Companies venture lightly into investments

Posted by on February 27, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly A little more than a half-year after striking an initial partnership, Concur Technologies recently led the second round of a $4.6m funding for RideCharge, a startup that allows users to book and pay for taxis over mobile phones. John Torrey, Concur’s head of business development, told us the company, which provides an [...]

NetQoS back in the market

Posted by on February 26, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly When we caught up with NetQoS last June, the company had just inked its first purchase after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus, taking home trade-monitoring software startup Helium Systems. The Austin, Texas-based network performance management vendor is now ready to continue that shopping. Speaking at the Pacific Crest Securities Data Center Conference on Wednesday, [...]

Startup scrap sales

Posted by on February 25, 2009

With new funding difficult to come by, many cash-burning startups are finding that they have no choice but to take a scrap sale. Those desperate deals cut M&A spending on VC-backed startups in the second half of 2008 by nearly three-quarters over the same period in 2007. From July to December last year, 100 venture-backed [...]

SAP goes (Cog)head hunting

Posted by on February 24, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly Having put a bit of money into Coghead about two years ago through its venture wing, SAP picked up all of the platform-as-a-service vendor in a wind-down sale late last week. Coghead drew in $11m in two rounds from backers El Dorado Ventures, American Capital Strategies and SAP Ventures. American Capital and [...]

‘Little brothers’ eyes get big

Posted by on February 23, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly As virtually all investors are acutely aware, public companies get their valuations reset every trading day. And with the Nasdaq having been cut in half since the highs on the index in November 2007, those valuations are universally being reset lower. That has created a somewhat counterintuitive situation where public companies sometimes [...]

Gaming for consolidation

Posted by on February 20, 2009

As the videogame industry continues its downward spiral, consolidation is accelerating. We separate the acquirers from the targets and speculate about what might come next.

Real deal for Virtual Iron?

Posted by on February 20, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly, Rachel Chalmers Several sources, both from industry and financial circles, have indicated that server virtualization startup Virtual Iron Software is nearing a deal to sell to a strategic buyer. The name at the top of the list? Oracle, which has a Xen-based hypervisor (OVM), but lacks management tools. Virtual Iron would bring [...]

Buyout barons go big, then go home

Posted by on February 18, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly After totaling about $100bn in both 2006 and 2007, the aggregate value of acquisitions by private equity (PE) firms dropped to $27bn last year. And the way 2009 is starting out, we’re certainly looking at another down year for leveraged buyouts (LBOs). So far this year, we’ve seen just half the number [...]

Cisco: not a common-sense shopper

Posted by on February 17, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly Through both direct and indirect cues, Cisco Systems’ John Chambers has created the impression that he’s about set to start wheeling a shopping cart up and down the Valley, grabbing technology companies with abandon. Folks who anticipate a dramatic return of Cisco to the M&A market have been busy putting together a [...]

Informatica: Wheeling and dealing in the Windy City

Posted by on February 13, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly It appears that the Second City is a first stop for M&A at Informatica. The data integration company picked up Chicago-based startup Applimation for $40m on Thursday. And there’s continuing speculation that Redwood City, California-based Informatica will reach for the Windy City’s Initiate Systems for a master data management platform. So, in [...]

keep looking »