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Archive for the ‘Gerbsman Partners’ Category

Greylock Bats off Market Concerns, Calls Pandora an IPO Candidate

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, IPO news, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , on April 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is some Techcrunch news.

“Last week we invited Greylock’s David Sze and Reid Hoffman into the studio for a chat about the state of the venture market, with its odd mix of soaring valuations and horrible returns. As it turned out, these two might be the worst guys in Silicon Valley to ask. I don’t say that because they refuse to pay up to be in good companies. (See Sze’s 2006 investment in Facebook—considered shocking at the time due to the company’s $500 million valuation, now considered one of the top trades in Web 2.0 history.) I say that because their portfolio doesn’t seem to be hurting.

We’ll be posting the full interview soon, but first here’s a sneak peak, including this bold statement from Sze about the funds the firm has been investing over the last five-to-seven years: “We think those will be our best funds ever.” Ever? That’s a claim I can’t imagine many Silicon Valley firms making—especially those that were in business during the late 1990s when nearly anything could go public.

Later in the video below, Sze noted that Greylock had three of the five potential blockbuster Web IPO candidates on most bankers’ and analysts’ short list: Facebook, LinkedIn and Pandora. As you can see in the video that last one caught Arrington by surprise and with good reason: A little more than a year ago Pandora was still on deathwatch. We knew it was profitable but, if it’s being bandied about as an IPO-hopeful, things may be even better than people realize. The good thing about being the only online music company to live long enough to go public is you don’t have a ton of competition.”

Read the full article here.

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“Terminating/Restructuring Prohibitive Real Estate, License and Payable Contingent Liabilities”

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Marketing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Gerbsman Partners has been involved with numerous national and international equity sponsors, senior/junior lenders, investment banks and equipment lessors in the restructuring or termination of various Balance Sheet issues for their technology, life science, medical device and cleantech portfolio companies. These companies were not necessarily in Crisis, had CASH (in some cases significant CASH) and/or investor groups that were about to provide additional funding. In order stabilize their go forward plan and maximize CASH resources for future growth, there was a specific need to address the Balance Sheet and Contingent Liability issues as soon as possible.

Some of the areas in which Gerbsman Partners has assisted these companies have been in the termination, restructuring and/or reduction of:

  • Prohibitive executory real estate leases, computer and hardware related leases and senior/sub-debt obligations – Gerbsman Partners was the “Innovator” in creating strategies to terminate or restructure prohibitive real estate leases, computer and hardware related leases and senior and sub-debt obligations. To date, Gerbsman Partners has terminated or restructured over $790 million of such obligations. These were a mixture of both public and private companies, and allowed the restructured company to return to a path of financial viability.
  • Accounts/Trade payable obligations – Companies in a crisis, turnaround or restructuring situation typically have accounts and trade payable obligations that become prohibitive for the viability of the company on a go forward basis. Gerbsman Partners has successfully negotiated mutually beneficial restructurings that allowed all parties to maximize enterprise value based on the reality and practicality of the situation.
  • Software and technology related licenses – As per the above, software and technology related licenses need to be restructured/terminated in order for additional capital to be invested in restructured companies. Gerbsman Partners has a significant track record in this area.

Date Certain M&A Process

Gerbsman Partners developed its proprietary “Date Certain M&A Process” in 2002. Since that time, the process has evolved into a 6-8 week time frame vehicle for maximizing enterprise and asset value for under-performing venture capital and senior lender backed medical device, life science and technology Intellectual Property based companies. To date, Gerbsman Partners has maximized enterprise and asset value for over 60 of these companies. A description of this proven process can be reviewed on the Gerbsman Partners website.

