VENTURE CAPITAL POST

It was confirmed on Monday that Israeli company Ravello was acquired by Oracle for $500 million. Ravello joins Oracle's cloud business with high hopes to take on giant tech companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

San Fransisco-based biotech accelerator IndieBio is determined to help biotech startups the way other accelerators have done for IT startups. The firm believes that biotech is a highly important sector to boost the quality of humanity and economy, and is convincing other investors to have the same vision.

Soundcloud's financial report revealed that the company is experiencing significant loss in 2014, and the losses had started from several years before. The 2014 loss was due to large expenses, even though Soundcloud's revenue actually experienced a growth. The company expects to face losses for the next three years, but they are striving to plan strategies to increase income.

A startup focusing in the student accommodation markets just received $60 million from high-profile firms and individuals, led by VY Capital. Student.com will use the funds to expand its presence and service in the promising markets of international students accommodation. For now, most of Student.com's bookings came from Asia-based students.

Palestinian-American entrepreneur Zahi Khouri teamed up with Palestinian investors to build a Coca-Cola manufacturing plant in the Gaza Strip. This new factory would provide direct jobs for 250 people and indirectly support 1,000 local families. This move is one of the first and most significant economic development in Gaza after the end of the war in 2014.

The Five app was first released in 2015 as a playful app to communicate with custom hand signs. Mach, an 18-year-old high school student, didn't realize that the app could be very useful to facilitate communications between people with loss of hearing until they contacted them to thank him. Then he reached out to raise money to improve the app for a better use.

Philippine's fourth quarter gross domestic product increased by 6.3% driven mainly by higher private consumption, government expenditure as well as an increase in economic activity.

The Drone Racing League already announce its first season that would take place in Miami this year. The league will involve only skilled pilots to compete in its six courses of races. The league hopes that they could be as big as NASCAR, Formula 1, or MotoGP.

The major factors such as oil price fall, economy growth concerns and uncertainty in stock markets are keeping more pressure on mortgage rates in the US market. The average US rate on long-term mortgage dropped for three weeks in a row to 3.81 percent. The average rate on 15-year mortgages dropped to 3.10 percent from 3.19 percent.

Short interest on the Nasdaq fell 3.3 percent in the second half of November, the exchange said on Tuesday. As of Nov. 28, short interest fell to about 8.508 billion shares, compared with 8.798 billion shares as of Nov. 14.

International buyers snapped up Chinese stocks on Monday at the debut of an exchange link that allows Hong Kong and Shanghai investors to trade shares on each other's bourses, a major step towards opening China's tightly controlled capital markets.

U.S. stock index futures ticked lower on Monday, with investors taking a pause following a sharp rally on Friday that took the Dow and S&P 500 to record levels.

Investors betting that oil prices will recover are starting to support the battered prices of high-yield bonds from exploration and production (E&P) energy companies.

A boardroom tussle brewing for months at Sanofi came to a head on Wednesday when France's top drugmaker fired its chief executive, wiping more billions off its share price.

Investors were spared immediate pain on Sunday after the European Central Bank's landmark banking health check did not force massive capital hikes amongst the euro zone's top lenders.