WHEB Ventures, one of Europe’s leading clean technology private equity and venture capital firms, has achieved the final closing of its second clean technology fund, WHEB Ventures Private Equity Fund 2 LP, at £105.4m (€125m-$145m).

James McNaught-Davis, WHEB’s Managing Partner, said: “We are very pleased to announce the final closing of our second cleantech private equity fund. Raising over £105 million during the deepest recession since the 1930s is an achievement. WHEB Ventures is one of very few cleantech venture capital firms to have raised significant amounts of capital since September 2008.”

WHEB Fund 2’s investors are a mix of institutions and family offices. The institutional investors include the European Investment Fund, the Environmental Innovation Fund managed by Hermes and a leading US fund of pension funds. The family offices comprise a range of leading industrial and financial families including the Bamfords (who own JCB plc), the Goldsmiths, Lord Jacob Rothschild (Chairman of RIT plc) and Simon Robertson (Chairman of Rolls Royce plc).

“The WHEB team now looks forward to focusing its efforts on investing this new cleantech fund while continuing to support our existing portfolio of investee companies, some of which should be ripe for exit during the next 12 months.” said McNaught-Davis.

WHEB’s Fund 2 has made six investments since its first closing in July 2008. These investments address markets in the energy efficiency, green industrial processes and waste management sectors.

Huddle, the real time collaboration startup based in the Uk, just announced a major investment and the opening of a US office.

The funding was led by Matrix Partners, an investor in Apple, HubSpot and Gilt. Existing investors Eden Ventures and Huddle’s chairman Charles McGregor also participated in the round.

The London-based company is already profitable and will quadruple in size in the next few years, said Alastair Mitchell,

Huddle’s CEO. Mitchell will move to the US and the company will use the latest funding to continue building its US customer base, which includes Disney and Procter & Gamble.

Huge congratulations to the very friendly team at Huddle for keeping the eu scene interesting to foreign investors, I am sure they will have a very successful adventure.

Read more on their blog and Techcrunch.

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  Austrian venture capital house GCP gamma capital partners has sold online trading platform FatFoogoo to NASDAQ-listed e-commerce group Digital River. The exit values FatFoogoo at $10m and GCP has further agreed an earnout provision.
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  GrandCentrix GmbH, a Cologne, Germany-based start up which develops a “Smartphone Analytics” technology, has received an undisclosed investment from High-Tech Gründerfonds.The company develops and provides a Platform as a Service (PaaS) which allows suppliers of interactive mobile value added services to achieve a comprehensive consolidation of mobile user identities.
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  EnjoyVenture has led a second round of financing for amedo Smart Tracking Solutions GmbH.
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  I-Source has led a €3m first round of financing in Compario, an e-commerce company, along side XAnge Private Equity.
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  MMC Ventures has invested an undisclosed amount in mobile telecommunications software designer Creativity Software in return for a significant minority stake.
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  Belgian provider of payment solutions Clear2Pay has acquired Jware Technologies, an internationally operating software technology provider of eCommerce and mobile payment solutions.
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  Qualitas Private Equity has increased its stake in social networking site Tuenti Technologies to 30%.

YFM Private Equity has invested £300,000 in UK software vendor, FreshTL.

The financing is part of a £600,000 co-investment deal with Greener House Investments, and marks YFM’s first investment from the North West Interim Venture Capital Fund.
FreshTL has created a crowd computing platform that is a combination of software from IBM and Bricsys – a Belgian software vendor.

Yoom.de, an innovative online platform for tenant-to-tenant residential real estate transactions, has raised further growth capital from Earlybird Venture Capital. Currently, Earlybird manages over 430 million Euros of assets for an international investor base investing in innovative, fast growing companies with outstanding management teams and high growth potential in international markets. Earlybird’s portfolio currently includes more than 25 companies in seven countries, they invested in over 70 companies and scored several successful trade sales and IPOs.

The company received seed financing from angel investors in spring 2009 while the new round is rumored to be in the single-digit million Euro amount,  following its successful market entry.

Hopefully they will use the money to put up an english version and enter other european markets.

Malte Niebuhr, Managing Director at Yoom.de, is delighted: ”Earlybird Venture Capital is a high-class investor who has already very actively supported us during our start-up phase and continues to do so in the growth phase we are now entering and very much looking forward to.

Yoom.de enables current and new tenants, landlords and asset / facility managers to efficiently execute the tenant changing process without involving real estate agents, whilst at the same time providing an economic benefit for all parties by revolutionising the value chain.

Dr. Christian Nagel, Managing Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital, comments: “Yoom.de is an innovative business model with the potential to eliminate a market inefficiency – namely high real estate agent commissions without agents providing a noticeable service or value-ad in return. The first transactions on the platform have proven that the model offers significant advantages not only to previous and subsequent tenants, but also to landlords and asset / facility managers compared to the estate agent-model. We are very convinced of the business idea.”

High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), DuMont Venture and bAV Consult have sold their stakes in northworks Software to games provider Travian Games in early March.

Now, the same High-Tech Gründerfonds, now together with RapidTainment, have also made a seven figure seed round in online game company UP Web Game GmbH.
“People enjoy playing with each other,” the founders Ibrahim Evsan and Thomas Bachem comment “and the Internet makes it possible to realize completely new concepts.” Evsan and Bachem have developed the idea behind the game since 2005, until they put it aside for some time in order to found the video platform sevenload. “However, we are entrepreneurs, and sometimes you can’t let an idea go. This game is one of those very special projects, and we are happy to finally implement it together with strong partners”.

