Roundup, deals, IPOs

GT Solar Pulls Off IPO, Esther Dyson and Tim O’Reilly Back Good Data, BioEnergy Bonds with OmniGene, & More Deals News

Rebecca Zacks 7/28/08

On the up side, the IPO drought was broken by a New England company. On the down side, the stock took a bit of a tumble. That and the rest of last week’s deals news below.

—GT Solar (NASDAQ: SOLR) raised about $500 million for its parent company, which sold 30.3 million shares of the Merrimack, NH-based manufacturer of solar panel production equipment in the first PE-backed IPO since the end of the first quarter. Shares closed the week at $12.59, however, down 24 percent from their debut price of $16.50.

—Tech luminaries Esther Dyson and Tim O’Reilly were among the seed-stage backers of Good Data, a Cambridge, MA-based business intelligence software startup. Good Data founder and CEO Roman Stanek and New York-based VC firm Windcrest Partners also participated in the $2 million deal.

—Biofuel and biochemical developer BioEnergy International of Quincy, MA, bought the assets of Cambridge, MA-based OmniGene Bioproducts; financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed.

—Accretive Exit Capital, a secondary private equity firm based in Boston and West Palm Beach, FL, closed its first fund, totaling $125 million. Accretive said it raised the money in just 45 days.

—Cambridge, MA-based CambridgeSoft raised $21 million from New York-based Goldman, Sachs & Co. The company provides management and database software for biotech, pharmaceutical, and chemical firms.

—Stealthy currency-trading startup Tradual of Boston reportedly collected $2.4 million of a $4 million Series A funding round led by Waltham, MA-based North Bridge Venture Partners.