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Archive for the ‘Gerbsman Partners’ Category

Sequoia Communications shutting down

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Distressed Intellectual Property, Distressed IP, Gerbsman Partners, Market research, Mobile, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , on August 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is an excellent article from the VC dispatch at Wall Street Journal.

“Though demand for mobile phones is at an all-time high, Sequoia Communications Inc., a developer of components for the devices, has found itself unable to raise additional venture capital and is closing its doors, according to an investor.

The San Diego company had raised about $64 million from nine venture firms over several rounds beginning in 2001, VentureWire records show.

Luis Arzubi, a general partner with Tallwood Venture Capital, which participated in three funding rounds for Sequoia, said the company felt the pinch from the world’s economic slowdown, competition from name-brand tech companies and the difficulty of keeping the company’s components in compliance with the rules and protocols of numerous overseas markets.

“The company was running behind its original schedule,” Arzubi said. “Venture capitalists are very cautious, and afraid of throwing good money after bad.”

The company developed a transceiver for mobile phones that worked well, he said, and had signed up customers. Sequoia was about a year away from breaking even when investors pulled the plug, he said.

Transceivers are one of many electronic components that enable wireless communication. They are capable of tuning in, modulating and broadcasting standard cell signals. Transceivers also exist in other electronics and are used to pick up and broadcast other types of signals.

Semiconductor giants such as Qualcomm Inc. and Infineon Technologies AG also build transceivers, and they have more resources to bring to bear on the process, Arzubi said. They also have a diversified line of products, which Sequoia did not.”

Read the fulla article here.

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Successful “Date Certain M&A” of Business Unit and its Assets and Intellectual Property

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Distressed Intellectual Property, Distressed IP, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, Strategy, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , on August 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Steven R. Gerbsman, Principal of Gerbsman Partners, Kenneth Hardesty, Merle McCreery and Dennis Sholl, members of Gerbsman Partners Board of Intellectual Capital, announced today their success in maximizing stakeholder value for a venture capital backed online marketing solutions company, specializing in lead generation and customer acquisition.

Gerbsman Partners provided Crisis Management leadership, facilitated the sale of the business unit, associated Intellectual Property and assets and recovered receivables. Due to market conditions, the senior lender and the board of directors made the strategic decision to maximize the value of the business unit and Intellectual Property.

Gerbsman Partners provided leadership to the company with

  • Crisis Management and technology expertise in developing the strategic action plans for maximizing value of the business unit, Intellectual Property and assets;
  • Proven domain expertise in maximizing the value of the business unit and Intellectual Property through a targeted and proprietary “Date Certain M&A Process”;
  • The ability to “Manage the Process” among potential Acquirers, Lawyers, Creditors Management and Advisors;
  • The proven ability to “Drive” toward successful closure for all parties at interest.

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 56 Technology, Life Science and Medical Device companies and their Intellectual Property and has restructured/terminated over $770 million of real estate executory contracts and equipment lease/sub-debt obligations. Since inception in 1980, Gerbsman Partners has been involved in over $2.2 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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The Fed Buys 47% of Last Week’s Treasury Notes

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Market research, tagged , , , , on August 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is an excellent article from Chris Martensson.

“And now it turns out that 47% (!) of the bonds that were taken by the primary dealers in that auction have been quietly bought by the Fed and permanently secreted to its balance sheet.

They didn’t even wait a full week!  A more honest and open approach would have been for the Fed to simply buy them outright at the auction but this way, using “primary dealers” and “POMOs” and all these other extra steps the basic fact that the Fed is openly monetizing US government debt is effectively hidden from a not-too-terribly inquisitive US press and public.

The speed of the shell game is accelerating.

This immediate repurchase of newly auction bonds by the Fed tells us that demand for these bonds is not nearly as high as advertised, and that things are not quite as strong as represented.

And oh, by the way, don’t expect any stock market weakness while so many billions are being shoveled out the Fed and into the pockets of the primary dealers.  They’ll have to do something with all that freshly minted  cash…..”

Read the full article here.

