Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) will probably soon finish raising a further $15 million for its third fund.
JVP III was founded in 1999 with $161 million. Major investments included Chromatis Networks (which gave a $25 million return, in addition to the $140 million return for JVP II), Cyoptics, Cogent Communications of the US, Celltick Software Technologies, Sphera, Sheer Networks and Native Networks.
The additional financing is intended for existing portfolio companies, in order to prevent dilution of JVP's stakes. Most secondary rounds like JVP's are made under very generous terms for the investors. Management companies do not demand fees for the added money and their share in capital gains is usually halved from 20% for an ordinary fund to 10% in a follow-up round.
JVP is also looking for new members for its management team. Reports circulated today that it was negotiating with Dr. Gideon Shichman, who recently left Vertex Management Israel, and Amnon Yacoby, who founded Floware and was recently co-CEO of the BreezeCOM-Floware merger Alvarion (Nasdaq: ALVR).
JVP declined to comment about the candidates, but stated the company was talking with scores of individuals about joining it as managers or partners.
Jerusalem-based JVP manages funds worth $660 million. Its current JVP IV fund has over $400 million.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on May 20, 2002