Early-stage venture capital firm Atlas Venture has entered into a multi-year collaboration with biopharmaceutical company Shire Human Genetic Therapies. Shire and Atlas will work together to identify strategic investments for early stage venture creation around rare genetic diseases.
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Daily deal company LivingSocial disclosed in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it has raised $176 million in new financing, with plans to raise a total of $400 million.
Read more »Whistleblowers have been in the news as of late, with several putting themselves in line for massive paydays.
Read more »San Diego-based OneRoof Energy, a solar leasing company, has received $3 million from the clean tech investor Black Coral Capital, money that will be used to expand its current markets and launch into new ones, including Hawaii.
The company raised $50 million from Black Coral, Hanwha International, and U.S. Bancorp last fall to help create a “SolarSelect Lease” program that allows homeowners to lease solar panels with no upfront payments.
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Recurly, a San Francisco-based provider of billing solutions for subscription-based businesses, has raised $6 million in a Series A financing round led by BV Capital, and including Polaris Venture Partners, Harrison Metal Capital and FreeStyle Capital.
The company previously raised a $1.6 million seed round in 2010 led by Polaris Venture Partners. Other investors in that round had included Harrison Metal Capital, FreeStyle Capital, Dave McClure, Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant.
Read more »How nasty is the dispute over bond putbacks getting?
The litigation has been testy, to be sure. But now a lawyer hired to represent banks in a dispute with bond insurer MBIA has accused the CEO of MBIA of insider trading. According to DealBook, the lawyer has that Joseph Brown Jr., MBIA's chief executive, was "pregnant with inside information" about MBIA's pending February 2009 restructuring "when he bought his company's stock in the months before the announcement." The accusation was made at a hearing late Friday in a federal court.
Read more »Nashville-based New Wind has secured over $1 million dollars in a second round of venture capital funding. The company is a distributor of small-wind vertical-axis wind turbines and other sustainable energy products.
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Nashville’s own New Wind, LLC, a distributor of small-wind vertical-axis wind turbines and other sustainable energy products, just received more than $1 million dollars in a second round of venture capital funding.
Read more »As 2011 ended, we unfortunately grew accustomed to a steady stream of bad news about the banking industry. But in reality, this was primarily a big bank phenomenon.
Read more »Elo7, a marketplace for buying and selling handicraft products in Brazil, has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from Insight Venture Partners. Terms of the round were not released. The money will be used for marketing, and other growth efforts. PRESS RELEASE Elo7, the first and largest marketplace for buying and selling handicraft products in [...]
Read more »Netflix chief Reed Hastings led an $11 million round for DreamBox Learning, investing through the Charter School Growth Fund, the company announced Wednesday. Also investing in the round were venture capitalist John Doerr, publicly traded GSV Capital Corp. and individual investor Deborah Quazzo. The Web-based learning company was founded in 2006 in Bellevue, Wash., and acquired in April 2010 by the Charter Fund in partnership with Reed Hastings, the company said.
Read more »Raj Rajaratnam is in jail serving an 11-year sentence, but the historic insider trading investigation that landed him there isn’t going away.
Read more »Digital marketing technology company DataPop has raised $7 million in Series B funding. MK Capital led the round, with participation from existing investors Rincon Venture Partners, IA Ventures, Momentum Ventures and Accelerator Ventures.
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Read more »It's assumed that Steven Cohen, the brash billionaire founder of SAC Capital, is a target of the on-going insider trading investigations.
Neither he nor his company has been charged as yet, nor is there any suggestion that charges are coming anytime soon. But he qualifies as a massive fish, and you can bet the feds are considering his case thoughtfully. They would love to indict someone of his stature.
Read more »Edmodo, a San Mateo, Calif.-based online network for teachers and students in K12 schools, has raised $15 million in Series B financing. Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital led the round and, as a result, Greylock’s Reid Hoffman has joined the company’s board along with Benchmark’s Matt Cohler. Edmodo’s existing investors include Union Square Ventures and Learn Capital, the company said.
Read more »The debate over too big to fail has kicked up again.
To add to the discussion, a professor at Seton Hall Law School has issued a paper that takes a look at how Bank of America might be liquidated should it run into financial problems ahead--an interesting hypothetical, to be sure. The general regulatory view is that the living wills that banks are required to submit in conjunction with the Dodd-Frank Orderly Liquidation Process will suffice in winding down large troubled banks without taxpayer support.
Read more »Deutsche Bank has taken a page from Morgan Stanley playbook on capping bonuses. But they have deferred bonuses awards (cash and stock) in excess of 200,000 euros, or about $265,000. Recall that Morgan Stanley deferred cash bonus awards over $125,000. At Deutsche Bank, awards over 200,000 will be paid out half in cash and half in stock over three years. And awards below 200,000 will also be half cash, half stock. Article
Read more »The Bank of America annual meeting was largely a success for management.
Read more »The investigation into whether banks manipulated LIBOR and TIBOR continues to heat up. The latest: Swiss regulators are looking into evidence that 12 European and Japanese banks conspired to manipulate rates to their advantage. Probes are on-going in several countries, and several suits have been filed, including one by Charles Schwab against 11 top banks. At least one bank, UBS, has cooperated on various aspects of the probe.
Read more »Morgan Stanley bowed to the inevitable and announced a round of job cuts that surprised no one.
The bank will cut 1,600 jobs in the first quarter from all levels and all geographic locations, according to statement. The bank thus becomes yet another premiere firm to downsize, joining the likes of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and a bevy of big European banks. The cuts will reduce the headcount by about 2 percent. It's unclear how large the inevitable charge against earnings will be to pay for the cuts.
Read more »There are benefits to running a wildly popular hedge fund.
Consider the Brevan Howard Master fund, which was one of the top performing funds last year. It gained about 12 percent, compared with an average decline of about 5 percent across the industry. The Master fund has generated positive returns every year since it was launched in 2003. Small wonder then that more investors are clamoring for a piece of the pie. Unfortunately, the fund is closed, as you might expect.
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