JH Whitney & Co. has taken an
equity position in Asia Capacity Exchange (ACE),a regional online
marketplace for buying and selling international telecommunications
capacity.
On its Virtual Trading Floor, ACE supports trading in both international
call minutes and network bandwidth and operates the ACE Telehub to
transfer minutes and bandwidth between trading parties.
“Having established the ACE brand in the market and rolled out our web
and facilities based trading platform, the focus is now increasing market
penetration,” said Paula Brillson, managing director of the Asia Capacity
Exchange.
Since it was founded in 1946, JH Whitney & Co. has helped to shape the
development of the private equity industry. Its Internet and technology
investment portfolio includes companies such as US Internetworking,
Kana Communications, MediaMetrix, SpectraSite, Global Online Japan,
LINC Media and Hong Kong-based renren.com.
“JH Whitney internally develops what it believes are exciting investment
themes and then endeavours to identify the best entrepreneurs and
companies to capitalise on each thesis,” said Paul Slawson, managing
director of JH Whitney Asia.
Brillson indicated that JH Whitney investment is sufficient to fund ACE’s
operations for the next year and anticipates that ACE is likely to seek a
second round of funding during the last quarter of 2000.
