The research firm put together a top 10 list, which you can find here.

In second place, but well behind Tumblr, is Right Media, which Yahoo purchase in 2007 for $850 million, CB Insights notes. Redpoint Ventures and WGI Group were backers.

At No. 3 is is Buddy Media, which sold last year for $745 million to Salesforce. Its backers included GGV Capital, Greycroft Partners and Institutional Venture Partners.

The rest of the list follows in a table courtesy of CB Insights.

Note that the list does not include DoubleClick, which Google purchased for $3.1 billion after DoubleClick went public.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Singh’s email account at New Mountain directs people to contact him at Bridge Growth Partners. No further information is provided.

Officials at New Mountain did not return calls or emails for comment.

Singh, 59, will act as a senior advisor “as needed,” New Mountain said in an April 30 statement detailing organizational changes at the firm.

Singh joined the New York PE firm in 2002 and was a managing director. He recently led New Mountain’s buy of AmWins Group, a wholesale broker, for $1.3 billion in 2012. Singh was also a Deltek lead director. Last year, Thoma Bravo acquired Deltek in a $1.1 billion deal.

Prior to New Mountain, Singh was part of Deutsche Bank’s financial sponsors group, where he was an MD.

Singh’s departure comes as New Mountain is fundraising for its fourth pool. New Mountain Partners IV LP is seeking to raise $3 billion, peHUB has reported.

The private equity firm’s prior pool, New Mountain Partners III LP, raised $5.1 billion in 2008. Fund III is producing an 8.3% IRR, according to Sept. 30 performance data from CalPERS, an investor in the fund.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

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Private equity firms’ interest in money manager investments is rising.

PE firms are also circling the grocery ad network MyWebGrocer.

How Jamie Dimon kept his job.

Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age.

Meet the founder (and sole employee) of 14-year-old Urban Dictionary, the 77th biggest Website in the country.

Vine: The latest social media concern for employers.

New York cracks down on Airbnb.

San Francisco gets the Super Bowl in 2016.

What things have come to: There is now an app that counts candy in a jar.

12 signs that you’re burned out.

Hedge fund mogul Steven Cohen may be trying to strike a deal with prosecutors.

This guy wants you to know he also made a windfall off Tumblr’s sale to Yahoo.

Photo: Apple Operations International, a subsidiary of Apple Inc, is seen in Hollyhill, Cork, in the south of Ireland in this October 6, 2011 file photo. Credit: REUTERS/Michael MacSweeney/files

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Tagg and Mitt Romney

Solamere Capital, the private equity fund-of-funds and co-investment firm co-founded by Mitt Romney’s eldest son, Taggart Romney, has begun raising its second vehicle, Solamere Capital Fund II LP, according to a government filing.  Buyouts, the sister magazine of peHUB, reports that the filing indicates that the new fund carries a $250 million target.

Mitt Romney, who lost the Republican bid for the presidency to Barack Obama, joined his son’s firm in March with the title of executive partner and group chairman. According to a report from NBC News, Mitt Romney’s role at the firm would amount to one week a month and would not involve fundraising. Prior to running for president, Mitt Romney was the governor of Massachusetts and founded Bain Capital, one of the world’s largest and most successful private equity firms.

According a March 2013 letter to Solamere investors posted on the Boston Globe’s website, the firm said it would “begin accepting new investment commitments in the first half of 2013.” That letter also said the new fund would be modest in size: “We feel strongly that there is value in not raising too large of a fund, and therefore anticipate keeping the size to a level we feel we can appropriately manage within our desired band of target returns.”

A person at Solamere said she was instructed not to speak to reporters about Fund II.

Tagg Romney co-founded Solamere Capital with Spencer Zwick in 2008. Eric Scheuermann is a third partner in the firm. The junior Romney also cultivated a rich variety of experiences before launching Solamere. Among his other roles has been chief marketing officer for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team and vice president for “on-field” marketing at Reebok.

A 2010 Buyouts profile of the firm’s $255 million debut fund disclosed that the fund-of-funds had invested in the vehicles of several prominent private equity and venture firms, including SCF Partners, Bain Capital, Battery Ventures and Charlesbank Capital Partners. Fund commitments ranged in size from $5 million to $20 million, and roughly two-thirds of the money was invested in commingled funds and one-third in co-investments.

Investors in the debut fund, according to the story, included Lee Scott, the former chief executive of Wal-Mart, and Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and a former Republican candidate for governor of California.

On its website, Boston-based Solamere says it was “formed by a group of influential business leaders to leverage their industry expertise to access and execute superior private investments.”

Gregory Roth is a senior editor at Buyouts Magazine. Any opinions expressed here are entirely his own. Follow him on Twitter @RothReuters. Follow Buyouts tweets @Buyouts.

Photo:  REUTERS/Brian Snyder

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The filing does not list a target amount or the names of any other individuals involved in the effort. It does state that no broker-dealer is being used and that the first sale has yet to occur.