About Gerbsman Partners

Gerbsman Partners focuses on maximizing enterprise value for stakeholders and shareholders in under-performing, under-capitalized and under-valued companies and their Intellectual Property. Since 2001, Gerbsman Partners has been involved in maximizing value for 60 Technology, Life Science and Medical Device companies and their Intellectual Property, through its proprietary “Date Certain M&A Process” and has restructured/terminated over $790 million of real estate executory contracts and equipment lease/sub-debt obligations. Since inception, Gerbsman Partners has been involved in over $2.3 billion of financings, restructurings and M&A transactions.

Gerbsman Partners has offices and strategic alliances in Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Alexandria, VA, San Francisco, Europe and Israel.

For additional information please visit www.gerbsmanpartners.com

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Microsoft, Yahoo deal gets regulators’ OK

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Gerbsman Partners, internet, Microsoft, tagged , , , , , , , on February 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interresting article from SF Chronicle.

“Regulators have cleared the way for the landmark search partnership between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., creating a unified front in the battle to crack the dominance of Google Inc.

Seven months after announcing the agreement and following several years of merger flirtations, the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission approved a deal that tightly allies the No. 2 and No. 3 players in the search space. It also marks a pivotal moment in the history of Yahoo, as it cedes territory where it was once a pioneer.

Under the terms of the pact, Microsoft’s Bing search tool will become the exclusive platform on Yahoo’s sites, funneling queries through the Redmond, Wash., software titan’s increasingly popular algorithm. The Sunnyvale Web portal will sell advertising tied to online search for both companies, and Microsoft will pay Yahoo for the traffic it generates.

The deal promises to give the companies control over nearly 30 percent of U.S. online searches, based on the current market share reported by comScore Inc. The combination will deliver improved results for consumers and better returns for advertisers and publishers, the companies said.

“Together, Microsoft and Yahoo will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation,” Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said in a statement.

But analysts are skeptical about how much the deal will really reshape the search industry. Google holds a commanding lead of more than 65 percent of searches, and Yahoo has been bleeding market share for years.

“I don’t think there’s a big shift in power here,” said Carl Howe, analyst with Yankee Group Research Inc.

Rather, he said the agreement provides incremental benefits, opening up a bigger channel of advertisers for Microsoft and lowering research and development costs for Yahoo.

Yahoo previously estimated the agreement would add $500 million to its annual operating income and save $200 million in capital expenditures, though not until two years after the deal was approved.

Implementation will begin in the coming days and could be complete in the United States by the end of the year. The goal is to transition U.S. advertisers and publishers to the new platform before the holiday season, but the companies acknowledged it may take until 2011.

“This breakthrough search alliance means Yahoo can focus even more on our own innovative search experience,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in a statement. “Yahoo gets to do what we do best: combine our science and technology with compelling content to build personally relevant online experiences for our users and customers.”

Read the whole article here.

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Silicon Valley faces fierce global competition in cleantech

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, cleantech, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a Cleantech article from Mercury News.

“In other tech revolutions of recent decades, Silicon Valley became the uncontested global leader. The region’s ability to innovate its way to the top in cleantech, though, is far from guaranteed. Competition is fierce and global, with trillions of dollars at stake.

One of the valley’s greatest challenges comes from here. China’s drive to be a dominant power in the emerging global cleantech industry was on display one recent morning on the campus of the nation’s third-largest solar-panel maker, Trina Solar. New assembly-line employees, in an exercise designed to instill discipline, marched military-style around the grid-like campus, chanting responses to a drill leader dressed in army fatigues.

But China’s ambitions in cleantech reach far beyond piecing together solar panels. The central government has committed more than $100 billion a year to green technology research. It also has put in place incentives to create markets for everything from electric cars to rooftop solar water heaters to jump-start homegrown cleantech companies.

Provincial and local governments also are investing heavily in cleantech. Leaders in Jiangsu Province, where Trina Solar is located, are placing big bets on the solar industry, inspired by the municipal government of Wuxi. That Jiangsu Province city financially backed Suntech Power, now a global solar leader.

“China is moving very aggressively,” U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said during a visit to Google’s Mountain View headquarters last fall. “They want to be a leader in this new industrial revolution.”

