Amy Banse, president of Comcast Interactive Media, will head the combined entity, Comcast Ventures, which will focus on digital media, e-commerce and entertainment after its integration of Peacock Fund from NBCUniversal.
Month: May 2011
Daimler drives into Tesla placement
Before its flotation, Tesla had raised more than $220m in venture funding from Daimler, Panasonic, Honda and Toyota and independent venture capital firms.
Monsanto seeds Ceres flotation
Monsanto had bought 3.3 million shares in Ceres’s E round last year at $6.50 per share following a $137m collaboration signed in 2002 applying genomics technologies to identify genes that provide improvements in corn, soybean and certain other row crops, according to its regulatory filing.
Singhal joins Tata Capital
Rajesh Singhal had previously been founding managing partner of Milestone Religare Capital.
Tencent and Expedia book into eLong
Tencent, which in turn is backed by South Africa media group Naspers’ corporate venturing unit, invested $84.4m in eLong for a 16% stake.
Solazyme doubles flotation plans
In March, Solazyme aimed to raise $100m but now said it would issue 11.5 million shares, including 1.5 million if demand is strong enough as a so-called greenshoe allotment, at between $15 and $17 each. At the top end of its pricing range, Solazyme would have an initial market capitalisation of $965m.
SmallWorlds gains $2.5m
Disney’s Steamboat Ventures owns about 7% of SmallWorlds, which was launched in 2008 and has nearly six million registered players.
Zimory eyes flotation
Zimory, a Germany-based cloud computing company backed by local phone operator Deutsche Telekom’s corporate venturing unit, is reportedly planning to float its shares in the US in 2013. Rüdiger Baumann, chief executive of Zimory, told newswire Reuters: "One option, by 2013, that we are really considering seriously is to run an IPO [initial public offering],… Continue reading Zimory eyes flotation
Fusion-io’s buoyant flotation plans
Fusion-io will issue 10.76 million shares with its owners selling 1.5 million at up to $15 each, before 1.85 million shares can be sold if demand is strong enough.
Intel takes total to $10bn
Intel Capital invested $24.5m in its latest four deals to take its total to $10bn invested over 20 years.
UK bank fund to work with corporations
The Business Growth Fund (BGF) has been launched by five banks to invest up to £2.5bn ($4bn) in UK smaller and medium sized businesses. The corporate venturing fund will invest between £2m and £10m per business that has an annual turnover of around £10m to £100m in return for a minimum 10% equity stake and… Continue reading UK bank fund to work with corporations
Best Practices Supplement: May 2011
Supplement covering the best practices shown by the industry over the past year as well as award winners from the inaugural Global Corporate Venturing event.
EIF signs up six strategics
Six strategic investors have backed the public and private-backed European Investment Fund’s (EIF) first corporate venturing programme. The EIF is Europe’s largest investor in independent venture capital funds with €4.6bn committed and has been working on providing wider coverage of the early-stage market by setting up complementary programmes to help angel and corporate investors, as… Continue reading EIF signs up six strategics
Companies outperform by venturing
Research by Gary Dushnitsky, associate professor at London Business School, revealed at the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium on Wednesday found the outperformance covered both a company’s market value to book value ratio and their innovation capacity, as judged by patents.