News Briefs

November 6, 2014 | The Israeli engineering company Baran Group signed a water infrastructure contract worth $200 million with a West African country. Baran reports that according to the agreement the company will design conveyance systems and collection, treatment and pumping facilities for the country. Completion of the project will take up to 42 months, according to the company. Baran has been working towards increasing its international activity through its subsidiary Baran International, with rumors of another mega infrastructure deal worth $200 million. Baran Group is headquartered in Israel, but has offices in Latin America, Mexico, Germany, Romania, Uzbekistan, Russia, Vietnam,  Thailand and South Africa.

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November 6, 2014 | The Black Eyed Peas member and musician Will.i.am’s latest venture, the i.am PULS smartwatch, will use Israeli technology created by company Beyond Verbal. According to Beyond Verbal, the company has partnered with Will.i.am to create the world’s first wearable technology that reads emotions. Using an application on the watch called Vibe+, users can measure their positivity and share it with their social community. Besides detecting user positivity level, the smartwatch allows its wearers to make phone calls, send text messages using a full keyboard as well as other functions, but the really unique aspect of the watch is Beyond Verbal’s Emotional Analytics technology. Beyond Verbal was launched in May 2013 and its platform is based on over 18 years of thorough research.

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November 6, 2014 | The global payment service BlueSnap announced the closure of a $50 million funding round. Great Hill Partners, Parthenon Capital Partners and BlueSnap CEO Ralph Dangelmaier participated in the round. The company will use the new funds to expand its operations for global operations seeking payment and to pursue strategic acquisitions. BlueSnap has developed a platform allowing for one-click checkout, stress-free cross-border payments and other ecommerce tools, serving shoppers in over 180 countries,  in 29 languages, 60 currencies and with 110 different payment types  BlueSnap has over 110 employees in their global offices located in Boston, Chicago, London, Silicon Valley and Israel.

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November 6, 2014 | The online customer engagement platform LivePerson announced the acquisition of US company Contact At Once! for an aggregate total of $65 million. According to LivePerson, the company will pay $43 million in cash and the remaining $22 million in common stock. Contact at Once!’s live chat and texting software will provide LivePerson clients with further digital engagement capabilities as well as options to expand their client base. In addition, the customer service improvement company reported positive results in this year’s third financial quarter, with enterprise and mid-market sales growth of up to 23 percent. LivePerson was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in New York, NY, with offices in Tel Aviv, Israel and London, England.

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November 5, 2014 | The credit card grey-charge monitoring company BillGuard announced a strategic partnership with Experian Data Breach Resolution. Experian is a subsidiary of one of the United States’ top three credit card bureaus, helping businesses plan for potential risks following data breaches. BillGuard uses big data to monitor credit card charges and bank accounts for grey charges when you make a purchase different than your mobile phone’s location. BillGuard was founded by Yaron Samid and Rafael Ouzan, using crowdsourced data to identify credit card grey charges.

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November 5, 2014 | The Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva and Active Biotech will expand the Laquinimod clinical development program into Phase II trials. The trials will evaluate the ability of the Laquinimod drug to treat primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS) as well as Huntington’s disease. This would be the first treatment for both PPMS and Huntington’s disease beyond symptom management. The study, called ARPEGGIO, will evaluate the efficacy, safety and tolerability of the Laquinimod drug in patients with PPMS, and the LEGATO-HD trial will test the efficacy and safety of the drug use on individuals with Huntington’s disease. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries was founded in 1901 by Eli Hurvitz.

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November 5, 2014 | Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel, will invest $62 million in 16 tech startups, at least three of which are Israeli founded and run. The three Israeli startups include Screenovate, Gigya and Stratoscale. Screenovate offers mobile solutions for entertainment, productivity and education sectors and is headquartered in Jerusalem. Gigya, the cloud-based customer identification platform founded by Israelis Rooly and Eli Eliezerov, received a $35 million investment. Stratoscale, a company rethinking next-generation data centers, also received a heafty sum, $32 million in a financing round led by Intel Capital. Intel Capital is set to invest up to $355 million in technology startups this year.

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November 4, 2014 | The community-led cloud platform empowering graphic and web designers, Webydo announced a new version of their Pixel-Perfect Responsive Editor. The new version of the Editor allows designer to create responsive websites for their clients without having knowledge of code, allowing them complete creative freedom, among other things. With a growth rate of 285 percent over the last six months alone, Webydo is one of the fastest growing design communities on the Internet, serving over 110,000 designers.

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November 4, 2014 | The cloud-based presentation platform Emaze announced that its parent company, Visual Software Systems raised $2 million in Series A funding. Emaze hopes to take on the likes of Microsoft PowerPoint, a program that controls over 90 percent of the market share in presentation platforms. Unlike other PowerPoint challengers, Emaze hopes to provide users with an easy-to-use interface with lots of design options, and the option to create a slideshow presentation on your own, or with other collaborators. All of the work and the presentation itself is shared over the cloud and is accessible from any Internet-connected device. Emaze was founded in 2013 and was cofounded by CEO Motti Nisani and CTO Arie Livshin.

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November 4, 2014 | The creator of a customer identity management platform, Gigya raised $35 million in growth capital. The recent financing round was led by Intel Capital, along with Common Capital Fund, Vintage Investment Partners and existing investors: Adobe, Advance Publications, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Greenspring Associates and Mayfield Fund. As of this round, Gigya will have raised a total of $104 million in funds. Gigya asserts that their unique cloud platform helps business owners to improve their customer experience, as well as identify potential new customers. According to the company, as of this year they will have recorded and processed over one billion customer interactions and logins since the start of 2014.

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November 4, 2014 | Peregrine Ventures sold its 30 percent stake in Neovasc to Fidelity for $12 million, selling 2 million of their 6.7 million company shares, at $6 per share. Peregrine’s holdings in Neovasc, a company that manufactures, develops and markets cardiovascular products, are worth approx. $27.5 million, with Peregrine holding on to 4.7 million of its shares in Neovasc. Neovasc was created through a merger deal led by Peregrine Ventures in 2008, in which two of Peregrine’s companies, Neovasc and B-Ballon merged with the publicly traded Canadian company Medical Ventures Corporation.

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November 4, 2014 | The central nervous system drug developer NeuroDerm filed a revised prospectus with the US Security and Exchange Commission for an IPO on NASDAQ. The company reportedly hopes to raise between $60-82 million at a company values of between $236-290 million, after money. Jefferies and Cowen & Company are the joint bookrunners for the offering, with Oppenheimer and Roth Capital as secondary underwriters. When NeuroDerm completes its IPO, the company join the Israeli record set on Wall Street with 10 biomedical companies trading publicly. NeuroDerm is developing a transdermal delivery system for drugs for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

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November 3, 2014 | According to the Israeli newspaper “Yediot Ahronot,” the international telecommunications company Cisco will lay off approximately 280 employees worldwide. The report stated that the majority of layoffs in Israel would occur in the company’s development center. The move comes after a downsizing movement just eighteen months ago that saw dozens of employees in Israel and worldwide dismissed. Cisco is an American multinational telecommunications company founded in 1984 and headquartered in California.

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November 3, 2014 | Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi’s Forex, CFD and binary options company Markets.com signed a sponsorship agreement with the English Premier League football team Arsenal. According to the agreement, Arsenal will provide Markets.com with exposure on its social and digital media outlets, focusing on customers in Asian markets. The deal will last for two football seasons, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016, and according to some sources, was closed for £1 million (approx. $1.6 million). According to reports, Teddy Sagi was in talks last May to acquire the second-tier English Championship football team Reading.

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November 3, 2014 | According to a “Globes” report, Israeli companies set a record in offerings on the United States’ capital markets. The report asserts that there have been 26 offerings this year, including IPOs and secondary offerings. The offerings made by Israeli technological and biomedical companies raised a record-high $3.6 billion, breaking the record of $3.3 billion in 1999 before the Internet bubble. Of the 14 IPOs offered up this year, only four were made by information technology companies like Mobileye, CyberArk Software and Borderfree. The remainder of the companies were biomedical companies, a fact that highlights the strength of Israel’s biomedical sector this year.

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