SAN FRANCISCO Oct 17 (Reuters) - Cloud-based analytics company Tidemark took the wraps off its business after two years in stealth mode, and announced a new funding round.The company is another in a list of start-ups aimed at helping businesses deal with sorting through growing amounts of data. It works using the cloud — meaning data gets stored on a network of computers and is accessible from anywhere.But in a sign of the tough fund-raising environment that has emerged over the last couple of months, the company raised less money this year than it did last year. Typically, companies raise a bigger sum with each funding round.Tidemark, formerly known as Proferi, raised $6.3 million in its A, or first significant, funding round last year, and said total equity raised totaled “more than $11 million.” A spokesman confirmed the new round was slightly smaller than the previous round, and said Tidemark didn’t want to raise more cash than it needed at this stage.Its software takes on established players like Oracle and SAP , and will allow customers to quickly see the possible outcomes for a variety of scenarios: “For what happens if a competitor enters your space, or if you change a product line,” Chief Executive Officer Christian Gheorghe told Reuters as examples.Fellow cloud-based business-software company Box said last week it won $81 million in a late-stage round of funding. Domo, a cloud-based business intelligence company founded by former Omniture CEO Josh James, won $33 million in July.Tidemark’s initial customers are sales & marketing company Acosta; US Sugar, and a large technology company it declined to name.Its backers include venture-capital firms Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz; and Dave Duffield, co-founder of Workday and founder of PeopleSoft, both business-enterprise companies.

SAN FRANCISCO Oct 17 (Reuters) - Cloud-based analytics company Tidemark took the wraps off its business after two years in stealth mode, and announced a new funding round.The company is another in a list of start-ups aimed at helping businesses deal with sorting through growing amounts of data. It works using the cloud — meaning data gets stored on a network of computers and is accessible from anywhere.But in a sign of the tough fund-raising environment that has emerged over the last couple of months, the company raised less money this year than it did last year. Typically, companies raise a bigger sum with each funding round.Tidemark, formerly known as Proferi, raised $6.3 million in its A, or first significant, funding round last year, and said total equity raised totaled “more than $11 million.” A spokesman confirmed the new round was slightly smaller than the previous round, and said Tidemark didn’t want to raise more cash than it needed at this stage.Its software takes on established players like Oracle and SAP , and will allow customers to quickly see the possible outcomes for a variety of scenarios: “For what happens if a competitor enters your space, or if you change a product line,” Chief Executive Officer Christian Gheorghe told Reuters as examples.Fellow cloud-based business-software company Box said last week it won $81 million in a late-stage round of funding. Domo, a cloud-based business intelligence company founded by former Omniture CEO Josh James, won $33 million in July.Tidemark’s initial customers are sales & marketing company Acosta; US Sugar, and a large technology company it declined to name.Its backers include venture-capital firms Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz; and Dave Duffield, co-founder of Workday and founder of PeopleSoft, both business-enterprise companies.

