This is from a Red Herring e-letter. Consider it part of my series on economic happy-talk... Providing some balance to the doomies. :)

ST. PAUL, TAKE 4 Ever since St. Paul Venture Capital raised its $1.3 billion fund in November, it's been on a hiring frenzy, recruiting three partners and a principal with loads of operational expertise to help put that money to work.

The newest addition is Bill Cadogan, who will retire later this month from his chairman and CEO role at ADC Telecommunications (Nasdaq: ADCT) and start May 1 as a general partner out of St. Paul's Boston office.

In his ten years at ADC, Mr. Cadogan was instrumental in the communications system provider's corporate venture fund (its $40 million in investments now have a market capitalization of $1.4 billion) and in assimilating 20 acquired companies. "When I decided to leave, I knew [venture capital] was something I wanted to devote the next leg of my career to," he says.

He chose St. Paul from among a handful of offers from other East Coast firms (St. Paul has offices in Minneapolis and Boston) mostly because of the firm's heavy emphasis on communications and networking investments. St. Paul plans to devote up to 70 percent of its new fund to communications deals.

Between finishing at ADC and starting full time at St. Paul, Mr. Cadogan, a Minnesota resident, plans to take two months off -- most of it decompressing and warming up at his Florida home.

TALENT POOL In other venture capital news, Austin, Texas-based Verity Ventures hired Bill Bock, a VP at Hewlett-Packard, as a new partner.... Also, Durham, North Carolina's Intersouth Partners named as a new general partner Sallie Shuping Russell, formerly a VP and director at Duke Management Company (which manages endowment and other investments for Duke University).... Walden Israel brought in two new executives: Galia Weiner as director of executive placement, and Leslie Perlberg as director of marketing communications.... And Village Ventures, which recently brought on former Mothernature.com CEO Michael Barach, hired Jane Martin as its Midwest regional managing director. Ms. Martin was formerly CEO of Wisdomtools, a spin-off from Indiana University's Advanced Research & Technology Institute.... Here's another big executive hire for recruiter Mel Connet of Connet & Company, who's lured (see: http://www.redherring.com/companies/2001/0129/com-headcount012901.html) several execs out of Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU). Mr. Connet hired Redback Networks (Nasdaq: RBAK) senior VP Randall Kruep as the new CEO and president of Procket.... Going from one power exchange to another, former California Power Exchange chief operating officer John Yurkanin was appointed CEO and president of Automated Power Exchange.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001