smac partners Fund II has acquired stakes in 10 portfolio companies from Vertex Venture Capital.
smac partners Fund II has acquired stakes in 10 portfolio companies from Vertex Venture Capital. smac partners is a venture capital firm in the Information and Communication Technologies sector (ICT). To finance the deal, smac partners was backed by Headway Capital, an independent UK-based secondary firm. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
‘Vertex is renowned for its excellent investment choices. We are delighted to have arranged the acquisition of this portfolio and we are also pleased about the confidence Headway Capital has put into the deal. The portfolio will be continuously developed over the next three to five years through experience in the ICT-industry and further financing rounds’, says Dr. Dietrich Ulmer, Managing Partner of smac partners.
Yoram Oron, Founder and Managing Partner of Vertex Venture Capital adds: ‘We reached the tenth year of our fund and sought a partner who can continue to support our portfolio investments. We chose smac partners, because smac has been a very reliable co-investor in the past with comprehensive experience in Israel. We are confident the companies will continue their successful development.’
Christiaan de Lint, Partner at Headway Capital says: ‘We are delighted to back smac partners in this transaction. The Vertex-portfolio companies have already set standards in their respective fields and we look forward to supporting them in the future. This deal perfectly matches our strategy: complex, niche secondary directs with quality assets and a strong general partner’. Headway purchased two other secondary direct portfolios in 2007, one in Germany and one in France.
The portfolio includes technology leaders such as:
- Runcom Technologies (Rishon Lezion, Israel) heads the development of Mobile WiMAX with its groundbreaking silicon solutions. The recent announcement by the International Telecommunication Union that WiMAX has been approved as a 3G IMT-2000 standard is a colossal achievement for Runcom which is pioneering the OFDMA technology since its early days.
- Flash Networks (Herzlia, Israel) is a leading provider of quality-of-experience (QoE) solutions that accelerate mobile Internet adoption by empowering improved user experience. The company serves a growing installed base of over 40 top-tier mobile carriers worldwide such as T-Mobile, Vodafone and Orange.
- Image ID (Hod-Hasharon, Israel), a multinational company with partner networks in the US, in Europe and in Japan, develops and markets large field-of-view, traceability solutions for logistics and manufacturing applications. Its unique imaging-based technology is an effective alternative to RFID for rapid identification and tracking of assets. It is currently being used to track over 1 million assets every day, worldwide.
‘We regard this transaction as an important step to systematically grow our business. We are actively evaluating further secondary opportunities in Israel and beyond’, says Dr. Ingo Potthof, Partner at smac partners and responsible for investments in Israel.
Other transactions of smac partners in 2007 include the sale of the Swedish GPS-company NordNav to the British world leader in Bluetooth technology, Cambridge Silicon Radio.
