Venture Capital

Osiris Therapeutics could raise more than $50 million from its initial stock offering, the company said yesterday. The Fells Point stem-cell technology company expects to sell 3.5 million shares at $11 to $13 each, according to an amended registration filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The underwriters would be able to obtain an additional 525,000 shares to cover over-allotments. After the offering, the company will have 27 million shares outstanding. Over the last two years, Osiris has raised $70 million in venture capital funding.

Investors are offering money to venture capitalists in a fashion not seen since the dot-com craze, though most firms are turning much of it away. But for the second quarter of 2006, which ended June 30, there were two exceptions: Oak Investment Partners of Connecticut, and New Enterprise Associates, or NEA, which was founded in Baltimore 28 years ago. Those firms raised record amounts, bringing in the bulk of the quarter's nationwide $11.2 billion raised...

It's called "bootstrapping," as in pulling yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps, and Mark Wesker is a pro at it - enough to know that he doesn't want to do it again. In the early 1990s, he and a partner had to use creative self-help methods to build Sequoia Software Corp., a fledgling business founded in the basement of a Columbia townhouse. They maxed their credit cards, used their homes as collateral and bought computer equipment only to return it days later after impressing potential clients, who often turned out to hold more power than the company's founders when determining Sequoia's direction.

Though not exactly known for its mastery of Mexican food, a venture capital firm in Timonium has become part-owner of one of the country's largest such restaurant chains. Grotech Capital Group announced yesterday plans to finance the acquisition of Del Taco Inc., a chain of 461 "quick service" Mexican restaurants concentrated west of the Mississippi. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close next month, were not released, but Grotech's founder said it will be the largest outlay the company has ever made.

Osiris Therapeutics Inc. says it raked in about $70 million from venture capital investors in 2005, its highest one-year total, allowing the Baltimore biotechnology company to support its five clinical-trials testing treatments derived from adult stem cells. But perhaps just as important, the amount gave the nearly 14-year-old business coveted credibility. "Some feel the company is on stable ground now, because we were able to raise a significant amount of money," C. Randal Mills, Osiris' president and chief executive, said in an interview Friday.

Organizations representing hundreds of venture capital, health care and technology companies are calling for changes to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which they contend is stifling business investment and innovation. A letter that industry groups mailed to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday criticized the provision of the act that requires companies to take certain steps to verify their accounting procedures and reports as "one-size-fits-all." The act puts "disproportionate cost burdens" on smaller public companies, according to the letter.

A new generation of Internet companies is gaining currency and enticing investors again. Although remnants of the Internet mania of the late 1990s still litter the landscape, that debacle almost assures that today's cyber investor remains grounded in reality. "All of us took more risks [in the late 1990s] than we should have," said Ryan Jacob, portfolio manager of the Jacob Internet fund. "Today, investors are much more scrutinizing, and it is a much more rational environment." That's good because investing in dot-coms is not - and never should have been - for everybody.

Visicu Inc., a company founded seven years ago by two Johns Hopkins intensive care specialists, has decided to go public after becoming profitable this year. The Baltimore company, which makes systems for remote monitoring of hospital intensive care units, filed a registration statement for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Tuesday. The preliminary filing left key details blank, such as the number and price of shares and the timing of the IPO. Funds from the offering will be used to expand the company's business.

Venture capitalists pumped more than $116 million into Maryland companies in the third quarter - a gain of 46 percent over the second quarter even as funding levels slipped nationwide - with increased investments in state-based biotechnology, medical device and health care services firms leading the advance, according to a report released yesterday. Nationally, venture-capital investments totaled $5.26 billion in 714 companies during the third quarter - a drop from the $6.07 billion invested in 780 companies during the second quarter, according to the MoneyTree Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association.

Grotech Capital Group is looking to acquire as many as three restaurant companies to add to the one it already owns, underscoring the Timonium firm's plan to boost its involvement in atypical venture investments. Frank A. Adams, Grotech's founder and general partner, declined to identify the companies but said all of them are "names you would recognize." He said that Grotech is in serious talks with one company. The company is "early in the process" and one of several possible suitors with the other two, he said.