A pair of New England tech firms sparked up an otherwise slow summer week by announcing their intentions to go public in a market that’s scared off virtually everybody else.
—Not one but two New England cleantech firms filed for IPOs. Wind-farm developer First Wind of Newton, MA, registered for an offering worth up to $450 million, aiming to trade on the NASDAQ exchange under the apt symbol “WNDY.” And Enfield, CT’s STR Holdings, which owns a maker of polymers and laminates used in photovoltaic solar panels called Specialized Technology Resources, announced its intention to raise up to $300 million and trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “PVS.”
—Boston-based Sophos, a maker of software for managing and protecting corporate networks, made a $340 million takeover bid for German encryption and security software maker Utimaco Software.
—Searchandise Commerce, the Beverly, MA-based merchandise search company formerly known as Guidester, raised $7.5 million in a Series C funding round. New investor Cloquet Capital Partners led the deal, which was joined by existing investors DFJ Gotham, Wheatley Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, Inflection Point Ventures, and Tim Draper.
—CIA venture fund spinoff In-Q-Tel, which recently opened a Boston office, made a strategic investment in Burlington, MA-based Veracode, which spots software security flaws by examining raw binary code. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
—Forrester Research (NASDAQ: [[ticker:FORR]]) of Cambridge, MA, announced it will acquire fellow market-research firm JupiterResearch and its parent company, JUPR Holdings, for $23 million in cash.
