This morning, First Read brings you the lowdown on Accel’s new venture partner; the latest corporate market chatter; Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and why Microsoft Azure is worth a billion.

The firm’s newest fund, Accel London IV, will target early through growth stage investments in Europe and Israel. Partner Kevin Comolli says he’s more bullish than ever about the region, where he sees talented entrepreneurs and startups that are less prone to the “hot deal syndrome” of soaring valuations than their Silicon Valley counterparts.

Accel-backed ForgeRock has named Mike Ellis as the company’s new chief executive officer. ForgeRock is an open source identity management business.

This morning’s First Read brings you the latest venture deals, what ten big brands have plummeted in value and a McKinsey report predicting more doom and gloom for world banking.

This morning’s First Read brings you private equity to the rescue of Chinese listed companies, 3i bringing its debt management business Stateside and five reasons why St Petersburg is a leading tech hub.

Bangalore-based engineering design and innovation firm, Jed-i, has raised an undisclosed funding from Accel Partners. PRESS RELEASE: Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Monday, May 14, 2012 — (Business Wire India) Jed-i, dedicated to the creation of gifted engineers, announced that it has raised investment from Accel Partners. Jed-i is pioneering conceptual engineering delivered through the flipped class [...]

BranchOut, a professional networking application on Facebook, has closed $25 million in Series C financing led by Mayfield Fund. Previous investors Accel, Norwest Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures also participated in the round. This financing brings BranchOut’s total funding to $49 million. PRESS RELEASE BranchOut, the largest professional networking application on Facebook, has surpassed 25 [...]

Entrepreneur Rick Marini has a lot to be thankful for, including smart, connected friends who’ve supported him in the launch of two of his businesses. The most recent of these is BranchOut, which leverages Facebook to help people find business connections and that has an enviable list of backers and advisors. Marini may soon need them more than [...]

Certainly starting an Internet company is a lot cheaper than it used to be. And clearly entrepreneurs would prefer to hold on to as much equity as they can. But perhaps there are other drivers behind what might be called a recent mini-trend: Rather mature companies in a variety of sectors raising their first venture [...]