VentureBeat

Norman Pearlstine, the former editor in chief of Time Inc., has left the politically connected buyout firm Carlyle after less than two years, and joined the financial media company, Bloomberg.

The departure comes at a time when Carlyle is going through serious turmoil, with prominent partner Bob Grady stepping into a lesser role. The firm recently lost two other partners and replaced them with others.

In March, lenders seized the assets of one of its subsidiaries Carlyle Capital, sending it into insolvency. That’s a big embarrassment for the firm that was once vilified by Michael Moore in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 for its extensive power.

Pearlstine will be chief content officer of the Bloomberg group, apparently a newly created job mandated with finding “growth opportunities.”

But here’s another interpretation of the move: We’re hearing Bloomberg is up for sale. Could it mean that Carlyle might be a buyer? If you were Carlyle, you’d put someone on the inside first, right?

Here’s the latest action:

Advanced Micro Devices is in a world of hurt — The Sunnyvale, Calif. chip company lost $358 million on revenues of $1.5 billion in the quarter. It cited a tough outlook for the computer market, but it is clearly hurting from Intel’s newfound competitiveness. AMD’s core business is microprocessors and graphics chips for personal computers. It has other businesses related to getting those chips into other devices, from consumer electronics to mobile phones. CEO Hector Ruiz said the company is looking at its “non-core businesses” to evaluate them as part of a new cost-cutting program. That’s in addition to its previously announced restructuring in which it will cut 10 percent of its staff. Hence, it may sell off some of its non-core businesses.

Sequoia wants to be Blackstone, Carlyle going through shift — Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley’s top dog venture capital firm, is trying to broaden its franchise, looking to do asset management and advisory work, according to Dan Primack, who says it is looking to become the venture community’s Blackstone Group. Among other things, PE Wire says Sequoia is raising a $750M hedge fund and has hired Eric Upin, former chief investment officer for the Stanford University endowment, and Michael Beckwith, former principal with Maverick Capital. We’ll look into this (let us know if you know more). Meanwhile, Primack also mentions that Bob Grady, who has led venture capital activities for The Carlyle Group, an investment firm with close ties to the Bush Administration, is moving into a lesser role. It’s part of a larger transition happening at the firm. The firm has lost two partners, and it replaced them with Nick Sturiale (formerly of Sevin Rosen Funds) and Greg Rossman (formerly of Pequot Capital). According to Primack, it also has hired Jeb Miller as a principal. Miller was previously ousted from ComVentures when that firm merged with Velocity Interactive Group.

Technorati and b5media to merge? — Seems like an odd idea to merge a company like Technorati, which searches and ranks blogs all across the web, with b5media’s network of 340 topic-oriented blogs. Wouldn’t the result be b5-biased Technorati rankings? Anyway, the merger is off because of personality differences and accounting issues, apparently.

The future of social networking: Watch this space — Social networking executives, investors and pundits sounded optimistic at a panel held on Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus yesterday afternoon. There are still issues with making networks profitable, but that will come with time, panelists said. The discussion was part of ReMix, a follow-up to Microsoft’s big Mix conference earlier this year. The award for best quote goes to Dalton Caldwell of imeem (pictured), who said about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, “I think Zuckerberg is calling the shots for our industry, and when they launched a platform, our heads exploded.”

Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive continue to trade barbs as EA extends takeover offer — More here. Our previous coverage here.

Quality-video site Hulu coming to mobile? — It’s been talked about before, and chief executive Jason Kilar implied as much again during a recent talk. Of course, there are already mobile competitors. YouTube has its own mobile site, while startup MyWaves has a deal with media conglomerate Viacom to be the sole provider of mobile Viacom videos.

“‘Crazy guy’” thinks CNN’s web site is about to be attacked by Chinese computers — more here.

(UPDATED: IAC put out a release this morning — see below.)

The HealthCentral Network, an Arlington, Va., collection of health-information sites, raised roughly $50 million, paidContent reports. Investors included some big names, include Barry Diller’s online media and commerce conglomerate IAC, Sequoia Capital, Carlyle Group and Polaris Venture Partners.

HealthCentral runs about 30 health-related Web sites, ranging from general-info offerings like HealthCentral.com to disease-specific sites such as OurAlzheimers.com and MultipleSclerosisCentral.com. (The company also owns the DrKoop.com name, although that site is no longer affiliated with the former Surgeon General.) The sites are all essentially clones of one another in style and appearance, and generally offer a grab-bag of general or disease-specific information and some seemingly sparsely attended forums.

HealthCentral doesn’t seem to produce much of its own content, either; it lists five different sources, including Harvard Health Publications, HealthDay, and Thomson, at the bottom of its sites. In other words, it’s difficult to see exactly what makes the business worth the sums investors are pouring into it, as you can easily find much the same stuff on a half-dozen other sites.

In short, the whole HealthCentral Network looks a lot like a crass money-grab — a minimal deployment of resources designed to catch, if not retain, the maximum number of eyeballs. Which means that this latest investment is simply the latest in a flood of hot money that’s been pouring into health and so-called Health 2.0 sites over the past year or so, a trend that’s looking more and more like an unsustainable bubble with every transaction.

We’ve covered several related launches such as Microsoft’s HealthVault, Kosmix RightHealth, HealthCare.com, Healthline, and a roundup of other startups here. Valleywag has more on HealthCentral in particular.

UPDATE: IAC issued a release on its investment this morning, which doesn’t move the ball forward in any meaningful way. But at least the deal is confirmed.

Featured companies: Adenosine Therapeutics, Allylix, Caprotec BioAnalytics, Equipois, F-Star, Insightec, MedNets.com, Renal Solutions, Transport Pharmaceuticals, VeriCare Management

UPDATED: Expanded items on Transport Pharmaceuticals, InSightec and VeriCare Management.

Transport Pharma aims for $35M for cold-sore treatment — Framingham, Mass.-based Transport Pharmaceuticals, a dermatology-focused biotech developing a new treatment for cold sores, is looking to raise $35 million in a fifth funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Hillman Co., Quaker BioVentures, Carlyle Group and EGS Healthcare Capital Partners have pledged $15 million in the round, which the company expects to close in February.

Transport’s leading product candidate is device that uses a low-voltage electrical current to improve the absorption of drugs through the skin. The handheld device, which the company calls the Solovir electrokinetic transdermal system, delivers a reformulated version of the antiviral drug acyclovir directly to cold sores in a ten-minute treatment. The company has so far raised roughly $36 million in venture funding.

InSightec takes in $30M for ultrasound surgery — Israel’s InSightec, a developer of ultrasound-based surgical systems, raised $30 million in a new funding round. Investors included Elbit Imaging, GE Capital Equity Holdings, MediTech Advisors and directors and managers of the company.

InSightec’s system combines MRI scanning and focused ultrasound in order to attack tumors in a non-invasive fashion. The device has been approved in the U.S. for treatment of uterine fibroids, which are non-cancerous tumors of the female reproductive system. InSightec is currently studying ways to apply the system to brain, liver and bone tumors as well.

VeriCare Management gets $9.5M for mental healthcare services — San Diego’s VeriCare Management, a provider of mental-health care to the elderly, raised $9.5 million (MS Word document) in a second funding round. Investors included HLM Venture Partners, Salix Ventures, Acacia Venture Partners and Aetna Ventures.

This is sort of an interesting investment, as VCs haven’t traditionally been all that interested in healthcare providers. In the release, Aetna managing director Adam Grossman notes that the investment is aimed specifically at improving the quality of healthcare, which suggests that some VCs, at least, are starting to view quality improvements as financially rewarding. The logic isn’t entirely clear to me, but it seems to parallel the effort that David Brailer’s new outfit, Health Evolution Partners, is just getting off the ground. (See our coverage of Health Evolution here.)

HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Adenosine Thera gets $4.5M for a grab-bag of drugs (release)
• Caprotec BioAnalytics raises $6.6M for protein-analysis tools (GenomeWeb News)
• Ergonomic-arm maker Equipois raises $1.5M (VW)
• F-Star adds $4.5M for engineered antibodies (release)
• Healthnostics acquires med-info portal MedNets.com (release)
• Flavor and fragrance producer Allylix raises $3.4M (release)
• Renal Solutions acquired by Fresenius Medical for $190M (release)

Meda, a Swedish specialty-pharmaceutical company, agreed to acquire MedPointe, another specialty pharma in Somerset, N.J., for roughly $820 million in cash and stock. Meda’s release — and be careful, as it’s a little difficult to slog through even though it’s (ostensibly) written in English — is here (PDF). (One hint for the baffled: “MUSD” stands for “millions of U.S. dollars.”)

MedPointe was backed by several private-equity firms — the Carlyle Group, the Cypress Group and Ferrer Freeman & Co. — as well as traditional venture capitalists Frazier Healthcare Ventures. These four investors will all become shareholders in Meda.

Meda will pay MedPointe’s shareholders $520 million in cash and issue them 17.5 million Meda shares as well. At the stock’s recent close of 115 Swedish krona on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, the stock portion of the deal is worth roughly $300 million U.S. dollars.

MedPointe will become Meda’s main U.S. affiliate. Its net sales were $252 million in 2006, 23 percent higher than the previous year. MedPointe sells antihistamine nasal sprays, epilepsy drugs, muscle relaxants and cough suppressants. It has 710 employees, approximately 500 of which are in sales and marketing.