Some 60 million Americans — close to a fifth of the adult population — were under-banked or un-banked in 2009, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. That number is likely to rise as banks choke off free checking, and adjust to new rules that cut into their revenue.Bank of America, Citigroup Inc, J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co, PNC Financial, Suntrust and others are beginning to charge for once-free services, making a bank account more of a luxury to those living on a tight budget.”Credit unions are an alternative source for the kind of services a bank provides,” said Professor Lawrence White of New York’s Stern School of Business.”I’m hoping they would see the un-banked as part of their mission. That would be the most socially worthwhile thing they could do.”Credit unions, which are effectively not-for-profit co-operatives, are stepping up to offer cheaper alternatives to the short-term, high-interest loans provided by payday lenders.Demand for short-term, small-dollar loans from credit unions rose 52 percent in the second quarter, National Credit Union Administration data showed. More aggressive selling by these unions will have seen that rise further in the third quarter.Livonia, Michigan-based Co-Op Services Credit Union has begun a “Shred My Card” campaign offering $105 to people who open a free checking account with a direct deposit and who cut up their bank debit card.”We want consumers to know they can fight back against big banks by saying ‘no’ to more fees. They should give credit unions a close look,” Bill Cheney, Chief Executive of the Credit Union National Association, said in a statement.The credit unions are also lobbying to have their business lending cap more than doubled to 27.5 percent of assets so they can better target small businesses unable to access bank funding.NET LENDERSAmong the crop of alternative finance companies opening their wallets to cash-strapped consumers through the Internet are BillFloat, Pawngo and Prosper.com.Online lender BillFloat, backed by Ebay’s PayPal, offers a 30-day loan of up to $225 to consumers looking to pay their bills.The service, started two years ago, has an annualized interest rate of 36 percent, making it far cheaper than payday loans, where rates can be as high as 500 percent.”We want to be nothing like a payday loan and nothing like a bank loan,” BillFloat Chief Executive Ryan Gilbert told Reuters.He said BillFloat, which has relationships with more than 3,000 billers, including utility PG&E and telecoms giant AT&T, was seeing at least double-digit growth every month.Pawngo.com, an online pawn lender backed by Daylight Partners, Access Venture Partners and Groupon-backers Lightbank, offers up to $1 million to small business owners with collateral — a shift from normal pawn operators where small loans of less than $1,000 are the norm.”We helped a gentleman who needed money to put into his venture fund. We loaned him $50,000 on several pieces of jewelry and normally he would have gotten that from a bank, but the banks just aren’t there for those loans right now,” said Pawngo CEO Todd Hills, a 25-year pawn industry veteran.Pawngo, which has offered pawn loans on Louis Vuitton bags and Solitaire diamond rings, is attracting better-off clients, who have seen banks pull back their lines of credit.Peer-to-peer lending site Prosper.com, which has raised more than $70 million in venture funding, connects people who want to borrow money with those who want to invest. It has more than $262 million in funded loans since it launched in 2006.The growing demand for newer financing options is attracting venture capitalists, who are backing new, Internet-based entrants.LOOKING TO LISTDemand for these services is also spurring alternative financial firms to tap public markets for the cash they need to grow.Regional Management Corp and Community Choice Financial have filed for initial public offerings this year, and Cash America said it would spin off its online lending unit, Enova International, in a $500 million IPO.Investors are likely to buy into these IPOs, despite the regulatory overhang, as these companies are immensely profitable.”These companies could make a unique industry cluster in the IPO market; they have revenue, they make money,” said Josef Schuster, founder of Chicago-based IPO research and investment firm IPOX Schuster.Other listed pawn and payday lenders like EZCorp, First Cash Financial, and DFC Global Corp havebolstered their pawn lending operations and are adding pre-paid debit cards to the services they offer.

* Carrefour falls after another profit warning* Rolls-Royce surges on venture stake saleBy Brian GormanLONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - European shares slipped in choppy trading on Thursday morning, after recent strong gains, with mining stocks among the biggest casualties after Chinese trade data was weaker than expected.The STOXX Europe 600 Basic Resources Index fell 2.3 percent after top metals consumer China’s trade surplus narrowed for a second straight month in September, with imports and exports both lower than expected, reflecting global economic weakness.”China is lower and slower. You can hear the balloon slowly losing its air. But that’s OK. We know it’s slowing. There’s no reason to panic,” said Justin Urquhart Stewart, director at Seven Investment Management.”But in Europe, maybe the political decisions are finally coming through. Markets have been taking strength, as the underlying value is still there.”At 0853 