Angela Sormani
VC-backed TxVia has apointed Donald W. Layden as an independent director. Txvia is backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Oak Investment Partners. The company provides an advanced operating system to enable emerging payments and financial services.
Open source web server developer NGINX has attracted $3 million in a fully subscribed Series A round. The investment includes funding from BV Capital and Runa Capital and an entity affiliated with MSD Capital, the private investment firm for Dell Inc. Chairman and CEO Michael S. Dell. The funding will be used to support the company's plans for its new commercial arm, Nginx, Inc., and its expansion into the US.
Bay Grove Capital, an investment firm based in San Francisco, has acquired Richmond Cold Storage Company, a third party warehousing logistics company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. RCS will join Bay Grove’s family of cold storage companies, which includes Terminal Freezers, Flint River Services and West Coast Cold, the parent of CityIce and Seafreeze Cold Storage.
New Dehli-based One97 Communications Limited, a mobile Internet company, has secured a significant amount of funding from SAP Ventures.
European private equity firm Vitruvian Partners has invested in College Group, valuing the business at approximately 45 million pounds ($70.3 million). College Group management and staff will continue to retain a substantial equity investment in the business, in partnership with Vitruvian.
eFront, a provider of software for the alternative assets sector, is launching a new benchmarking solution to meet the specific needs of Limited Partners in the private equity sector. The new service, called Pevara, is a web application offering performance monitoring and benchmark analysis. It enables the LP to conduct independent analysis of investment returns, monitor industry performance trends and conduct like-for-like comparisons of investments for consistent, accurate risk reporting and asset allocation monitoring.
CapMan Russia, a Russian private equity fund managed by CapMan, has acquired a 29% share in Russian laboratory analytical equipment manufacturer Lumex Instruments. The company has operations in Russia, the CIS, China, the European Union, the US and Canada. Financial details of the acquisition were undisclosed.
Google has acquired SocialGrapple, a social graph analytics service which started up a year ago.
Renaissance Learning, a provider of technology-based school improvement and student assessment programs for K-12 schools, has received an unsolicited, revised definitive acquisition proposal from Plato Learning. Under the revised definitive proposal, Plato Learning proposes to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Renaissance Learning for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $496.0 million. Renaissance Learning previously announced that the company and the Permira Funds entered into an amendment to the definitive merger agreement dated August 15, 2011 under which a company formed at the direction of the Permira Funds will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Renaissance Learning.
Genpact, a global player in business process and technology management, has acquired High Performance Partners, LLC (HPP) and its Quantum Mortgage Technology. Genpact had previously announced an initial equity investment in HPP in March 2010 and now owns 100 percent of the company.