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Euro Ventures - Friday, December 7, 2007

This Week in Euro Tech Ventures

Features
+ Q&A with the CEO and co-founder of Warp Networks, a three year old Spanish startup that is launching eBox, an open source enterprise network administration platform.

Investments
+ BeCheeky.com, the two year old UK-based e-tailer, has raised funding from YFM Group and Internet-experienced business angels in a £630K round.

+ While we are on this subject of European sexy ventures, two of the founders of recently floated Seloger.com, the France-based real-estate classified site publisher, have reinvested along with new investor 123Venture, in a €1.5M financing round YesForLove, a new cosmetics brand that is dedicated to enhancing sex.

+ High-Tech Gründerfonds and Neuhaus Partners have financed antispameurope.

+ Providence Equity Partners, a media and communications private equity firm, agreed to invest over $200M in Volia Cable, a Ukrainian cable TV and Internet access provider.

+ Streamezzo, the French startup specialized in software that enables "rich media" for mobilephones, has raised a new round of finance to the tune of €15M.

+ Oodrive Technologies, a seven year old French venture specialized in remote backup, online file sharing and collaboration solutions, has raised €4M.

+ Gigle Semiconductor raised $20M.

M&A
+ In a £54M deal, Swedish investment firm Maria Invest AB has sold its online gambling interests in Malta-registered Maria Holdings Limited to Internet gambling group Unibet.

+ Warburg Pincus has acquired a stake in Centrum.cz in a deal that is rumored to value the venture at about €100M.

+ Referencement.com, a French online web marketing specialist with a mkt cap of €29M announced two acquisitions this week, buying a 100% stake in Agorad, an independent interactive media agency, and Daooda an ad network.

+ Glowria, the French DVD rental and VOD startup, has been sold by its French VCs to Netgem for at up to €18.9M .

+ Pennsylvania-based e-commerce solutions provider GSI Commerce has agreed to acquire Manchester-based Zendor.com for approximately $7.9M.

News and analysis
+
+ Contrary to the commonly held belief that the bulk of private technology companies left over from the boom are on the verge of fizzling out, these companies that were "conceived during the 2000 bubble-era comprise one-third of all private technology companies today, and the bulk of them — 70% — have received fresh funding within the last three years.

+ Arma Partners, the London-based investment bank, has a new "whitepaper" available for download that attempts to dig through the "excitement" and "hype" to find out what's real in the SaaS market today.

+ Just who are Europe's hottest software companies?

+ Where are they now: Marc Fleury of JBOSS. The French-born entrepreneur who founded open source company JBoss is still in the US, and he's reportedly taking it easy, doing some gaming, studying some biotech, and being a DJ.