Canadian Venture Funds Invest Additional US$5m in HDMI Provider RedMere

RedMere Technology raises US$13.5m in 6 months

[ClickPress, Mon Apr 30 2007] RedMere Technology Ltd. (www.redmere.com), a leading multimedia networking fabless semiconductor company, today announced the closing of an additional US$5 million top up to its first round of venture capital funding, bringing the amount invested in under 6 months, to US$13.5 million.

The top up round was led by Edgestone Capital Partners, a Canadian private equity firm, along with additional reinvestment by the original investors including Celtic House Venture Partners. RedMere will use the funding to expand its portfolio of unique multimedia communications chipsets, aligned with market expansion in Asia.

RedMere designs and markets chipsets that are used in the fast-growing HDMI devices market, from flat screen televisions to surround sound systems. The advanced communications microchip technology manages the faster flow of complex video and audio data to improve performance and reliability.

The company has produced a range of patented chipsets which were unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2007 and will be launching its expanded portfolio of HDMI products commencing Q2 2007.

Commenting on the investment round Peter Smyth, CEO of RedMere Technology, said: "Following our first round of fundraising and customer reaction to our products at CES, there has been a lot of interest in our technology and our market success. This additional funding demonstrates the confidence in the company by our investors and will allow us to focus on exploiting new market and applications opportunities.”

Derek Smyth, partner, Edgestone Capital Partners who will be joining the board as part of their investment said: “Edgestone is excited to be joining the existing investment partners in financing further growth. We believe Redmere is addressing a very large market need, both current and future, in consumer electronics connectivity and has a world class team of technologists and management.”

According to Instat 2006 there will be 200 million HDMI units in the marketplace by 2008. Many of these are visible in LCD and Plasma TVs but also include Media Centres, Media PCs, Set-top-boxes, Projection Systems, Home Theatre Systems, DVD Recorders and Personal Video Recorders. RedMere’s technology enhances the performance of these devices and the subsequent user experience.

RedMere officially opened an office in Taipei, Taiwan and has recently moved its headquarters to new offices in Balbriggan, Co Dublin. Its design office in Cork will be expanding into new premises in Q2. All the design and production management of its unique chipset is handled by an R&D team of engineers in Dublin and Cork with physical production outsourced to Taiwan.

For reference:
Eoin Kennedy
Slattery Communications
Tel. +353 1661 4055, +353 86 8339540

About RedMere Technology (www.redmeretechnology.com):
RedMere Technology was founded in October 2004 by Peter Smyth (CEO), with Dr John Horan (CTO) and Declan Farrelly (VP Engineering) coming on board in 2005. As a fabless semiconductor company they specialise in the high end design and development of advanced chipsets, with production being outsourced to manufacturers in Taiwan. The chips will be sold to customers including the major electronic equipment makers in Consumer Electronics, Storage and Networking.
About EdgeStone Capital Partners
EdgeStone Capital Partners is one of Canada's leading private equity firms and has managed in excess of $2.5 billion of private capital on behalf of institutional and high-net-worth clients. EdgeStone provides capital, strategic direction and business and financial advice to help promising mid-market and early-stage companies achieve their full potential. EdgeStone leverages the resources of its broad business network and ensures an alignment of interests to achieve superior returns for all stakeholders.
EdgeStone manages three types of private capital funds – Later Stage Equity, Venture Capital and growth equity targeted towards the energy industry. EdgeStone invests in a variety of carefully selected companies in the middle-market and early stage sectors, offering above average long-term potential.
EdgeStone is one of the principal entities of the GMP Capital Trust group (TSX:GMP.UN).

