Deal flow was a bit slow among New England’s tech and life sciences firms this week. Perhaps folks were too distracted by the unexpected appearance of that warm glowing ball in the sky to attend to contracts and negotiations?
—Stemgent of Cambridge, MA, and San Diego announced plans to invest $4.5 million over the next three years in Ubiquigent, a Dundee, Scotland-based company commercializing biological products from the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling at the University of Dundee. Stemgent will market Ubiquigent’s products in the United States.
—Software giant Novell received an unsolicited buyout offer from private equity firm Elliott Associates, which owns 8.5 percent of the Waltham, MA-based firm’s common stock. Novell’s board of directors will review the $5.75 per share offer, worth $2 billion in total.
—Isis Biopolymer raised $3 million in equity-based financing, according to an SEC filing. The Providence, RI-based startup is developing a patch device for delivering drugs through the skin.
—Boston’s Summit Partners led a $23 million growth equity investment in San Francisco-based Cloudmark, a mobile-messaging security firm. Nokia Growth Partners, Ignition Partners, and Industry Ventures joined the deal.
—SensAble Technologies of Woburn, MA, indicated in an SEC filing that it has raised $8 million in a mixed offering of equity and other securities. Return investor HLM Venture Partners led the round and North Bridge Venture Partners participated as well. The financing will help support marketing, engineering, and sales efforts for SensAble’s line of digital dental design products.
—Mobile Monday Boston unveiled data indicating that venture investments in Boston-area mobile technology companies decreased in both volume and value in 2009, while payouts from mergers and acquisitions hit a record high of $1.5 billion.