Fortune reported in January 2012 that Griffith had left TCV, where he became a general partner in 2003 and worked with a long list of companies, including 2Wire, Adknowledge, MoneyExpert, Orbitz, Tiny Prints, Travelport and Whitepages.

Before joining TCV, Griffith – a Bay Area native who attended Dartmouth before nabbing his MBA at Stanford — was an associate at the Beacon Group, a private equity firm that was acquired by JP Morgan Chase in 1999. Before the Beacon Group, Griffith was an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Iconiq doesn’t yet appear to have a Web presence. It’s also not clear whether or not Griffith’s new endeavor has any ties to Iconiq Capital, a San Francisco-based registered investment advisor that was formed in December 2011 by three colleagues who spun out of Morgan Stanley’s private client group together — and who famously count among their clients Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

While Griffith was reportedly involved in a late-stage investment made by TCV in Facebook, none of Iconiq Capital’s three principals are listed among his 400-plus Facebook “friends.”

Neither Griffith nor Divesh Makan, one of Iconiq Capital’s founding partners, has responded to requests for further information.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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The moment that Yahoo’s board agreed to buy the popular blogging service Tumblr for approximately $1.1 billion, the media shifted into overdrive, asking if Yahoo’s high-stakes gamble

Venture capitalists, meanwhile, have probably been pondering something else – specifically, how the deal impacts the value of their stakes in other social networks like Pinterest, which is now among the only still-private platforms of major scale, with roughly 50 million registered users to Tumblr’s 110 million registered users.

The early consensus appears to be that for those investors, Yahoo’s tie-up with Tumblr is good news, indeed.

“I think the acquisition positively affects everyone in the [visual social media] category,” says Paul Kedrosky, a venture investor and entrepreneur. “Everyone wants dance partners: Google, Yahoo, and, to a lesser extent, AOL and Microsoft. Now there are fewer from which to choose.”

The question is who wants what and for what price? Though Pinterest, founded in 2010, is three years younger than Tumblr, it would undoubtedly demand a higher price. Much of the company’s roughly $340 million in financing to date came through a $200 million round in February that valued the company at $2.5 billion.

Pinterest is also far broader than Tumblr in terms of reach in the United States. In its most recent Internet & American Life survey, for example, Pew Research broke down the landscape of social media according to users of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. That research found that in the month of December, 67 percent of Internet users visited Facebook, while 16 percent used Twitter, 15 percent used Pinterest, 13 percent used Instagram, and just 6 percent used Tumblr.

Similar research compiled by Nielsen underscored Pinterest’s position near the top of the still-private social networking heap. In 2012, while Tumblr grew 55 percent year-over-year in terms of unique PC visitors, Pinterest grew by 1,047 percent. While Tumblr’s mobile Web audience grew by 162 percent over the same period, Pinterest’s grew by 4,225 percent.

Rick Heitzmann of FirstMark Capital, which has participated in each of Pinterest’s four fundraising rounds, says Pinterest is in the earliest stages of realizing its potential and that it plans to remain independent. “I don’t think the company is necessarily concerned about who buys what,” he says.

Still, Heitzmann acknowledges that acquirers, including media companies, are “looking to get more mobile, more social, more image driven and more driven by short-form content,” and that they’re particularly interested in “peer media networks, where the creators, curators and publishers are all the same people, which can drive phenomenal economics.”

Heitzmann also notes that there are a limited number of platforms that enjoy the kind of network effects that excite companies in search of growth. There are “only so many beers in the fridge,” he says. “Microsoft took one with [the enterprise-focused social network] Yammer. Facebook took one with Instagram; Yahoo has taken Tumblr.”

Assuming that Twitter goes public as expected, that limits the number of game-changing companies left to snap up. Still, any real supply-demand imbalance could change quickly, says Brian Wieser, a senior research analyst with Pivotal Research Group in New York, who observes that not only are smaller social players like Path growing quickly but that  “there is no shortage of social networks that are coming online.”

Wieser points to Facebook, which has reportedly been in talks to acquire Waze – an Israeli navigation app with a social media dimension – for between $800 million and $1 billion.

Waze is six years old, but its popularity has soared particularly over the last two years, making it an attractive acquisition target somewhat recently. That sudden rise, says Wieser, illustrates that the “world is not static.”

Indeed, though Wieser thinks Yahoo’s Tumblr acquisition “validates that niche social networks can sell for ten figures,” he suggests that potential acquirers continue to weigh their options carefully.

“VCs try to engender as much fear as they can among prospective acquirers, to bring as much money as they can to the table,” says Wieser. “Sometimes it works, too. But it’s still the case that very few companies are woven into the Web in the way that Facebook is.”

Image credit: Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer speaks about Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr at a news conference in New York on May 20. Photo by Adrees Latif, Reuters

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Goldman Sachs is recruiting for a New York-based associate within its Alternative Investments & Manager Selection (AIMS) private equity group. For further information click here.

