A cool iPad app can go a long way these days. Flipboard announced today that it has raised $50 million in venture funding at a $200 million valuation, according to BoomTown.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Flipboard has created a beautiful app for viewing social media using a book’s page-turning metaphor. It shows that taking advantage of a touchscreen interface to create a simpler way of doing something that can already be done elsewhere is a valuable contribution, particularly if users adopt it.

“We’re obviously thrilled, because we think it confirms our focus that people want a beautifully designed way to interact with content and to share it,” said Flipboard chief executive Mike McCue told BoomTown.  “And there is a lot more to come–on a scale of one to 10, we’re just at a two or three.”

Much of the funding came from New York-based Insight Venture Partnres. Previously, Flipboard raised $10.5 million.

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

When David Sokol, the Berkshire lieutenant thought to be the frontrunner for Warren Buffett’s job resigned two weeks ago, Buffett sent a letter mentioning that Sokol owned a bunch of shares of Lubrizol, which he had bought before pitching WB on the idea for the company. Sokol says he didn’t know much or how Buffett would react or if there was a snowball’s chance in hell BRK would acquire the company, or if anyone would even take this thing seriously. Turns out he may have had some reason to at least have a hunch.

In the March 30 letter, Mr. Buffett wrote that Mr. Sokol bought nearly 100,000 Lubrizol shares in January, just before recommending the industrial manufacturer as a potential takeover target. But the letter never mentioned that Mr. Sokol knew Lubrizol’s chief executive was planning to talk to the company’s board about a possible deal with Berkshire — and that he knew a few weeks before buying $10 million of stock for his personal portfolio. The Lubrizol preliminary proxy, filed on Monday, revealed for the first time that Citigroup told Mr. Sokol about such discussions in December.

[Dealbook]

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Bit9 has raised $12.5 million in a new round of funding for its enterprise security business.

The Waltham, Mass.-based company offers protection for endpoints, or the smartphones, tablets, and computers that connect to an enterprise network. Since those endpoints are increasingly vulnerable to attack, Bit9 specializes in protecting them so that information technology managers can still allow employees to use them. Overall, the endpoint security market is expected to reach $10 billion by 2014 as corporations try to protect their assets from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.

Atlas Venture led the round, with participation from existing investors Highland Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and .406 Ventures. New investor Paul Capital also joined the funding. To date, Bit9 has raised more than $23 million.

Demand for Bit9’s technology has escalated in the past year across industry segments such as government, healthcare, defense and retail. That happened in part because of sophisticated attacks, such as Operation Aurora, which cracked Google’s security system, and Stuxnet, which destroyed some of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.

Patrick Morley, chief executive of Bit9, said that the company’s technology allows IT teams to precisely control what software is allowed to run and what is not. The company saw 140 percent revenue growth in 2010 and 60 percent growth in new customer acquisition. The company will use the money for new product development, better sales and marketing, and expansion in Europe.

Market researcher IDC expects the market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.3 percent, reaching $10 billion in 2014, compared to $6.6 billion in 2009.

Bit9 was founded in 2002 and has more than 70 employees. Rivals include Symantec, McAfee and others.

[image credit: inbluetech]

Tags: cyber attack, security

Companies: Bit9

People: Patrick Morley

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Cloud video startup Zixi has raises $4 million in a round of funding for its web video broadcasting business.

The Waltham, Mass.-based company will use the money to build out a worldwide team and complete its infrastructure for delivering high-definition video via the cloud, or web-connected data centers. The company focuses on delivering cloud video with high quality, security, and the ability to make a return on investment.

Schooner Capital, a Boston-based private investment firm, led the round. Other investors include Sidney Topol, former chief executive of Scientific Atlanta, and Maurice Schonfeld, former CEO of CNN.

Zixi’s chief executive is Israel Drori. He said the company will offer high-quality video over the internet for broadcast, enterprise and video-on-demand services. Potential customers include companies that operate networks, video on demand services, web broadcasts, and device makers. Zixi could be used to broadcast video such as a Netflix streaming movie to a tablet computer or a smartphone without any noticeable hiccups. Customers include CNN, Reuters, CBS Sports and Netgear.

Zixi tries to set itself apart by making the best use of available network bandwidth. It minimizes startup delay, or the seconds it takes to launch a video, and eliminates buffering (or loading video into memory to ensure smooth playback) without sacrificing quality.

A company could use Zixi to securely telecast a high-definition vido conference to multiple locations around the world in real time with lower infrastructure costs. Zixi was founded in 2006 and it has 11 employees. Check out Zixi’s video demo below.

Tags: Internet video, video

Companies: Zixi

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Specifically its not so hot US-based RBC Bank unit? Because the Canadians want to get rid of this thing and fast.

The international-banking unit, which includes Raleigh, North Carolina-based RBC Bank, had 10 consecutive quarterly losses before returning to profitability in the first quarter of 2011, according to the bank’s financial statements. The U.S. consumer bank lost money in the first quarter, said Chief Executive Officer Gordon Nixon on March 3. RBC Bank is the smallest of Royal Bank’s U.S. operations, which also include asset management and the RBC Capital Markets investment bank.

While that may sound like an attractive acquisition to many, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan and Citi “face constraints related to the deposit market share or ‘too big to fail’ concerns,” so no RBC for them. Potential buyers are said to include U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial Services but are nowhere near close to a deal. Make your offer today.

Royal Bank of Canada Said To Seek Buyers For US Bank [Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Don’t try and drag him into this one, pipsqueak.

Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger said his family was invested in BYD Co. “for years” before his company took a stake in the Chinese automaker and that he disclosed the financial interest to his business partner Warren Buffett. “I certainly suggested that Berkshire look at investing in something that the Mungers were already invested in, but we’d been in it for years,” he said today in a telephone interview. The Munger investment was cited last week by former Berkshire manager David Sokol in a CNBC interview as precedent for his purchase of Lubrizol Corp. shares before recommending the company as a takeover target to Buffett. Sokol, whose resignation from Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire was announced by Buffett on March 30, said there was nothing unethical about purchasing about 96,000 Lubrizol shares in January.

“I don’t believe I did anything wrong,” Sokol said, according to a transcript on CNBC’s website. “Mr. Munger owned a significant piece of BYD before he mentioned it to me to go look at it.”

“I had Dave look at it, because I knew I couldn’t talk Warren into buying into the damn thing by myself,” Munger said. “It’s a new technology-type investment. But David went over there, and he made the deal for Berkshire.” Buffett is Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive officer.

Munger Says He Told Buffett Of BYD Stake, Stayed Out Of Talks [Bloomberg]

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Mpire, a company that helps to verify, optimize and measure online display advertising, today announced a third round of funding for $3 million to support the company’s growth. The company also decided to change its official name to its main product, Adxpose.

Adxpose helps advertisers and publishers gain more control of their online ads. For advertisers, the tool tracks specifics like where ads land and how users interact with them. The tool also gives content publishers control over things like placement, reporting and protection from fraud.

The company also announced several changes to its leadership, including former president and chief revenue officer Kirby Winfield to chief executive, and former senior vice president of strategic development Ryan Polley to chief operator. Winfield will also join the company’s board of directors.

Several competitors offer similar services, including DoubleVerify and Adsafe Media.

The Seattle-based company, founded in 2005, claims to have had a good 2010 with a 150% quarter-by-quarter increase in revenue and impressions optimized, according to a company announcement.

The latest round of funding was led by previous investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson and included Ignition Partners.

Tags: display ads, display advertising, online ads, optmization, verification, Verify

Companies: adsafe media, adxpose, DoubleVerify, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ignition Partners, Mpire

People: Kirby Winfield, Ryan Polley

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

In October 2009, the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel, Oregon filed a shareholder resolution strongly suggesting the board of Goldman Sachs “review pay disparity” at the firm and “analyze the appropriateness of its spiraling pay packages.” It seems they were not satisfied with GS’s response (or lack thereof) and have once again demanded some introspection on the part of Lloyd and Co re compensation, this time with the support of their colleagues from the Boston and Philadelphia offices.

Goldman Sachs is facing a call from four leading orders of catholic nuns to review whether the pay awarded to chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and other top executives is excessive. The proposal will be put forward at the Wall Street bank’s annual general meeting next month by the orders, who own shares in Goldman, the bank revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel want Goldman’s compensation committee to report back by the beginning of October.

Nuns Ask Goldman Sachs Whether They’re Really Worth $69.5 Million [Telegraph]

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Yesterday during Lloyd Blankfein’s testimony at the Raj Rajaratnam insider trading trial, Blankfein noted that, professionally, he prefers using voicemail to email. This is not a Lloyd quirk but something of an institutionalized “thing” at Goldman, where management has, for years now, been known to fill up employees phones with messages, rather than typing them out. The messages can range from morale boosters (LB left one for the staff last April around the time of the SEC investigation into ABACUS), to administrative and everything in between. For example, there was the time Hank Paulson left a firm-wide message, telling the staff he’d said some stuff he didn’t mean.

Mr. Blankfein’s predecessor as chief executive, Henry M. Paulson Jr., was also a fan of the spoken word. Voice mail was his preferred method of communication and in 2002 he famously used voice mail staffwide to apologize for his “80-20″ comment, when he remarked that 20 percent of the staff add 80 percent of the value. “It was glib and totally insensitive response, which is totally at odds with the way I think about the people here,” he told employees in a voice mail.

If that sounds awkward, it doesn’t really compare to the message he left for Jon Corzine one night not too long after pushing him out, telling him “it’s not you it’s me,” in an attempt to bury the hatchet, footage of which we’ve been able to obtain.

Goldman’s Love Affair With Voicemail [Dealbook]

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$$$ Judge Holwell read the names of dozens of people who will testify or be mentioned during the trial, and asked the group whether they had heard of any of them. The names mentioned included Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, who may be a witness for the prosecution. Not a single juror had heard of Blankfein, who testified before Congress last year about his firm’s role in the 2008 financial crisis. And the judge mispronounced Blankfein’s name. Instead of pronouncing the second syllable as “fine,” Holwell rhymed it with “bean.” [Bloomberg]

$$$ Spitzer Flirts With Mayoral Bid [Politico]

$$$ Hedge Fund to Predict Markets Using Twitter [CNBC]

$$$ Billionaire Sons Aspire to Make Snowbound Niseko Asia’s Aspen [Bloomberg]

$$$ KKR Appoints Rosenberg to Head Global Real Estate [FINS]

$$$ Seventeen months after bringing charges in the largest insider-trading case in decades, the pressure is on the U.S. to prove its case against Mr. Rajaratnam. The trio of prosecutors, who sometimes lunch over Cuban sandwiches near the courthouse, are Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s go-to team for insider-trading cases. [WSJ]

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