Executive Biographies

Peter Smyth, CEO, RedMere Technology
Peter Smyth is a 20 year veteran of the business. Most recently he held the position of VP Business Development for Ceva Inc.'s (NASDAQ: CEVA) Strategic Accounts and Wireline Communications Divisions, with worldwide responsibility for division revenues and product marketing, including Ceva's high-speed Wireline interface technologies. Over a career spanning 10 years at Ceva (previously Parthus Inc.), Peter also held positions as VP Product Marketing and VP Sales. Prior to working for Ceva in Ireland, he was Europe Manager for Taiwan-based Microtek International (DSD) based in Munich, Germany, and prior to that, he was Western Region Sales Manager for Microtek's operation in the United States, based in Portland, OR. Peter also held roles as Product Marketing Engineer and later as UK Sales Manager for Irish firm Ashling Microsystems, based in London. Out of college Peter was a Control Systems Design Engineer for Hyster Inc. Peter has a Bachelor of Electronic Engineering from Dublin City University, 1985.


Dr. John Horan, Chief Technology Officer, RedMere Technology
Dr. Horan has most recently worked as an IC Architect with the Wireline Communications Division of Ceva Inc., based in Cork, Ireland, where he has contributed architectures and designs for Ceva’s leading edge PLL, Transceiver, PHY and SerDes products, to speeds up to 6Gbps. John also led Ceva’s renowned PLLXpert product development. Prior to his 9 years at Ceva, John held R&D positions at the National Microelectronic Research Centre, Cork, Ireland; Analog Devices Inc., Limerick, Ireland; and Microsim Corporation (makers of PSPICE), Irvine, CA. Since 1992 he has also taught at the Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland at undergraduate and Post-graduate level. He has authored numerous technical papers and has had 6 US patents issued, with others pending. John has a Bachelor of Engineering, MEngSc and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Ireland at Cork.

Declan Farrelly, VP Engineering, RedMere Technology
Declan Farrelly has more than 20 years design and design management experience in the semiconductor industry. He was most recently European Design Centre Manager at Agere Systems, Dublin, managing the design and development of 1Gig Ethernet PHYs chipsets. Prior to working with Agere, Declan was with Ceva Inc. (previously Parthus Inc.) for 8 years as Engineering Director for the Consumer Multimedia Division, delivering Consumer Multimedia products in for Audio and Automotive markets; and later as Platform Director in the Applications Processing Division. Declan was also Engineering Director for Parthus Inc.’s family of DSP cores, which have been deployed in Consumer Multimedia products worldwide. Prior to joining Ceva, Declan worked in control systems management in GE, Dublin, Ireland; Research Scientist in the National Microelectronics Research Centre, Cork, Ireland; Design Engineer in Anacad GmbH, Germany; and Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecommuncazione, Italy, where he worked on the areas as diverse as analog IC design, transistor simulator development and analog design synthesis tools. Declan has Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Science degrees from Trinity College in Dublin.


Kevin Fielding, Chairman, RedMere Technology
Kevin Fielding is a Partner in Venture Capital firm Alta Berkeley. He has a 20-year track-record of building and managing companies in the semiconductor industry both in Europe and in the US. Prior to joining Alta Berkeley, Kevin held the position of President and CEO of ParthusCeva (NASDAQ: CEVA). He also led several successful high-technology start-up activities, including the successful IPO of Parthus Technologies plc (NASDAQ: PRTH) on the LSE and NASDAQ in 2000. Prior to returning to Europe in 1998, Kevin spent 10 years in the US working on several high performance microprocessor businesses. He was the GM of the StrongARM business in Palo Alto, CA prior to it’s acquisition by Intel in 1998, and also worked on the original Alpha microprocessor in Hudson, MA for Digital Equipment Corp. Before moving to the US, Kevin worked on high-speed processor design for Philips BV in Eindhoven and in Dublin. He also spent four years working in the research labs at the NMRC (National Microelectronics Research Centre) attached to University College, Cork. Kevin earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration in 1992 from Northeastern University, Boston. In addition he received both Masters and BSEE degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ireland at Cork.


