New Fluke Venture fund raises $57 million
|
BELLEVUE — Fluke Venture Partners has raised a pool of about $57 million for its second fund and expects to raise a total of $70 million by midsummer, the firm said yesterday.
The second fund, Fluke Venture Partners II, received a Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) license last week from the Small Business Administration, which gives $2 in government funding for every $1 raised. Institutional investors put up more than $19 million, and the SBA added about $38.5 million. The new fund will focus primarily on information-technology and health-care companies in the Pacific Northwest.
The fund has raised $15.1 million from Washington state investors, $2.5 million from Oregon, and the rest from investors in New York, California, Ohio, Wyoming and Minnesota.
Digital Farm to join game-maker Screenlife
SEATTLE — Screenlife, Seattle makers of the DVD-based board game Scene It, was scheduled to announce today that it acquired the digital media design studio Digital Farm. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Seattle startup helped Screenlife develop the DVD enhancement technology that forms the basis of the Scene It game.
Users watch a DVD of Hollywood movie clips and answer trivia questions to move around a game board.
The technology allows DVD players to randomly access the hundreds of video clips and puzzlers, while keeping track of what has already played.
Digital Farm will help develop new DVD games and entertainment products for the company.
Turn in Microsoft case boosts Burst shares
WASHINGTON — Burst.com shares rose 13.9 percent yesterday after a U.S. judge ordered Microsoft to search a computer to explain why its Windows division chief, James Allchin, told employees to destroy e-mails older than 30 days.
Thursday's order by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in Baltimore may increase chances Microsoft will be coaxed into a multimillion-dollar settlement of a patent-infringement and antitrust suit by Burst, a provider of software for broadcasting audio and video over the Internet. If the case goes to trial, Burst lawyers want Motz to instruct the jury it can infer from elimination of e-mails that Microsoft destroyed incriminating evidence.
"It seems that the judge is not looking terribly favorably at Microsoft's defense of this," said Kim Redding, who owns 34,000 Burst shares and is a principal of KG Redding & Associates in Chicago, which manages $700 million of fund money.
Redding, Burst's fourth-largest shareholder, said his investment was "sort of speculation on Microsoft being the bad guy" in the federal suit.
Burst's shares rose 15 cents to $1.23 in over-the-counter trading.
Nation / World
FCC reverses its OK of Nextel airwave plan
WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission has pulled back its approval of a plan backed by Nextel Communications to secure valuable new airwaves on which to transmit its phone traffic, sources close to the commission said.
Nextel's cellphone systems interfere with police and emergency radio systems around the country. To remedy the problem, Nextel proposed giving up some of the airwaves to which it has rights and offered to pay $850 million to move public-safety agencies to less-crowded frequencies. In return, it wants the rights to airwaves in the 1.9 gigahertz range. Nextel's rivals have lobbied against that proposal, arguing that Nextel should pay more and get less-valuable airwaves in the 2.1 gigahertz range.
In early April, a majority of the five commissioners, including Chairman Michael Powell, voted in favor of Nextel's plan. But this week Powell pulled his vote supporting the 1.9 gigahertz exchange, increasing the possibility that Nextel may be forced to take the frequencies it says it will not accept, sources close to the FCC said.Compiled from Seattle Times business staff, The Washington Post and Bloomberg News.