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April 19, 2007
Mandriva Linux Raises Capital To Exit Chapter 11
Mandriva, the French Linux distribution, announced raising new capital and a new major shareholder, Occam Capital (which recently did a first closing of its first fund --- more on that soon to come).
Occam has committed about €1.65M and two of its principles will join the Mandriva board once the transaction is completed.
At a valuation of €2M for this round of funding, the firm is currently selling new shares targeting €1.35M (75 percent has already been signed for by existing investors - Millennium Partners, Windhurst Participation, Jacques Le Marois, and François Bancilhon- and Occam).
The publicly-traded Mandriva has struggled since it floated just as the tech bubble burst. This is its second "plan de continuation", the French equivalent of Chapter 11.
We think its investors are getting a good deal. The French company has a well-known global Linux brand. Open source and Linux on the desktop are increasingly being used by Europe's public service administrations (and there's a lot of them over here).
Occam's Laurent Cadieux said as much in a phone interview, adding :
"Linux has been difficult to make money on. Mandriva has been strong on technology and needs some help in marketing/sales and community building. We have the resources to support that..."
The company is going to need a strong financial footing too in order to win contracts in large-sized organizations and if its latest realease is as good as the Linux-specialized reviewers say it is, it will be busy.
Things like it being Wii compatible and offering a super flexible desktop, as well as VOIP support, and virtualization without bloating the size of the code, are what they liked.
"[Mandriva] stands to benefit from the growth in PC purchasing in markets in India, China, South America, and Africa. We think that in three years time there will be one billion new PCs sold and they will be running Linux,"
said Cadieux, referring to the high costs related to using Microsoft's latest OS Vista.
Mandriva is currently offering a version on a USB memory device.
We like the the Metisse desktop wizardry
and that you don't have to buy a new PC running superfast processors to run it
Mandriva has completed a couple of acquisitions recently in Europe and Brazil. Its latest, Linbox, is meant to strengthen Mandriva's position in the French corporate market, as it brings on customers like Renault, Arcelor Mittal, the French Ministry of Interior and the French Prime Minister’s office, and some new products.
View Mandriva
Posted on April 19, 2007 05:53 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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