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U.S. Recession Worst Since Great Depression, Revised Data Show

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, tagged , , , , on August 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a goo Bloomberg article.

“Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) — The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.

The world’s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of 2008, compared with the 0.8 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said yesterday in Washington. Gross domestic product has shrunk 3.9 percent in the past year, the report said, indicating the worst slump since the Great Depression.

Updated statistics also showed that Americans earned more over the last 10 years and socked away a larger share of that cash in savings. The report signals the process of repairing tattered balance sheets following the biggest drop in household wealth on record may be further along than anticipated.

“The current downturn beginning in 2008 is more pronounced,” Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a press briefing this week. The revisions were in line with past experience in which initial figures tended to underestimate the severity of contractions during their early stages, he said.

Consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, decreased 1.8 percent in last year’s fourth quarter from the same period in 2007, exceeding the prior estimate of a 1.5 percent drop. Purchases also began sinking sooner than previously projected, registering their first decline at the start of 2008 rather than in the second half.

Treasuries, Stocks

Treasuries gained after the GDP report, while stocks closed little changed. Benchmark 10-year note yields dropped to 3.48 percent by the close in New York, from 3.61 percent late the day before. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index closed at 987.48.

Residential construction fell 21 percent during the period, almost 2 percentage points more than previously reported, aggravating what was already the worst slump since the Great Depression.

The Commerce Department also reported yesterday that the economy contracted at a 1 percent annual rate from April through June after shrinking at a 6.4 percent pace in the first quarter, the most since 1982. The decline in the first three months of the year was previously reported as 5.5 percent.

Recession’s Start

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the arbiter of U.S. business cycles, last year determined the recession started in December 2007. The private group is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

Yesterday’s updates are part of comprehensive revisions that take place about every five years and are more extensive than the changes announced at this time each year. Figures as far back as 1929 can be revised.

Over the most recent period, the third quarter of 2008 underwent one of the biggest changes, going from a 0.5 percent decrease in GDP to a 2.7 percent drop. The new reading better illustrates the effect the September collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. had on the economy and credit markets.”

Read the full article here.

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Zappo provide returns for Sequoia

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, google, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good VC article from Alibaba.

“BURLINGAME, Calif. — Marc Andreessen, in a recent Forbes interview, noted there are hundreds of venture-capital outfits slogging it out right now, trying desperately to squeeze profits out of a terrible investing environment–but only a handful worth their salt.

He’s right. And this week’s news that Amazon.com ( AMZN – news – people ) would buy online-shoe retailer Zappos for $807 million in Amazon stock, plus some cash, highlights the staying power of one of those perennial Sand Hill Road stars, Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia is the notoriously tough firm that backed winners like Google ( GOOG – news – people ), Apple ( AAPL – news – people ), Cisco ( CSCO – news – people ), YouTube and PayPal. (I could go on.) It also owned a big chunk of Zappos, a company with a somewhat unlikely business model that excelled by providing unparalleled customer service and shoe selection on the Web. Sequoia recently told its investors it put about $48 million into Zappos and will get just over $169 million from the Amazon transaction. That’s not a “home run” in VC parlance. But it’s a very respectable return of about three-and-a-half times Sequoia’s original investment, particularly in these depressed times.

In the first six months of this year, there were only four tech-related M&A deals of over $100 million involving companies that took venture capital, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. (There were a few VC-backed IPOs in the first half, too, but no blockbusters.) The biggest of the tech M&A deals, Cisco Systems‘ $590 million purchase of camcorder maker Pure Digital Technologies, also involved Sequoia, which owned a small stake.

Sequoia’s profits from that deal were very small, but it still made a nice return: Sequoia told its investors in March that it invested just over $1.4 million in Pure Digital and would receive $13 million in Cisco shares and $1 million in cash after the acquisition. (The biggest VC-related deal in the first half of this year was Medtronic’s ( MDT – news – people ) $700 million purchase of CoreValve, a company with a new catheter technology to improve heart-valve replacements. Sequoia doesn’t do health care investing.) Plenty of other VCs have sold companies in fire sales this year for less than what investors put into them.”

Read the whole article here.

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