LinkedIn marks progress to IPO, hires ex-Tivo CFO
621490
Armed with a bevy of new managers  from top Silicon Valley firms and explosively growing revenues,  business networking site LinkedIn Corp. is gearing up to become  one of the first big post-dotcom Internet IPOs.
323614
Ziff Davis - Fresh out of its &#36;20 million settlement with Microsoft, the company says it "won't be forced into a cut-rate IPO by a fickle stock market." Instead, it plans to wait until conditions improve.
592444
Q&A: Vinny Ferrari, CIO at Edward Jones, said in an interview that a new IP network will enable the financial services firm to converge data, voice and video traffic for users at its 10,000 branch offices.
654401
Google Inc. said Tuesday that its chief financial officer will retire by the end of the year, creating the highest-ranking job opening at the Internet search leader since it went public three years ago.
504666
Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, a  large alternative asset manager, said on Monday it filed for an  initial public offering, making it the latest large investment  firm to seek a public listing.
719561
Digital video recorder provider TiVo Inc. filed papers Tuesday saying it will sell up to $100 million in debt securities, preferred and common stock and other securities.
259557
Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone is quitting after six years with the company, to join a venture capital firm. His replacement, Jim Safka, currently heads Primal Ventures, the venture capital division of Ask.com&#39;s parent company IAC.The moves are intended to streamline the operating structure of IAC as it prepares to spin off some of its operations, said Barry Diller, CEO of IAC.The group plans to turn its HSN (Home Shopping Network), Ticketmaster, Interval International, and LendingTree activities into separate, publicly traded companies.Lanzone was responsible for a &quot;turnaround&quot; at Ask.com over the last two years, Diller said in a statement.However, Ask.com&#39;s share of the U.S. search market is small: it had just 4.6 percent of the market in November, compared to 9.8 percent for Microsoft, 22.4 percent for Yahoo, and 58.6 percent for Google, according to market watcher Comscore. Ask.com&#39;s share has fallen from 5.2 percent in March, according to Comscore figures.Ask.com is going down fighting, though: in November, it struck a deal with Google said to be worth up to $3.5 billion to display sponsored search listings for its larger rival.It has also tried to differentiate itself from the other search engines by promising to protect its users&#39; privacy and erase personal data stored about the searches they make.Ask.com&#39;s new CEO Safka will be aided by Scott Garell who, in the role of president, will manage Ask.com&#39;s daily business operations, the company said. Garell is currently head of IAC&#39;s consumer applications and portals business, which includes the Evite service.Ex-CEO Lanzone become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures. That company&#39;s past investments include Excite, MySpace, TiVo -- and Ask.com itself.&#160;
111860
(InfoWorld) - Merger and acquisition news from companies as diverse as Yahoo, Cognos, and MetroPCS Communications heated up IT investor interest this week, shoring up confidence in the sector even as credit-market concerns continued to buffet the stock exchanges. After wireless carrier MetroPCS proposed a merger valued at about $5.5 billion with rival Leap Wireless, its share price Tuesday spiked $1.36 to close at $28.65. Brokerage Jefferies & Co. Wednesday then upgraded its rating on the stock from "hold" to "buy," sparking another uptick in the company's share price. Though the merged company would have about 6.2 million customers, a far cry from the 50 million-plus subscriber base that market leaders like AT&T and Verizon have, the combined company would be the fifth largest in the U.S., with a national footprint. Meanwhile, investor faith in the beneficial effects of mergers was underscored by share-price increases in all the major acquiring companies this week. Often, the acquiring company stock takes a hit because acquisition costs are usually expected to dilute earnings for a while. Business performance software vendor Cognos Wednesday said it agreed toÂ pay $339 million for Applix, a developer of performance analysis software. The company has an aggressive plan to integrate Applix's products by early next year. Company shares jumped by $0.18 to close at $41.08 Wednesday, rising further on Thursday as brokerage JPMorgan raised its rating on the shares, saying that underlying demand for the Cognos' software and services is strong. JPMorgan also said that gross margins on product sales at Cognos should also benefit from the Applix acquisition. Yahoo meanwhile continues to pursue its strategy of scooping up companies in the online advertising market, WednesdayÂ announcing a $300 million purchase of BlueLithium. BlueLithium's banner advertising network should help expand Yahoo's ad reach. The news sparked shares to rise by $0.13 to close at $24.10. Also this week, IP-based communications technology company Telanetix announced it would buy VOIP company AccessLine Communications for up to $34.9 million in cash and stock, and OracleÂ continued its buying spree.Â Oracle snapped up Netsure Telecom, a provider of network intelligence and network data integrity software, andÂ Bridgestream, a maker of software that helps companies map employee responsibilities, for undisclosed amounts. The M&A news mirrors data on venture capital funding, which in the first half of the year hit its highest point since 2001, with IT taking a big share. Now, the latest MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on Thomson Financial data, shows that a growing percentage of those funds are coming not from pure venture-capital firms, but from operating companies such as manufacturers and IT vendors. A lion's share of this corporate VC funding is also going to IT businesses. For example, corporate VC funding amounted to $1.3 billion in 390 deals in the first half of 2007, representing 21.4 percent of all VC deals -- the highest percentage of corporate venture deals and dollars since 2001, according to the report. The biggest slice of the investment pie -- 20 percent -- was taken by software companies. Intel was the biggest corporate investor, plunking down $112.3 million in 42 deals. "Corporate venture capital deals are a good measure of confidence in IT," said Claudia Fan Munce, the Chairman of NVCA's Corporate Venture Board and managing director of IBM's Venture Capital Group. While pure venture capital companies need to make investments just to stay in business, operating companies like IT vendors don't have that particular sort of pressure, she noted. Corporate VC funding and M&A "allow companies to tap into innovative new technologies and business models," she said. Â
363426
Microsoft's overture toward Facebook may be a prelude to an IPO.
282925
Popular video technology earns the codec company a strong IPO.
232905
Time Warner Inc.'s  cable  division said on Tuesday it has become a public company and  expects its shares to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange  and start trading as early as March 1.
231313
TiVo exec to step down in time of fast ups and hard downs. Also: Google unveils mini search engine for small companies to scour intranet and web & hellip;.  Sony's Creation Box might be the photoshop of video & hellip;. and more.
235343
By Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.  Mar. 11--Rob Marx didn't TiVo until a year ago.
650233
The scandal-tagged IPO wants some respect.
342703
Google Inc.'s chief financial officer will retire by the end of the year, creating the most prominent job opening at the Internet search leader since it went public three years ago.
267860
Over six months after Comcast set-top boxes utilizing TiVo's software debuted at CES, the cable giant has officially certified the platform for deployment to customers. The companies originally announced a deal to work together in March 2005.
349996
TiVo Inc., maker of television recording technology, on Monday said it has started shipping "TiVoToGo," a service upgrade that allows some subscribers to view recorded programs on a computer or laptop.