Angela Sormani

Liftopia, an online retailer of lift tickets and mountain resort activities, has raised $1.3 million in a round led by First Round Capital. New investors Dave Morin and Chris Sacca also participated, along with existing investors and travel technology veterans Erik Blachford and Sam Shank. Liftopia's total capital raised reaches nearly $3 million.

Mid-market investor Compass Diversified Holdings has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its majority owned subsidiary, Staffmark Holdings, Inc. to a subsidiary of Japan-based Recruit Co., Ltd for a total enterprise value of $295 million. Compass anticipates making a gain on the sale of Staffmark ranging between $75 million and $90 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2011.

NewSpring Mezzanine has led a mezzanine investment in Philadelphia-based Cellucap. NewSpring has funded the company with PNC Bank, who provided a senior term loan and a revolving credit line to acquire DISCO. Cellucap manufactures and distributes disposable protective apparel and related products to the foodservice, healthcare and safety markets. The acquistion will further expand the company's product lines with market leading scrubbing and cleaning brands such as Brillo, Grilbrik, Filter Brite, and Big Boss among others.

Arsanis Biosciences, an early stage biotechnology company developing anti-infective human monoclonal antibodies, has been awarded a grant for the development of monoclonal antibody therapeutics against nosocomial infections from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (Forschungs-Forderungs-Gesellschaft or "FFG"), the public funding agency for translational research in Austria. The support from FFG for the first year is 1.19 million euros ($1.63 million); additional funding (up to 70% of the total budget of 12.5 million euros ($17.2 million) for the program) is expected in the following three years.

UK-based Business Growth Fund has backed Statesman Travel Group, an independent travel management company providing a comprehensive service to blue chip corporate and private clients. BGF has invested 4.25 million pounds ($6.71 million) of growth capital in Statesman for a minority stake. The backing will enable the strategic acquisition of Commodore Corporate Travel and will make the combined entity one of the top 10 UK travel management companies in terms of transactional volume, with revenues approaching 100 million pounds ($158 million).

MMC Ventures, UK-based growth company investor, has appointed Simon Menashy to its investment team. Menashy joins from Deloitte, where he was a senior consultant in the TMT Strategy practice. He has advised major telecoms and media clients across Europe including the BBC, BT, Thomson Reuters and several cable operators.

Italian asset manager Azimut and German Earlybird Venture Capital have launched a new venture capital fund investing in the technology sector in Italy.

SL Capital Partners LLP, one of Europe’s most active private equity fund of fund managers has announced a partnership with the Oxford University Private Equity Institute at Saïd Business School, creating an additional research position at the Institute: the SL Capital Partners Research Fellow.

SunBorne Energy has joined hands with Europe-based IPP Eoxis Energy for executing a 15 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) project being built in Gujarat. The project is expected to be operational by December 2011. This represents Eoxis' first investment in India.

OVIA, a multimedia recruitment technology player, has secured its first funding round led by global venture capital firm, DCM. The new funding will be used to further enhance OVIA’s technology platform, expand sales and marketing, and add key employees to its San Francisco headquarters.