Tobias Hartmann, who joined end of 2009 as co-founder: “Our two investors complement each other perfectly. RapidTainment AG is a very powerful partner with an exciting strategic vision, while HTGF contributes an excellent VC network and a high degree of professionalism”.

ClickandBuy is to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG. Via its venture capital company, T-Venture, Deutsche Telekom has held shares in ClickandBuy since 2006 and currently owns 20.2 per cent of its shares.

Other investors included Intel Capital and 3i. Deutsche Telekom has now acquired all remaining shares in the internet payment service provider ClickandBuy. The agreement was finalized yesterday. The supervisory bodies of the companies concerned and the UK’s Finacial Services  Authority (FSA) have already approved the process.

Klaus Konrad, Investment Director of Intel Capital: “ClickandBuy has become one of the top three online payment providers in the world and is a European investment success story.This shows that even in challenging economic periods, it is possible to grow top performing organizations through great management and the right investment strategy.”

ClickandBuy’s CEO, Charles Fraenkl, welcomed the deal: “Our minority shareholders T-Venture and Intel Capital with their dedication and commitment have contributed a lot to the success and growth of ClickandBuy.With the support of our new shareholder, ClickandBuy, already one of today’s leading providers of online payments solutions, will continue to strengthen and expand its market position in the future. ClickandBuy is in an exceptionally good position and is very happy about the huge advantages this synergy contains regarding the realisation of its global strategic goals which will be made possible through the involvement of Deutsche Telekom.”

ClickandBuy is one of the leading payment services in the internet.Certified by McAfee and tested by Germany’s Technical Inspection and Testing Association (TUV), this online payment system is used for internet purchases by over 13 million people. Having doubled its turnover generated by traders and end customers to EUR 922 million (TTV) in 2008, the ClickandBuy Group first crossed the billion euro threshold in 2009.

Over 16.000 online traders use ClickandBuy’s e-payment system for their e-commerce, retail, online entertainment, and paid content & services billing, including Deutsche Telekom, Scout24 Group, Apple iTunes, Napster, Orange, msn, AOL, Meetic, Parship, Electronic Arts (EA), Codemasters, McAfee, Panda, RTL, Playboy, Financial Times Deutschland, Foto.com, Deutsche Boerse Group, KPMG, Yamaha, Digital River, Redcoon, bonprix (Otto Group).

Founded in 1999, ClickandBuy represents over 10 years of experience and expertise in the e-payment market. The online payment system is operated by ClickandBuy International Ltd. in London. As an e-money institution licensed by the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA), ClickandBuy’s complete service includes 120 currencies and offers 50 national and international modes of payment throughout 31 countries.

This is not so new, but it has been overlooked by the media, while I think it’s a very important event in the european venture capital landscape.

BaltCap has been around since 1995 and has managed four private equity and venture capital funds with total capital of €130m.

In January the closed a new €30M fund that will consist of €20m provided by EIF managed JEREMIE Holding Fund and €10m raised from local private investors, including Parex Asset Management, Hipo Fondi, LKB Krajfondi, Pirmais Slegtais Pensiju Fonds and high net worth individuals.

The fund will provide start-up and expansion financing to companies with established operations and growth potential taking equity stakes of between €300,000 and €3m, with the aim to build a portfolio of 15 to 20 investments.

Plus notably, BaltCap is the first venture capital fund to successfully complete private fund raising under the European Investment Funds managed JEREMIE initiatives in Europe, and the first structured private equity fund to be raised in the Baltics since the economic crisis hit the region.

There has been immense interest in the App Store. It has 28,000 developers who have made 140,000 apps to date. It’s amazing how much energy has been diverted to the iPhone and now the iPad platform. In its 18 month history, the App Store has a dramatic impact on our lives, not just as consumers, but has changed businesses around the world. It amazes me.

What I have seen:
Developers quitting their jobs and starting their own companies selling apps. Companies allocating resources and departments to making apps. VCs investing $24 million into an iPhone app and creating funds dedicated to app development. Companies piggybacking on the usefulness of apps. Companies extending their service to mobile. Millions of websites reviewing apps. Companies being threaten by apps.

I’m not even mentioning the impact of the iPhone itself.

If apps are the equivalent  of software, then Apple is Microsoft now. If the app store is the web, then Apple is Yahoo. I wonder who will emerge as Google. Just a thought.

Sofinnova Partners, a Paris-based venture capital firm, announced today the closure of its sixth fund, Sofinnova Capital VI, bringing in €260 million.

The firm is over 35 years old, and has backed nearly 500 companies; it has around €1 billion of funds under management, an office in San Francisco and an awesome track record.

The investors that fueled the fund include CDC Entreprises, Industrial & Financial Investments Co., JP Morgan Asset Management, funds advised by Partners Group and Skandia Life Insurance Company.

Denis Lucquin, a managing partner of Sofinnova Partners commented “Given the context of the global economy and coupled with our successes during the past 12 months, the closing of our sixth fund is testimony to the fact that our investors recognize our solid investment style and our ability to generate returns, even during turbulent economic times”.

Sofinnova Capital VI will invest in all kind of areas, its former investments (already are in healthcare therapeutics, medical devices, green chemistry, wireless and mobile technologies.

The portfolio companies include Celsius, CoAxia, Inc., Crescendo Biologics Ltd, DNP Green Technology, Inc. , Flexion Therapeutics AG, MD Start, Mydeco (UK) and Sagem Wireless (France).

Concluding, Lucquin added: “With the successful trade sales of our portfolio companies and the IPO of Movetis, 2009 confirmed that Sofinnova Partners is a major player in backing entrepreneurs and building world leading technology companies.  This to us proves that one can make money with European Venture.”