Dan Primack

Things must be getting lonely in the London office of venture capital firm Accel Partners, as peHUB has learned that partners Kaj-Erik Relander and Simon Levene both resigned within the past several weeks. No word yet on why they left, or if their departures were related. Relander was the more notable of the two, having joined Accel in 2001 after serving as president and CEO of telecom giant Sonera. He later was convicted by a Finnish court of having violated privacy laws while running Sonera -- the court found that Relander had ordered an illegal review of employee phone logs in order to determine who leaked information to the media about an internal company dispute -- but Accel never waivered in its support.

Last summer, I was chatting with a venture capitalist during a tech conference, when Veoh Networks founder Dmitry Shapiro walked by. "Dead company walking," the VC whsipered. Seems he was onto something, as Peter Kafka is reporting that Veoh laid off its workforce yesterday and is expected to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. This comes less than a year after the San Diego-based company cut around one-third of its workforce and installed founder shapiro as CEO, but also less than a year after Veoh beat back a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Universal Music Company.

Solar market consolidation continued today with Silicon Valley-based CaliSolar agreeing to buy Ontario, Canada-based 6N Silicon. No financial terms were disclosed, but VC backers of both companies agreed to invest an additional $22.5 million. This puts CaliSolar's total VC funding at around $85 million, putting it in 18th place among all VC-backed solar companies. I figured it's worth taking a quick look at the top five, since they are the most likely private acquirers going forward:

Intriguing legal kerfuffle in Israel, involving Sequoia Capital and portfolio company SDT, a five year-old maker of what one report described as a “backpack-carried digital nose that sniffs out improvised explosive devices.” SDT was founded five years ago via a merger between M.S. Tech and Israel Military Industries, and has since raised around $6.5 million from Sequoia's Israel affiliate and individual angels. But it has since fallen on hard times (financial crisis and all), and virtually ceased operations last summer. SDP's court-appointed receiver wants approval to sell SDT’s assets for a bit under $1 million to U.S.-based Rapiscan (subsidiary of OSI Systems), but claims that Sequoia and two other shareholders are interfering

Neither Erin nor I could make it down to the annual Wharton Private Equity Conference last Friday, so a group of first-year Wharton MBAs offered to take notes and report back. Get some thoughts from the conference organizers, thoughts on keynotes by John Megrue (Apax) and Dalip Pathak, notes on a panel about the future of private equity and notes from a pair of venture capital panels. Big thanks to Rohan Deuskar, Daniela Stefovska and Carmen Feliciano.

Bain Capital Ventures has quietly closed its fourth fund with $525 million in capital commitments. The Boston-based firm also has hired John Connolly, former CEO of Institutional Shareholder Services, as an operating partner focused on portfolio company management. A few notes: Fund: This vehicle comes in a bit larger than its $500 million predecessor (raised in 2007), but below the $750 million cap that BCV had listed in a regulatory filing last February. Unclear if BCV aimed for $750m and failed, or reevaluated due to: (a) The hellish fundraising environment, and (b) A realization that the current VC market has better early-stage opportunities than later-stage ones (BCV is stage-agnostic).

We have a new contender for most scandalous private equity exec of the year. And, for bonus points, this one also happens to be a peHUB Wire reader. The NY Daily News reports that Giri Sekhar, a managing partner with FA Technology Ventures, has been indicted for trying to blackmail the chief counsel of NY State Comtroller Thomas DiNapoli, in order to secure a $25 million fund commitment from NY Common Retirement Fund. Specifically, Sekhar is alleged to have sent messages threatening to expose the chief counsel’s extramarital affair (which, for the record, DiNapoli’s office denies having occurred).

Will Kohler is leaving Prism VentureWorks after a six-year run, in order to join the Boston office of Summerhill Venture Partners as a partner. He informed his portfolio company CEOs of the move last week, and plans to begin at Summerhill in late February. While with Prism, Kohler has led or co-led investments in such companies as Sonian, The Receivables Exchange, Conduit Labs, Six Degrees Games, Sparkplay Media and ExpoTV. "We're happy for Will, because he gets to become a general partner," says Prism partner Woody Benson. "But we're obviously sad to see him go."

Tucker Twitmyer of EnerTech Capital Partners said during yesterday’s PEA Outlook conference that LPs have successfully pressured certain VC/PE firms to abandon new cleantech investment efforts. Basically a gripe against firms that "stray from their knitting." Twitmyer declined to name specific firms (you should feel encouraged to do so in the comment section), but he did expand on his thoughts via email. I’ve posted them in full after the jump...

New York angel investor Roger Ehrenberg is raising up to $25 million for a venture capital fund focused on "big data" startups. It will be called IA Venture Strategies, and is expected to hold a final close within the next two months. At first blush, this is a surprising development. Ehrenberg has long said that the traditional VC fund model is broken. In fact, he and I discussed that very subject during a panel discussion at Columbia Business School, nearly one year ago to the day (we were in basic agreement). So is this an about-face? No, says Ehrenberg, pointing out several structural differences between IA Venture and typical VC funds. First, and most important, he is not seeking capital from traditional VC funding sources (pensions, endowments, etc.). Instead, he's raising money from people who either are within the "big data" space, or those who could help make valuable introductions to IA Venture portfolio companies. To be very cliche about it, these would be "value-added" limited partners.