Also in New York, Fifth Street Finance Corp., a lending partner to private equity firms, is on the look out for a vice president – credit portfolio management / restructuring.

If you have experience with pension funds, the following position may be of interest. San Francisco-based Strategic Investment Solutions is hiring for a private markets consultant to work directly with a small number of institutional clients to provide advice and expertise on private market investments, including strategic planning, investment policy development, and implementation, and to present investment recommendations. If you’re interested in applying send an email to staff@sis-sf.com.

Also in the San Francisco Bay area, Microsoft is looking for a Silicon Valley portfolio manager to “work with key VCs and startups in Silicon Valley to uncover synergies with Microsoft.”

And finally, early stage tech investor Thomvest Ventures is searching for a Financial Analyst in San Francisco Bay Area. To apply, click here.

Image credit: Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

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Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital Management LP, a New York-based hedge fund, has committed to provide an estimated $200 million cornerstone pledge to MC Credit, a firm that has been reconstituted to reflect its new source of capital, said a person familiar with the fundraising effort.

MC Credit launched in May as the successor to Cyan Partners, a lower mid-market lender founded in 2008 by Ashok Nayyar, who had been co-head of global leveraged finance at Morgan Stanley from 2006 to 2008 and before that a managing director in the leveraged finance group at Citigroup from 1997 to 2006.

Cyan Partners has sourced and invested in approximately $900 million of loans and other credits since its inception, according to a cached Web page. (The Web site domain appears to have been decommissioned.) The team, which Nayyar is bringing with him to MC Credit, will now operate as an affiliate of Moore Capital but will maintain its independence in making credit decisions, said a second person who was familiar with the arrangement.

MC Credit, like Cyan Partners, plans to focus on companies with $15 million to $75 million in EBITDA, primarily serving the North American market, with a strategy of growth capital through senior secured loans, with some second-lien loans, said the second person.

MC Credit plans to emphasize its proprietary origination for its investments, the first person said. The firm then will syndicate the loans to hedge funds or banks, the person said. While MC Credit will work with some sponsors, that is likely not to be core to the firm’s approach, the person said.

With a net worth estimated at $1.3 billion, Bacon ranks No. 347 on the Forbes 400 list, the magazine reported in March. Known as a green billionaire and conservationist, Bacon has set plans to donate a conservation easement on 90,000 acres of land in Trincherea Ranch in Colorado to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Top stock holdings in Bacon’s Moore Global Investments fund as of Dec. 31 include 7.6 million shares of the Powershares QQQ Trust, 5.1 million shares of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., 4.7 million shares in Citigroup, and 11.8 million shares of Bank of America Corp, according to 13F filings cited by InsiderMonkey.com.

The investment banking boutique Greenhill & Co. is acting as placement agent for the fund.

Michael Zimmerman, a senior managing director at Moore Capital, wouldn’t comment on the size of the commitment but did confirm that an entity affiliated with the hedge fund had made a commitment.

Steve Bills is a senior editor at Buyouts Magazine. Any opinions expressed here are entirely his own. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Bills. Follow Buyouts tweets @Buyouts. For information on how to subscribe, contact Greg Winterton at greg.winterton@thomsonreuters.com. Additional reporting by David Toll and Steve Gelsi.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.com

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Two recent issues, from Tableau Software and Marketo, received nice receptions last Friday and more potential winners are thought to be on the way.

With this in mind, peHUB decided to take a look at 18 venture-backed IPOs this year to see where the action has been. The analysis shows that companies trading above their IPO price greatly outnumber those that have sunk below it. The score is 12 above to six below.

What is interesting is that the year has been evenly divided between technology and life sciences, with life sciences issues holding a slight edge, nine issues to seven, according to data from Thomson Reuters, publisher of peHUB. Two additional issues have been cleantech companies.

That said, the record of winners in technology is strongest. Six of the seven technology offerings traded above their IPO price as of Monday’s close, including Marketo, Tableau Software, Cyan, Rally Software and Model N. Only Marin Software is below.

Life sciences companies are more evenly split, with five above and four below, the data show. One winner is Chimerix. Another is Enanta Pharmaceutical.

The cleantech companies are also evenly split, with Silver Spring Networks narrowly up and BioAmber down.

The biggest winners so far this year are Marketo, up 87% over its offer price, Tableau, up 72%, and Enanta, up 48%. Rally Software is ahead 45% and Chimerix is 43% above.

Please find a chart of the 18 IPOs with their prices and venture backers on our premium Venture Capital Journal site (for VCJ subscribers only) by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Rockwood pigments businesses attract private equity bids

The rarity of mergers among start-ups and VCs

Early Tumblr investor recognised raw talent

Eos Energy secures NRG funds for zinc-air batteries

Mexico’s abandoned homes draw venture capital

The pros of venture debt

Five traits to look for in prospective startup employees

IPO for Imprivata?

Image credit: Photo of a new dawn courtesy of Shutterstock

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