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was down 0.8 percent at 969.29 points, after earlier going into positive territory to as high as 980.34.The index rose 1.6 percent in the previous session to its highest close in more than nine weeks, buoyed by better-than-expected euro zone output data. It is up more than 13 percent from a low it hit in September, but is down more than 13 percent in 2011, hurt by the euro zone debt crisis.Euro zone countries will ask banks to accept losses of up to 50 percent on their holdings of Greek debt, officials said on Wednesday, as part of a grand plan to avert a disorderly default and stem a crisis that threatens the world economy.To restore confidence in the banking system, euro zone leaders are working on plans to shore up the balance sheets of banks through recapitalisations.The index is bouncing around the 50 percent retracement level of its fall from an August high to the September low.Across Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 0.6 percent, Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC40 fell between 0.6 and 0.8 percent.Some technical analysts remained positive, following the recent rally.Bill McNamara at Charles Stanley said in a note on the FTSE 100: “Notwithstanding the fact that this rally is being driven by relatively low volumes the outlook has improved as the UK index has pushed up through its short-term downtrend and, at the same time, exceeded its 50-day moving average - taken together, the impression is that, for the moment, the path of least resistance is to the upside.”CARREFOUR FALLSCorporate news was mixed. Carrefour , Europe’s No.1 retailer, fell 5.4 percent after issuing a fresh profit warning, citing an increasingly challenging economic climate that has seen shoppers cut spending at its core French hypermarkets.Rolls-Royce rose 6.7 percent after Pratt & Whittney said it would buy Rolls-Royce’s share of International Aero Engines consortium for $1.5 billion.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, is holding on to his support but failing to increase it significantly, according to the survey, which also showed President Barack Obama facing deep unhappiness among voters about his performance.Romney was backed by 23 percent of Republicans in the October poll, up from 20 percent in the most recent comparable carried out in June.Cain, a businessman who has emerged as a surprise front-runner after proposing a radical tax reform, nearly tripled his support among Republicans in the same period, leaping to 19 percent from 7 percent four months ago.”In the Republican presidential primary, everybody still says Mitt Romney’s the front-runner,” Ipsos research director Chris Jackson said. “And he is … but he’s certainly not any sort of dominant front-runner.”Texas congressman Ron Paul was third with 13 percent and Texas Governor Rick Perry fourth, with 10 percent.Supporters of Sarah Palin, who announced last week she would not run for president, have not coalesced behind a single candidate, the survey found.The poll was conducted October 6-10, before a debate on economic issues on Tuesday night in which Romney and Cain had strong performances and Perry failed to make up the ground he lost when he stumbled through two previous debates.”I think Rick Perry’s boomlet probably really peaked in August and has subsided,” Jackson said.The margin of error for Republicans among the 1,113 people polled was 4.8 percentage points, leaving Romney and Cain in a virtual tie.OBAMA TAKES HEAT FROM VOTERSWhichever Republican eventually wins the nomination to run against Obama in 2012 will face an incumbent facing a very unhappy public.The percentage of Americans who disapprove of the president’s job performance has edged up to 50 percent from 48 percent in the past month and the percentage who strongly disapprove has risen to 34 percent, the highest level since Obama entered the White House.Fewer than half — 47 percent — of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, a figure unchanged from a poll conducted in September.Obama has taken a tougher line against political opponents as he has pushed for passage of his jobs bill but the new approach has yet to make a difference among voters.”People are still wildly pessimistic,” Jackson said.The survey showed that 74 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, compared with 21 percent who believe it is going in the right direction.There was one bright spot for Democrats. More registered voters — 48 percent — said they would back Democrats in congressional races if the November 2012 elections were held today, compared with 40 percent who would support Republicans.But their verdict on how the two parties would handle the struggling economy — the issue expected to be central to the 2012 election — generally favored Republicans.On reducing the deficit, Republicans have the lead at 44 percent to 35 percent for Democrats; they have a 43 percent to 36 percent lead on their ability to make the country globally competitive; and more Americans thought they would generate economic growth with a 43 percent to 38 percent edge over the Democrats.The two parties were tied on job creation at 41 percent each and close on “dealing with taxes,” with 42 percent for Democrats and 41 percent picking Republicans. On the economy overall, 42 percent favored Republicans and 40 percent choose Democrats.The of 1,113 adults, including 934 registered voters, had a margin of error of 3 percentage points for all respondents and 3.2 points for registered voters.