[June 27, 2005] Meriton Networks Secures $54 million in Series C Funding Tweet OTTAWA, June 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Meriton Networks Inc., provider of the optical networking foundation for 21st century networks, announced today that it has secured $54 million (US dollars) in Series C funding. The oversubscribed round was led by two new prominent investors, VantagePoint Venture Partners and Nomura International. The round now provides Meriton's recently appointed CEO Mike Pascoe with the resources necessary to aggressively pursue the company's business objectives. In addition to VantagePoint and Nomura, all of the previous investors in Meriton Networks participated in the round, including Desjardins Venture Capital Group, Newbury Ventures, Primaxis Technology Ventures, RBC Capital Partners (Telecommunications Fund), Sierra Ventures, VenGrowth and Venture Coaches/Skypoint Capital. Meriton's continued, growing traction with carrier customers worldwide - including its role in supporting strategic partner, Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe, in addressing BT's network build - fueled this investment round. The financing will be used to further expand existing customer and strategic partner relationships. "Carriers are looking for a flexible, cost-effective infrastructure that will smooth the migration to a converged IP/MPLS network," said Cynthia Ringo, managing director and co-head of the communications and systems practice at VantagePoint Venture Partners. "Meriton is the only vendor that allows carriers to make this transition entirely through software controls - no card swap-outs, no truck-rolls. It's a winning proposition for carriers - for today and for the future." "Meriton competes and wins against multi-box solutions as a result of its transport consolidation concept," said Andrew Healey, head of Nomura International's technology private equity practice. "What's equally impressive is that Meriton also competes and wins against single point solutions such as fixed OADMs. Given the broad range of applications for its architecture, we believe Meriton has the potential to become one of the leading suppliers of optical networking equipment." "Recent analyses of the optical transport market have identified metro and regional optical networks as one of the fastest growing markets in telecommunications. Our increasing customer activities provides convincing proof of the size and timing of the opportunity immediately before us," said Mike Pascoe, CEO of Meriton Networks. "We will continue to be singularly focused on delivering proven networking innovations to this market, utilizing our resources very effectively, for the mutual benefit of customers and investors alike. Meriton has the ingredients for outstanding success: financial strength, a growing base of satisfied customers, compelling product differentiators, a talented team, and a pragmatic approach to growing the business." Meriton's HSM Architecture With a focus on making telecommunications networks more flexible, easier to operate and less expensive, Meriton Networks has developed the industry's first end-to-end, fully managed high-speed metro/regional (HSM) services architecture. The unique promise of the architecture is that consolidating key transport capabilities (ROADM/DWDM/CWDM and Wavelength/SONET/SDH switching) within a single network element means the Meriton solution leads the industry in CAPEX and OPEX savings, density and future-proof networking capabilities. The Meriton solution addresses the issue of fiber relief while enabling the delivery of all high-speed services, allowing carriers to dramatically lower their costs, improve service and increase market share. About Meriton Networks Inc. Meriton Networks Inc. is an innovative wavelength networking company that has developed the industry's first managed high-speed metro/regional (HSM) services architecture. Meriton customers, which include incumbent and competitive carriers as well as world-class enterprises deploy a single, cost- effective solution that addresses the issues of fiber relief and network cost reduction, while also enabling the delivery of all HSM services. The Meriton solution includes metro access, metro core and regional extension products, which are fully managed by a best-in-class suite of network and service management tools. For more information, please visit http://www.meriton.com/ . About VantagePoint Venture Partners VantagePoint Venture Partners is among the most active and successful venture firms in the world with more than $2.8 billion of capital under management. The Firm invests exclusively in technology driven companies and is organized around deep expertise and resources in five principal areas of interest: CleanTech, Communications and Systems, Healthcare, Semiconductors, and Software/Internet. VantagePoint is a multi-stage investor, investing in high growth businesses at all stages of development. The Firm believes in applying an active, hands-on and team oriented approach to businesses not only at the traditional early stage, but throughout a company's progression to scale. The Firm supports each of its portfolio companies with the resources of a dedicated team of VantagePoint professionals able to contribute a blend of company building, technology, operations, marketing, and corporate finance expertise. For more information: http://www.vpvp.com/ About Nomura International The Private Equity Group is the Venture Capital arm of Nomura, one of the world's leading investment banks and Japan's largest securities firm. Since its creation in 1997, our Group has invested in 50 companies, in the Technology sector, in the US and Europe. Many of our portfolio companies have been involved in IPOs and mergers. Representative investments include Revivio, NetForensics, Arraycomm, enCommerce and Arc. Nomura is a global financial services group dedicated to providing a broad range of financial services for individual, institutional, corporate and government clients. The Group offers a diverse line of competitive products and value-added financial and advisory solutions through its global headquarters in Tokyo, 133 branches in Japan, and an international network in 28 countries; with regional headquarters in Hong Kong, London, and New York. The Group's business activities include investment consultation and brokerage services for retail investors in Japan, and, on a global basis, brokerage services, securities underwriting, investment banking advisory services, merchant banking, and asset management. For further information about Nomura please visit our website at http://www.nomura.com/ Meriton Networks, the Meriton Networks logo, MeritonCare, OI2 Optical Inter-networking Intelligence, IVFN and Out-of-the-box WDM are trademarks of Meriton Networks Inc. Other trademarks that may be used in this document are property of their respective owners. MERITON NETWORKS CONTACT: Media contacts: Gwen Avery, Meriton Networks,613.270.9279; Mobile: 613.291.8602 [email protected], Kathleen Keith,for Meriton Networks, 707.529.4507; [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]