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Euro Ventures - Friday, November 9, 2007

This Week in Euro Tech Ventures

Investments
+ bmp Media Investors and Mangrove have invested an undisclosed amount in Republika Kobiet, the company behind a 'web 2.0 lifestyle portal' targeted at women and based in Poland.

+ Ever since Vente Privée, which sells home-shopping channel-like products on the web, raised capital from Summit Partners at a stellar valuation, we've been keeping an eye on French eCommerce innovators. A couple of deals this week to report along those lines.

+ German startup HumanGrid financed for Mechanical Turk-like business that lets users outsource online tasks.

+ <strong>Xtract out of Finland is is getting its board in place, typically a prelude to a financing round of some sort, as it pulls out the stops to promote its behaviour analytics software to social networking communities and communications companies.

+ Greenhanger has raised an undisclosed amount of capital for its concept to replace metal coat hangers used in dry cleaners with cardboard ones.

+ YouDoo Dolls founders had with winning a Dragon's Den episode, not only getting backing from Dragon's Den jury member Deborah Meaden but also some traffic that apparently was intent on buying.

YouDoo Dolls Became a Hit After Being Featured On British TV

M&A
+ Mapsolute acquired by Navteq for $40M.

+ Ireland's S3 acquires Portuguese VC-backed Acacia Semiconductor.

IPO
+ Sophos, a UK-based anti-virus and security software company, is planning to IPO on the London Stock Exchange, possibly before the end of the year.

+ One week after its IPO on the Swiss Stock Exchange, GPS chipset maker u-blox is looking at a 30 percent gain on its issue price.

Puzzler
+ Name one of the two venture capital firms that backed MutuiOnline, the Italian online mortgage broker that went public this year on the Milan stock exchange.