Theglobe.com Inc has raised $28m in a placement of shares with institutional investors as it tries to build a new business as a VoIP operator.

While the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company once enjoyed a buoyant share price during the dot-com boom, it now has to offer substantial inducements to persuade investors to put up more money for the promotion of its voiceglo business, which it says can turn a browser into a phone.

Now traded on the over-the-counter market, theglobe sold the shares to US-based institutional investors and a group of Mexican investors at $0.85 each compared with the most recent public quote for the stock of $1.16. Moreover, to sweeten the deal, the investors received five-year warrants to purchase a further 16.5 million shares at an exercise price of $0.01 each.

This is a far cry from when theglobe.com held its IPO in November 1998. Then styled as an online community, the company’s shares, which had been priced at $9, opened at $87 then soared as high as $97, making it the most successful opening day for an issue.

It never lived up to expectations, and by January 2000 the company founders stepped down from their roles as co-chief executives after growing losses.

In other news, privately held ERP vendor SSA Global Technologies Inc has reported revenue up 138% at $155.1m for its second quarter to January 31 as it enjoyed a boost from acquisitions, particularly its $135m purchase of Baan Company NV in June 2003.

The Chicago, Illinois-based company did not reveal its bottom line but said that earnings at the EBITDA level also increased 138% to $27.9m. The company said software license fees rose 83% to $38m in the quarter and represented 24% of total revenue.

SSA now boasts it is the fourth largest ERP vendor with a global reach. North America delivered 43% of revenue, the EMEA region contributed 38%, Asia/Pacific 13%, and Latin America 6%.

While SSA has $95.9m cash in hand, it has been comparatively quiet on the acquisition front but did conclude its $47.3m purchase of supply chain execution software provider EXE Technologies Inc in the quarter.

And finally, India’s largest exporter of software and services Tata Consultancy Services has acquired the remaining stake in Aviation Software Development Consultancy India Ltd, a joint venture it formed in 1996 with Singapore Airlines.

Under terms of the deal, Mumbai-based TCS’s parent company Tata Sons will pay INR 140.3m ($3.1m) in cash to acquire the remaining 51% stake in ASDC it did not already own, effectively buying out partner Singapore Airlines. TCS previously owned a minority 49% stake in the business.

Chennai-based ASDC was formed to provide Singapore Airlines with development services for its proprietary airline applications. The company has grown to employ some 180 people, and now offers its application development, client server and mainframe services to other airlines and aviation industry companies.

TCS said it will focus on developing a transaction processing system for credit card processing and a railways reservation system with ASDC, and will also attempt to cross-sell its services into other vertical markets.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire