Walden Israel has started raising a new $150 million fund, expected to be completed in the second quarter of this year. About $80 million of the financing round, the third held by Walden Israel since its establishment, have already been secured.

Investors that have committed themselves to invest in the new fund include investment bank Goldman Sachs, German insurance company Allianz, and TIAA-CREF, which provides insurance and provident fund services to US teachers. Walden is the Israeli branch of the Walden fund of San Francisco. Partners in Walden Israel include Roni Hefetz, Eyal Kaplan and Moty Ben-Arie.

Walden raised $33 million for a first fund in 1994 and $60 million for a second fund in 1998. Walden’s portfolio in Israel includes Schema (which recently raised $28.5 million), Allot Communications, Actelis Networks, Lynx Photonic Networks, Perfecto Technologies, Sanctum, Mercado Software, eMation, and Zend Technologies.

Walden Israel has already made four exits. It issued Terayon (Nasdaq: TERN) and Radcom (Nasdaq: RDCM) on Nasdaq, and sold AbirNet and Ornet Data to Memco and Siemens. The fund invests in companies at their early stages, averaging $2-4 million in each round.

Walden’s announcement that it was launching a financing round is the second of its kind this week. Veritas also said it was raising a new $100 million fund. The announcements came after a long period during which no new Israeli funds were raised. JVP is expected to complete raising its new fund of $400-500 million in the near future.

The past few months witnessed few financing rounds for new funds, in view of the stalemate on Nasdaq’s primary market and the considerable decline in the share value of potential buyers.

Published by Israel's Business Arena on 13 February, 2001