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19 Green IPOs On Deck This Year, More to Come

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an optimistic article from earth2tech.

“Is 2010 the year of the greentech IPO? Well, a whopping 19 green companies have announced IPOs since September, according to a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and none of those have sold shares yet. And that’s just the companies that have announced that they’ll IPO — not including companies that are widely thought to file and go public this year (like Silver Spring Networks.) In total, greentech companies plan to raise $9.6 billion worldwide in 2010, “more than triple the total value of IPOs for the industry in 2009,” reports Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Green IPOs were already up slightly last year over 2008, according to the Cleantech Group. That was thanks to lithium-ion battery maker A123Systems’ (a AONE) $371 million IPO in late September (the largest IPO in the U.S. last year) and the massive $2.23 billion IPO of China Longyuan Electric Power Group in the fourth quarter of 2009. But up until A123Systems’ public debut, green IPOs (and most IPOs) were relatively stalled last year.

However, the post-A123Systems boost seems like it already occurred in the fourth quarter of 2009, when there were already 18 green IPOs, totaling $2.9 billion. And the first quarter of 2010 saw a drop in green IPOs to 13, totaling $1.5 billion — China accounted for the majority of transactions, with eight offerings. As the Cleantech Group put it:

[T]he number of high profile companies registering to go public in the U.S. in late 2009 and early 2010 failed to translate into the volume of IPOs that many predicted, with only three North American cleantech IPOs in 1Q 2010.

But the green IPO bonanza that Bloomberg is expecting will specifically be targeted at renewables. The report says 12 of the 19 companies that have announced they will IPO are wind and solar firms. In particular Italian utility Enel SpA plans to sell a minority stake of its renewable energy unit Enel Green Power for $5.4 billion by the end of 2010, Chinese wind turbine maker Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. plans to raise $1.5 billion in Hong Kong, British solar energy producer Engyco is looking for $1.4 billion, and Spanish Renovalia Energy SA could be looking for $300 million.”

Read the full article here.

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EQT Partners Said to Consider Raising $5.8 Billion for Buyouts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Seams like boyout funds are gearing up for a bullmarket.

“EQT Partners AB, the private equity firm partly owned by Sweden’s Wallenberg family, has told investors it may raise a new 4.3 billion-euro ($5.8 billion) fund for buyouts, two people with knowledge of the plan said.

The firm, based in Stockholm, could start raising money as early as the end of the year, said the people, who declined to be named because the decision hasn’t been formally made. The fund would be about the same size as the firm’s last one.

EQT, which closed its current fund, EQT V, in December 2006, would join London-based buyout firm BC Partners Ltd. in Europe in coming back to investors for a new pool as deal making is reviving after the financial crisis nearly halted it for two years. Unlike other firms, EQT has continued to spend investors’ cash during the recession, signing 11 deals since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in September 2008.

Johan Hahnel, a spokesman for EQT Partners, declined to comment today.

The Swedish firm in December agreed to buy 82 percent of German academic publisher Springer Science+Business Media GmbH. In November, EQT completed the acquisition of Polish lancet maker HTL-Strefa SA after buying two cable operators in Bulgaria, Cabletel and Eurocom, for 120 million euros in October.

Buyout funds seeking more than $1 billion now spend an average of 19 months courting investors, according to London- based research firm Preqin Ltd. Last year it took 16 months, compared with eight months in 2007 and five months in 2004 as investors are curbing new pledges, Preqin said.”

Read the original post here.

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Where Are Rates Headed And Why? – John Mauldin’s Outside the Box

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Where Are Rates Headed And Why? – John Mauldin’s Outside the Box – InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.

“This week we look at two brief essays for your Outside the Box. The first is my friend Barry Habib talking to us about where mortgage rates are headed. Barry gives us a very simple, but logical analysis on why rates are headed up. Then we jump to Spencer Jakab writing in the Financial Times about the problems in the municipal markets. Seems we may be under funded on our public pensions by about $3.5 trillion. As a tease to his column:

“Taking a page out of Greece’s playbook, the peeved treasurer of America’s largest state fired off letters this week to the chiefs of Goldman Sachs and other banks questioning their marketing of credit default swaps on California’s debt . The instruments, he complained, “wrongly brand our bonds as a greater risk than those issued by such nations as Kazakhstan.”

“Insulting indeed, but who exactly should be insulted?”

It helps if you have seen Borat, or at least a trailer, but the message is the same.”

Read more here.

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IPad prompts VC firm to double iFund for apps

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is some intriguing new opportunities for iPad developers.

“Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said Wednesday that it is doubling a fund that focuses on the iPhone and iPod Touch to $200 million to include new applications for the upcoming iPad.

Partner John Doerr said Kleiner Perkins has exhausted its original $100 million iFund that it began two years ago. Now with the iPad coming, he said the application boom that began on the iPhone will extend into a new wave of iPad apps that transforms the way people interact with computers.

“We will move beyond spread sheets, word processors and Web sites limited by a browser to an interactive, connected world with incredible speed and fluidity,” Doerr said during a press event near its headquarters.

The public support from a respected venture capital firm lends more momentum to the launch of the iPad this Saturday and gives developers more incentive to develop dedicated iPad apps. The fund could help seed a new generation of iPad app companies that help define the device much the way early iFund recipients led the way for the iPhone.

The original iFund supported 14 companies, including the well-known Ngmoco, Pinger, Shazam and Booyah. The companies have collectively made more than $100 million and accounted for more than 100 million downloads.

Doerr said those companies have more than 20 iPad specific apps in the works with at least 11 to be released Saturday when the iPad goes on sale.

Many of the iFund companies have had a chance to work with the iPad. Some executives on Wednesday talked about how the device will create more engaging and longer experiences that require more thought and can lead to more profitable and memorable apps.

“We’re really trying to take advantage of the added real estate, and we’re trying to leverage the way users want to use the device,” said Neil Young, CEO and founder of gaming company Ngmoco, which is bringing three new games to the iPad. “The iPad has the opportunity to revolutionize gaming in the home in the same way the iPhone and iPod Touch revolutionized gaming on the go.”

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Cleantech Investments Bounced Back in Q1

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is some possitive news on Cleantech.

“The Cleantech Group this morning announced first quarter statistics, and the buzzword expression of the press conference was “bounce back.”

As in: “Following the decline in cleantech investments from 2008 to 2009, the industry has bounced back in the first quarter of 2010,” said Sheeraz Haji, president of Cleantech Group.

You can check out a press release here.

Among the key talking points from the press conference are:

-Q1 saw a record total of 180 deals, which raised $1.9 billion.

-Cleantech venture investment was up 29% from the previous quarter and up 83% from the same period in 2009.

-Government funding and VC dollars do not go hand-in-hand. Of the top 10 deals, only one had received government support. Haji said that although government-related financing is critical, this trend shows that private capital is not at all dependent on government stimulus.

-IPO window is open, Haji said, with seven companies on the IPO launching pad, including Tesla and Solyndra.”

Read the full story here.

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