Connie Loizos

CVC Capital Partners, the London-based private equity firm, has announced that its chairman, Michael Smith, will retire in January. Smith will be succeeded by Donald Mackenzie, Rolly van Rappard and Steve Koltes, who will act as co-chairmen of the group.

Beringea, a Detroit, Mich.-based venture and expansion-stage capital investor, has invested $3.2 million in InSkin Media, a London-based advertising network.

ViiV Healthcare, based in London, and Shionogi & Co., based in Osaka, Japan, are revising their relationship. Under the new agreement, ViiV Healthcare will acquire the exclusive global rights to the Shionogi-ViiV Healthcare LLC joint venture assets.

Disney plunks down a whopping $4.05 billion for LucasFilm, Paul Ceglia, the guy who claims to own half of Facebook, loses yet another lawyer, why Hurricane Sandy may spark an electoral storm, and so much more!

Apple's iOS chief is out the door, Apple's senior VP for retail is also gone, Chinese leaders' image takes another hit, Stanford tops the six colleges whose alums attract the most VC financing, and oh so much more!

AOL has a new board member: Dawn Lepore, CEO of the peer-to-peer lending platform Prosper Marketplace. Before Prosper, Lepore was most recently the CEO and chair of drugstore.com, which sold to Walgreens in 2011.

Safeguard Scientifics, the Wayne, Pa.-based, publicly traded holding company with stakes in growth-stage life sciences and tech company, has promoted senior VP and CFO Stephen Zarrilli to the post of CE0. Zarrilli will take the reins on November 1. He succeeds Peter Boni.

Telefonica Digital, a global business division of telecoms giant Telefónica, has acquired the San Francisco-based  video communications platform TokBox for undisclosed terms. Five-year-old TokBox had raised $26 million from investors, including Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and DAG Ventures. PRESS RELEASE: Telefonica Digital today announced its acquisition of TokBox, the leading video communications platform. The acquisition […]

Guanxi, a Cayman-based mobile social network services startup, has closed on an undiscloed amount of Series A funding led by SingTel Innov8 and venture capitalist Tim Draper. Guanxi recently completed its spin-off from mInfo, a Chinese mobile search and marketing provider.

Fifty-nine percent of private equity executives believe their investment activity will rise over the next year, while 33 percent believe it will remain "about the same" and 8 percent expect to decrease their investment activity, according to a recent poll taken by audit, tax, and advisory firm KMPG.