A group of valley tech executives, including former Intel CEO Andy Grove, recently sent a letter to Chu urging the energy secretary to “sound the alarm bell to make America aware — clearly and unequivocally — of how rapidly other nations, particularly China, are moving on clean energy.

“Unless we move quickly and commit substantial resources on a sustained basis, we risk becoming an energy also-ran, and risk developing a new dependency,” said the letter, also signed by Michael Splinter, CEO of Applied Materials, and John Doerr, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.

They urge the government to provide financial assistance to clean energy industries, including incentives for replacing polluting power plants with renewable sources of energy.

U.S. is lagging

Currently, only five of the world’s top 30 companies in the solar, wind and next-generation battery markets are based in the United States, according to John Denniston, also a partner with Kleiner.

U.S. government incentives — such as tax breaks and a regulation requiring utilities to buy power from solar and wind energy companies — were slowly eliminated in the 1980s after helping California become a global cleantech leader, said Ryan Wiser, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Around the same time, Denmark, Germany and Spain — whose governments adopted policies and incentives to jump-start cleantech enterprises — were emerging as global leaders.”

Read the full article here.

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Roubini Sees ‘Dismal’ Growth as Summers Rues ‘Human Recession’

Posted in boic, Community, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from Bloomberg worth reading.

“Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who anticipated the financial crisis, said the U.S. growth outlook remains “very dismal” and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said the economy is still mired in a “human recession.”

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, after the U.S. reported the fastest growth in six years, their comments underscored concern that that emergency measures to rescue banks and fight the recession may be withdrawn too soon.

“The headline number will look large and big, but actually when you dissect it, it’s very dismal and poor,” Roubini said in a Jan. 30 Bloomberg Television interview following a U.S. Commerce Department report that showed economic expansion of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter. “I think we are in trouble.”

Roubini said more than half of the growth was related to a replenishing of depleted inventories and that consumption was reliant on monetary and fiscal stimulus. As these forces ebb, the rate will slow to 1.5 percent in the second half of 2010.

Roubini, who chairs New York-based Roubini Global Economics LLC, has become famous for his pessimistic projections. In 2007, he correctly predicted a “hard landing” for the world economy. He said last year that the global recession would shrink through 2009, only for growth to resume in the middle of the year.

He says now that while the world’s largest economy won’t relapse into recession, U.S. unemployment will rise from the current 10 percent amid “mediocre” growth.

‘Feel Like Recession’

“It’s going to feel like a recession even if technically we’re not going to be in a recession,” he said in the interview.

Also speaking in Davos, Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said that the statistical recovery won’t mask a “human recession.”

The U.S. expansion in the October-December period resulted from manufacturers cranking up assembly lines and companies increasing investment in equipment and software. The rebuilding of stocks contributed 3.4 percentage points to gross domestic product, the most in two decades.

The rebound followed the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut its benchmark interest rate to near zero in December 2008 and President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package. The jobless rate has the central bank promising to keep borrowing costs low and Obama making new proposals to create jobs.

‘Pretty Attractive’

Carlyle Group LP co-founder David Rubinstein countered Roubini’s concerns. He said that even after a rally in global stocks that drove the MSCI World Index up more than 60 percent from March 2009, it’s a “pretty attractive” time to invest.

“There are a lot of great opportunities we see in the United States and abroad,” Rubenstein told a Jan. 27 panel. “Sometimes generals fight the last war, economists fight the last recession.”

Policy makers may be undermining their effort to spur hiring by attacking banks, Blackstone Group LP Chief Executive Officer Steven Schwarzman said in a Jan. 28 interview in Davos. One in four of chief executive officers worldwide surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP for the Davos conference already plans to cut jobs this year.

“Financial institutions will feel under siege and they will retreat,” Schwarzman said. “Their entire world is being shaken and they’re being attacked personally,” he said. “We don’t need those financial institutions insecure.”

Read the full article here.

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