Today we’ve had notice that AlertMe, a UK company that develops and sells alarm systems, has raised £8m in series B funding.
Good Energies, Index Ventures, SET Venture Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners were the investors.
Category: Financials
Nortel Files For Chapter 11
Wowser. Nortel, (ex-?)networking giant, have filed for Chapter 11 due to financial difficulties.
In their words …
Nortel made this decision with the unanimous authorization of its Board of Directors after thorough consultation with its advisors and extensive consideration of all other alternatives. This process will allow Nortel to deal decisively with its cost and debt burden, to effectively restructure its operations and to narrow its strategic focus in an effective and timely manner.
Kevin Rose: Pioneering the Downturn As Well?
It’s interesting how a couple of months can change the view you hold of a collection of companies.
These in particular center around Kevin Rose and the companies that he has an involvement in – Digg, Revision3 and Pownce.
It’s not long ago – back in March 08 – that there were rumours that Digg was subject to a bidding war between Microsoft and Google. The tech giants were – rumours told us – battling to outbid each other for the blessed Digg. Figures of $200 million were floated, although the accuracy of the rumours was questioned by Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson.
Continue reading Kevin Rose: Pioneering the Downturn As Well?
Sky UK Raising $600m In Private Bond Issue
We’ve just had notice that the UK side of Sky’s operation, British Sky Broadcasting Group plc, are raising around $600 million through a private Bond issue.
They’ll be paying 9.5% interest, it will mature in 2018 and they hope it to close on or about 24 November 2008.
The full statement is below.
Google News Generated $100m Year
Marissa Mayer, the acceptable face to Google’s tech dork-ery, appears to have slipped up somewhat.
She let it out that Google News — one of the only areas of Google that doesn’t have advertising on — generates them around $100 million a year in referrals to main Google, from the 47 million people a month looking at it.
Vodafone To Buy Back £1Bn Shares
Vodafone Board feels that their shares are undervalued at present, so to build the share price up again, they’ve just sanctioned the self-purchase of up to £1 Billion of their own shares.
The publication of this decision comes the day after a Vodafone’s shared dropped almost 14% over the day, the largest single-day drop in its history.
Q1 Google Result: Income Up 42%
Google’s Q1 2008 results have been published with their income up 42% compared with Q1 2007.
The result include the purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick, although Google state that this was “immaterial to income.” Continue reading Q1 Google Result: Income Up 42%
Sky Files First Loss for Six Years
The interim results for UK satellite broadcaster Sky have been announced, with a £36 million pre-tax loss showing for the six-month
period ending 31 December – its first loss for six years.
Balanced against the financial loss was otherwise positive news, like their ARPU raising to a record £421 per subscriber, an increase in subscribers and a lowering of the customer churn to 10%. Continue reading Sky Files First Loss for Six Years
Palm Increases Smartphone Sales, But Profits Slide
Palm is still battling to regain lost ground with the company posting a quarterly net loss of $840,000, a hefty slump down from the S$16.5 million net income notched up for the same period last year.
The company’s downward slide has been mainly caused by the decline of their traditional PDA (personal digital assistants) market, although their well regarded Treo phones continue to do reasonable business, shifting 689,000 units during the quarter, up 21 percent from last year.
Continue reading Palm Increases Smartphone Sales, But Profits Slide
Vodafone Launches Mobile Banking
Vodafone has shaken hands and heartily slapped besuited backs with its chums at the mobile banking service Monilink to secure a deal allowing their customers to access their bank accounts from mobile phones.
Part of Vodafone’s “Internet On Your Mobile” initiative to give access to fully-featured web sites, the service will let customers with Internet enabled phones go online to check their balance, request a mini-statement and top-up their “pay as you talk” mobile phone balance.
The Monilink service is available for nowt for customers of Alliance & Leicester, First Direct and HSBC, with the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest and Ulster Bank joining the party later this summer.
Continue reading Vodafone Launches Mobile Banking