Prepared by: Dante Fichera

This week “What’s Hot” are companies based in California operating in the biotechnology industry and have raised their Series C round. Also, all those years of playing garage Texas Hold’em with my high school buddies has turned out to be bigger than any of us could have imagined. Poker is televised on Travel, Bravo, and ESPN and now due to popular demand has taken the World Poker Tour to Wall Street with a $32 million IPO.

In addition, six companies began trading on Wall Street with over $627.47 million raised in equity through IPOs. The six IPO’s this reporting period are as follows:

1. WPT Enterprises, Inc. for $32 million
2. Westlake Chemical Corp. for $170.59 million
3. Placer Sierra Bancshares for $114.6 million
4. Stereotaxis for $44 million
5. Eurobancshares for $54.53 million
6. American Campus Communities for $211.75 million

Geographically, 9 California companies raised $74.8 million in venture financings. The largest venture financing in California this period was shared by two financings and are highlighted below:

1. Digital Evolution raised $15 million. Digital Evolution is a Santa Monica that is Provider of secure standards-based Web Services management solutions for the Global 2000 enterprise; uses XML standards to securely and reliably integrate distributed computing environments.
2. Idetic raised $15 million. Idetic is a Berkeley based provider of bandwidth acceleration and wireless network management software.

The biotechnology sector raised 24% of the venture capital this period. Four biotechnology companies raised over $67.7 million in venture financing. The largest biotechnology financing was by Pharmasset . Pharmasset is a biotechnology company that designs, discovers, develops, and plans to commercialize novel, small molecule therapeutics to treat viral infections and cancer.

Companies raising their Series C round of financing led this week’s venture capital activity. Series C companies represented 33% of the total venture capital deployed this period. The largest Series C financing was into College Sports Television for $37 million. College Sports Television is the first television network devoted entirely to college sports. The network will cover 1,200 schools, at every level of college sports.

The following Fourteen investors funded the above mentioned top three venture capital investments for $95.5 million:

A total of 62 worldwide equity financings of private and public companies occurred during this reporting period. Each of the 62 equity financings are profiled in a weekly report which include venture financings, private placements, secondary offerings, PIPE’s, and IPO’s. Also available is access to over 30,000 other historic equity financings through the CapitalHunter.com searchable database.

About CapitalHunter.com

CapitalHunter.com is a web-based financial information company that identifies, preserves and electronically disseminates worldwide data on venture capital and other equity financings. Customers utilize the CapitalHunter.com searchable database to research newly and historic financings and to identify active investors.