LOS ANGELES – The $6.5 billion Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System (LACERS) raised its asset allocation for alternative investments at a November board meeting to 5% from 3% and boosted its target to 7% from 4%, Chief Investment Officer Dan Gallagher said. “What we really want to have funded is 5%,” he said, which […]
OKLAHOMA CITY – The $1.1 billion Oklahoma Police Pension & Retirement System has for the first time carved out $15 million to $17 million of its assets for venture capital investing and plans to hire two or three alternative investment managers early this year. The pension issued a request for proposals for fund managers in […]
PARIS – Sofinnova, S.A. was slated to reach a first and final close on Sofinnova Capital III in mid-December, with expectations of exceeding its FFr 600 ($106.6 million) target. The fund (VCJ, November 1998, page 26) will back early-stage information technology and life-sciences companies, predominantly in France. Limited partners include J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc., […]
NEW YORK – Behrman Capital rounded out its management ranks in November by adding Neil Sandler as a partner. The former investment banker came from BancBoston Robertson Stephens, where he spent two years working on health care. Mr. Sandler also will focus on health-care investments at Behrman, a later-stage venture and buyouts group, that has […]
PALO ALTO, Calif. – Bruce Golden initially joined Accel Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence, and planned to focus only on his next business project. But he soon developed a passion for investing, and the firm took advantage of his operating and Internet experience by officially naming him a venture partner in mid-November. “It was more of […]
PNC Equity Management Corp. not only seeks strong returns from its limited partnership investments but also is equally interested in using those relationships to help the firm make direct investments, says David Hillman, executive vice president of the Pittsburgh-based subsidiary of PNC Bank Corp. As the private equity investment arm of one of the nation’s […]
NEWTON, Mass. – Phase Forward Inc., a provider of Internet-based clinical trial data collection and management solutions, closed an $8 million second round of venture financing in early November. The lead investor was Sprout Group, which joined existing investors Atlas Venture and North Bridge Venture Partners. Sources declined to give details on the size of […]
KIRKLAND, Wash./PORTLAND, Ore. – Olympic Venture Partners (OVP) in December tapped former Microsoft manager Bill Miller as the venture firm’s fourth general partner. Mr. Miller resigned from Microsoft in February 1998 with the intention of taking a year off, but Olympic partners persuaded him to accept the job sooner. Part of Olympic’s motivation for hiring […]
SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Interwoven Inc., a developer of enterprise Web production systems that manage the development and arrangement of Web sites, in mid-November raised $7.2 million from a half-dozen venture capital firms. Foundation Capital led the convertible preferred stock financing followed by Accel Partners, Integral Capital Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, JK&B Capital and Charter Ventures. […]
SAN FRANCISCO – Handspring, a company designing the next generation of personal digital assistants (PDAs), recently raised an undisclosed amount of capital in a first round of venture financing from Benchmark Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers. The company’s founders, PalmPilot developers Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins, plan to make a more consumer-oriented product […]