of financing led by Blue Chip Venture Company in Cincinnati. Other investors in the round included Imlay Investments, First Analysis Venture Capital, Arbor Partners and River Cities Capital Funds. The company will use the $11 million to support the continued development of new and next-generation products, expand its international sales efforts and more efficiently service its customer base.

DUBLIN, CA — Sanrise Group Inc., and its subsidiaries, a privately held global managed storage service provider, announced today that it has successfully completed the second closing of its Series B equity round in the total amount of $115 million. This substantial round positions sanrise as a dominant force in the managed data storage arena, and brings the total amount of equity, debt and lease facilities issued, raised and committed to $203 million since the company’s inception in May of 2000. The Series B investors include: ACON Venture Partners, a Texas Pacific Group affiliate; Comdisco Ventures, a division of Comdisco, Inc. (NYSE:CDO); Crosspoint Venture Partners; Exodus Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:EXDS); GATX Ventures, Inc., a subsidiary of GATX Corporation (NYSE:GMT); Global Innovation Partners; Greenbridge Partners LLC; The Greenspun Corporation; Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE:HIT); Lighthouse Capital Partners; Morgan Keegan (NYSE:MOR); Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Equity Funding, an affiliate of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (NYSE:MWD); Oasis Ventures; and VERITAS Software Corporation (Nasdaq:VRTS).

ARLINGTON, VA — Emtera Corporation, a leading provider of mobile Customer Relationship Management (mCRM) solutions for the retail industry, announced today that it has successfully completed its initial financing. Emtera obtained $1.2 million dollars from Avisent, an early-stage investment vehicle founded by General Atlantic Partners, which focuses exclusively on investing in information-technology, Internet and telecommunications businesses globally and at all stages of the development.

NEW YORK — CertCo Inc., a leading provider of risk management and security solutions for B2B e-commerce, today announced that it secured $20 million in financing from strategic partners andventure capital investors. Participants in the financing include original investors Deutsche AG and Four Partners, an entity of the Tisch Family Interests, as well as new investors Bank One, and Cazenove PrivateEquity, a division of Cazenove & Co. Ltd., one of the UK’s leading independent investment banks. The company also appointed the following new members to its board of directors: ThomasSteinberg, president, Tisch Family Interests; Donald Rice, partner, Ravitch, Rice & Co., LLC; and Tyree Miller, executive vice president, head of treasury management, Bank One. CertCo will use its new financing for working capital, an aggressive customer acquisition campaign and the further expansion of its suite of transaction risk management and PKI-basedsecurity technology solutions. In a separate press release today, CertCo also announced stepped-up plans to target the European B2B e-commerce sector with the establishment of a Londonoffice, to be headed up by Managing Director Susan Codrington.

SAN FRANCISCO — Progress-Putnam Lovell Advisors LLC today announced its fifth investment under the California Public Employees’ RetirementSystem Manager Development Program (CalPERS MDP). The firm is investing more than $2 million in Denali Advisors LLC, a San Diego based Native-American-owned firm specializing ina quantitative value-oriented equity investment strategy. Progress-Putnam Lovell Advisors has also agreed to allocate to Denali $100 million in assets to manage in a US Equity portfolio. Progress-Putnam Lovell Advisors LLC is a joint venture between Progress Investment Management Company, one of the country’s leading multi-manager investment managementspecialists and a member of the Liberty Financial Companies, Inc. (NYSE: L) family of companies, and Putnam Lovell Capital Partners Inc., the private capital affiliate of investment bankPutnam Lovell Securities Inc. Denali was formed by Robert Snigaroff, former Chief Investment Officer at the San Diego County Employees’ Retirement Association (“SDCERA”). SDCERA is also a client of theCompany. Mr. Snigaroff, who is a Native American (Aleut tribe), will serve as both President and Chief Investment Officer of the Company. Snigaroff is a former employee of the AlaskaPermanent Fund.

NEW YORK – A new economic impact study conducted by WEFA and released today by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) revealed that 4.3 million new jobs were created by US companies originally backed by venture capital. Those companies generated $736 billion in revenues in the year 2000. According to the study, venture capital-backed companies represented 3.3% of the nation?s total jobs and 7.4% of Gross Domestic Product in 2000.Regionally, the Southeast experienced the greatest job creation with 1 million jobs represented by venture-backed companies in 2000, followed by California and the Northeast. The consumer industry realized the largest number of jobs created as a result of venture-backed companies at more than 1.1 million in 2000, followed by the computer and medical/health industries. California saw the most venture capital-created revenues with $179 billion in 2000, followed by the Southeast and Southwest. The most significant revenue impact occurred in the computer industry with $204 billion in revenues generated in 2000, followed by the consumer and medical/health industries. The study, the first of its kind, was commissioned by the NVCA and released in New York City at its annual meeting held at the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel. The companies in the WEFA research did not include those that were acquired and absorbed into other organizations, which would raise the totals by at least 30%, to 5.6 million jobs and $956.8 billion in revenue.

SAN FRANCISCO ? Delta Venture Partners (DVP) announced today that Dr. Jonathon Wang has joined the Company as a Partner in the Biosciences Group, which invests in bioscience companies and provides strategic consulting services.  Dr. Wang will also serve as a General Partner in a $50-$100 million USD fund being raised by DVP, with a focus on Chinese information technology and bioscience opportunities. As an Investment Manager at the Walden Group, Dr. Wang managed healthcare investments for the multi-national venture capital firm with $1.3 billion funds. He also served as a consultant at Delphi Ventures, where he identified and assessed healthcare investment opportunities.  Most recently, he was involved with ENFASHION, Inc., a technology enabler for the apparel industry, as co-founder and CFO.  Dr. Wang has served as a consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton and a Project Leader for Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.  He has an M.B.A. from Stanford and a Ph.D. in Biology from Columbia University, where his Ph.D. supervisor was Dr. Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize laureate.

MINNEAPOLIS — Norwest Equity Partners (NEP) announced today that R. William Van Sant has joined the firm as an oOperating pPartner. Van Sant will be involved with strategic planning and corporate governance for several of NEP’s existing portfolio companies. He and will also assess new investment opportunities. Van Sant has held many senior leadership positions in his 40-year career, giving him invaluable management and operating skills, merger and acquisition expertise and a global business perspective. Most recently, Van Sant was cChairman and CEO of Nortrax, Inc., a business formed in 1999 for purposes of acquiring, consolidating and operating John Deere construction equipment distributors. Over the past two years, Nortrax has become the largest North American distributor of John Deere construction equipment through strategic acquisitions, new product introductions and efficient operations integration.

For yesterday?s Wire, click here.