Little Bear Investments LLC Announces the Acquisition of Substantially all of divine, inc.’s Venture Portfolio
Friday May 16, 2003, 9:45 am ET
NEW YORK, May 15 /Businesswire/ — Little Bear Investments LLC (“Little Bear”, or the “Firm”) announced today that it has completed the purchase of substantially all of divine, inc.’s (“divine”) (DVINQ.PK) portfolio of venture investments.
Pursuant to a bankruptcy court order issued in the Eastern District of Massachusetts dated May 12th, 2003, Little Bear purchased the assets under section 363 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code, which transfers the assets to the buyer “free and clear of all liens, claims and encumbrances”.
As part of the transaction, Little Bear also acquired from divine the Viant Ventures (a/k/a Viant Securities Corp.) portfolio, as well as the remaining holdings of Emicom, a former Israeli-based venture capital firm.
The purchased assets include equity interests in over 18 companies including: Mercantec, which owns the “Softcart” e-commerce package, Mindwrap, a software company creating enterprise solutions for document management and workflow systems, Expand Networks, inventors of “Accelerator”, a device which optimizes WAN performance by increasing capacity up to 400%, FuelQuest, which develops and hosts web-based supply chain management and tax automation technologies, and ComScore, owners of MediaMetrix, the web’s premier traffic measurement service.
Zachary Prensky, managing member of the Firm, commented that : “We are pleased to have purchased assets from a portfolio in which over $100,000,000 has been invested to date. Even with the steep decline in valuations for technology-based companies, we feel there remains significant value in the equity we purchased, and we hope to work closely in the coming months with management of the various portfolio companies to bring that value out.”
Little Bear is a merchant bank specializing in deploying capital into undervalued and/or distressed situations. To date, Little Bear has made investments in companies large and small with an eye towards maximizing value through active shareholder participation. The Firm also provides financial advisory services to businesses seeking to increase shareholder value, either through operational improvement, acquisition or re-capitalization.
Little Bear remains an active buyer of distressed asset portfolios. If you have any questions regarding this press release, please contact Mr. Prensky at Zach@Prensky.com.