Michael Reilly, Board Member, RedMere Technology
Michael (Mike) Reilly is a former Managing Director of JPMorganChase, New York, NY, where he most recently was Chief Architect for the Chase Financial Services business unit. Mike is the former Chief Technology Officer of J.P. Morgan, New York, NY, where he was responsible for the firm's technology research agenda, global infrastructure operations and strategic relationships. He was a member of the management team of JPMorgan’s LabMorgan business incubator where he was responsible for LabMorgan’s Wireless business investments, and for a year was acting CEO of TransactPlus, a start-up company based in San Francisco, CA. Prior to Mike's appointment to CTO in early 1999, he was co-head of the JP Morgan Products and Services (P&S) organization. Prior to joining Morgan, Mike was a senior technology consultant with Digital Equipment Corporation in New York, NY. Mike holds a degree in Electronic Engineering from Dublin City University, 1985.


Brian Antonen, Celtic House Venture Partners & Board Member, RedMere Technology
Brian Antonen is a Partner in Celtic House Venture Partners, and is based in Toronto, Canada. Prior to joining Celtic House in 2000, Brian Antonen was a senior technology analyst and partner at two Toronto brokerage firms, Paradigm Capital and Research Capital. Brian has an intimate knowledge of the fabless semiconductor, communications and consumer electronics markets. Brian spent six years in various roles at Nortel Networks, beginning as a design engineer, followed by positions in finance and marketing. He was responsible for strategic planning and business-development activities in the advanced intelligent networking business. Brian currently sits on the boards of Camilion Solutions, Fresco Microchip, RedMere Technology, Sibercore Technologies and ViXS Systems. In the past he has served on the boards of Cogency Semiconductor, RedCelsius and Sirific Wireless. Brian earned an Honours Bachelor of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. He is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario, and the Certified Management Accountants of Ontario.



Roger Maggs, Celtic House Venture Partners & Board Member, RedMere Technology
Roger Maggs is a Partner and Founder of Celtic House Venture Partners and is based in London. Before co-founding Celtic House in 1994, Roger Maggs had over 30 years of experience in senior management and venture activities — primarily with the global metals company Alcan Aluminum, where he became a vice president before he was 40. He served in various capacities around the world from 1979 to 1994, beginning as a VP at the Latin American headquarters, based in Rio de Janeiro. Other postings included CEO of Alcan Aluninio del Uruguay, based in Montevideo; VP Personnel at the world HQ in Montreal; president of Alcan Metal Marketing; and VP Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestments. During 1989, he also headed up Alcan’s Corporate Ventures Group; based in Boston, Mass. Roger currently leads Celtic House’s investment activities in the United Kingdom. Roger currently sits on the boards of Cavendish Kinetics, Global Silicon, NASDAQ-listed LTX Corporation, RedMere Technology and Sandvine. He has also served on the boards of Alcan Aluminium Inc., Alcan Italia, BlazePhotonics, BlueArc, NASDAQ-listed Bookham Technology, Bridgewater Systems, Madrid-based Inespal S.A., Castleton Network Systems, Convedia, CrossKeys, Flexion, nCipher, Newport Networks, Orchestream, PenOp, Simulus, SPAR Aerospace, Spikes Cavell, Synad Technologies, Televitesse, TimeStep, Ubiquity Software (London: UBQ) and WestEnd. Roger Maggs received a physics degree from the University of Wales, and a master’s degree from Warwick Business School. He is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales, Swansea, and a Governor of Clifton College.
Derek Smyth, Partner, Venture Fund, Edgestone Capital Partners
Derek joined EdgeStone as Partner in February 2004. Prior to joining EdgeStone he was President and CEO of Bridgewater Systems Corporation. Before joining Bridgewater Systems, he held the position of COO at Ironside Technologies, where he was responsible for the overall direction of global business development, marketing, sales operations and product development. As COO, Derek grew the business from start-up phase to a multi-national organization, and a team of 14 to 240, while raising $72M in private equity. Previously, he held a number of positions with Bay Networks Canada and Radius Inc.

Derek serves on the Board of Directors of Maximum Throughput, pVelocity, Shoplogix, CiRBA and Solace Systems. Previous board participation includes RSS Solutions and Time Industrial. He holds a B.A. (Commerce and Economics), University of Toronto and completed the Enterprise Program for Growing Companies (EPGC), Stanford University.

ENDS
For further information please contact:
Eoin Kennedy,
Slattery Communications,
Tel: +353 1 6614055, +353 86 8339540

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