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Archive for the ‘Market research’ Category

Recession Job Losses Top Four Million

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy continues to hemorrhage jobs at monthly rates not seen in six decades, a government report showed, signaling that there’s still no end in sight to the severe recession that has already cost the U.S. over four million jobs.

The report suggests that households, already seeing the value of their homes and investments plunge, face added headwinds from the labor market, which could put more pressure on consumer spending in coming months.

Nonfarm payrolls, which are calculated by a survey of companies, fell 651,000 in February, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday, in line with economist expectations. However, December and January were revised to show much steeper declines. In the case of December, the revision was to a drop of 681,000, the most since 1949 when a huge strike affected half a million workers. However, the labor force was smaller then than it is now.

The economy has shed 4.4 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, with almost half of those losses occurring in the last three months alone. And unemployment is lasting much longer. As of last month, 2.9 million people were unemployed more than six months, up from just 1.3 million at the start of the recession.

“The sharp and widespread contraction in the labor market continued in February,” said Keith Hall, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Layoffs announcements continued last month across industries including Macy’s Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc., Estee Lauder Cos., Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and General Motors Corp.

The unemployment rate, which is calculated using a survey of households, jumped 0.5 percentage point to 8.1%, the highest since December 1983 and slightly above expectations for an 8% rate. Some economists think it could hit 10% by the end of next year. For many industries including manufacturing, construction, business services and leisure, the jobless rate is already in double digits.

Read the full article by Brian Blackstone here.

Other comments can be found here: Flowing data, AFL-CIO, 8Pac

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Onerous Post-Bubble Deal Term Reappears

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good article by Scott Austin at WSJ Online on a subject we brought up last week.

“Start-up companies appear to be giving into investor demands of a harsher funding deal term that gained notoriety after the tech bubble burst in the early part of the decade.

According to two separate quarterly reports issued last week from law firms Fenwick & West and Cooley Godward Kronish, venture capital firms are more frequently receiving multiple liquidation preferences that protect them from losing out on investments.

Venture capital firms almost always receive preferred stock when they invest in companies, giving them certain rights over common stock holders, usually the founders and executives. One of these standard rights is a liquidation preference, which gives preferred stock holders the right to get their money back from a company before other common stock holders in an unfavorable sale or liquidation.

But with more companies in trouble, investors are inserting multiple liquidation preferences into term sheets, meaning they could get two times or more the amount of capital they invested. That can create nightmarish capital structures for companies but give them more incentive for them to become successful.”

Read the full article here.

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Emphasys Medical Up For Sale

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Distressed Intellectual Property, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Life Science, Market research, Strategy, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

emphasys-logoEmphasys Medical Inc., a Redwood City, Calif.-based medical device company focused on emphysema, has retained Gerbsman Partners to find a strategic buyer, according to VentureWire. The company canceled an IPO last spring, and before that had raised around $80 million in VC funding. Shareholders include Advanced Technology Ventures (17.8%), Morgenthaler Ventures (13.8%), St. Paul Venture Capital (11.5%) OrbiMed Advisors (13.7%), ABS Ventures (10%), Morgan Stanley Venture Partners (7.4%), Cargill Ventures (6.1%) and Neww Enterprise Associates. www.emphasysmedical.com

Links: peHUB, Biospace, DOW Jones,

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Good PR, bad PR…or not PR

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Market research, Marketing, tagged , , , , on February 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Those of us in this profession that have made the decision to make a living the hard way by asking to be paid only if we actually land positive press coverage for our clients rather than ‘counsel’ them, may be passing on some good income these days. I hope it’s not a sign of the dour economic times, but it’s apparent there are a lot of clients out there in need of some solid counsel rather than publicity. Do Michael Phelps, A-Rod, Jessica Simpson, and continuing fan and press fav, Blagojevich, come to mind?

Maybe it’s a backlash to the seeming adulation and feel-good nature of the coverage of the historic inauguration and charismatic new president, but we, as represented by the media we subscribe to (and ingratiate ourselves to as PR people) lately seem to have veered toward a fascination to report and elevate the weaker and sillier side of our nature. It’s as if we needed a good old-fashioned, what my grandmother used to say, “come-uppence” for being so smug in our reporting of real news that seriously affects our lives and incomes. “Enough” said the media kings and the publicists that feed off of them…”bring back the court jesters!” And of course, there are those amongst us, more than happy to do so.

The fact that we’re in the midst of an important debate with valid issues on all sides of the aisle that will affect all of us in the most personal ways over the next few years does not preclude us from the enjoyment of entertainment news, of sports, of even some fluff to lighten our day. Not at all. We all need and deserve a guilty pleasure or “silly fix” once in a while. But to be transfixed on it, to have it become a story with legs is an embarrassment to the media covering it, the audiences into it, and to the PR-types behind the scenes promoting it for income and profit.

This excerpt is from The Grove Report, for the full article and other excellent posts, please click here

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Venture Capital Investment Down 7% in Third Quarter

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Venture capital investment was down slightly in the third quarter, according to the MoneyTree Report released Saturday from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. Venture capitalists put $7.7 billion into 1,033 deals, a decrease of 7 percent from the second quarter.

The third quarter of the year is generally slower for venture investing, and the analysts who produced the report said that the economic crisis is not yet affecting venture numbers. In future quarters, though, the industry will probably see a dip in investing, said Tracy T. Lefteroff, global managing partner of the venture capital practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

For now, “the venture industry is very much open for business,” said John S. Taylor, vice president of research at the National Venture Capital Association.

Click here for the full article

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