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Posts Tagged ‘Gerbsman’

Restructuring provides a new start

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a interesting article posted at WSJ Venture Dispatch.

“Wallenstein, one of the first four employees and former vice president of sales at Recordant, a provider of sales analytics technology, said he purchased the company’s patents, software and trademarks at a bankruptcy auction last month for $1,000.”

The article continues…

“Recordant took in $12 million in venture capital before filing for bankruptcy in February. It raised $3 million in Series A financing from Kodiak Venture Partners in 2005 and 2006, followed by a $9 million Series B round led by FirstMark Capital, which was then called Pequot Ventures. Aurora Funds also participated in the later round.

Recordant sold a device, about the size of a small iPod, that could be worn by sales and customer service representatives to record their interactions with customers. The company also sold software to perform analytics to help its customers identify key words associated with a sale.

Founded in 2003, with its first products on the market in 2006, Recordant focused on retail, automotive, banking and hospitality industries. It fell victim to longer-than-expected sales cycles that became too much to bear when the economic crisis hit, and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in February.”

With no plans to raise money the company stands a good chance to run on a bootstrap.

“After extensive use of Recordant’s products by the U.S. National Guard, the U.S. Army had a contract to put the technology to use in their recruiting centers, but that fell through when the banking crisis hit, May said. It was also set to follow up a pilot program with an undisclosed insurance company to put the technology in 10,000 of its offices, he said. That company later declared a $1 billion loss, putting the project on hold indefinitely, he said.

May still remains confident about the potential of the business. “Somebody is going to do this someday, because there is a need for it,” he said. “We saw and heard things that were absolutely amazing in good ways and bad.”

Read the full article here.

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M&A Strategies

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Investments, Strategy, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is some interesting viewpoints from Venture Capital Dispatch – a WSJ Online blog written by Scott Austin.

“Last August, Hewlett-Packard Co. signed a letter of intent to pay $360 million cash for LeftHand Networks Inc., a venture-backed provider of storage systems. A few weeks later, Wall Street’s collapse sent the economy in a tailspin and threatened to knock the screws out of the deal.

But after a two-week pause the two sides got back together and in November closed the acquisition on the same terms.”

The article continues…

“LeftHand was able to hold its ground because it had proven itself valuable well before Hewlett-Packard offered to buy it. H-P had been reselling LeftHand’s software on some of its servers for nearly three years, and realized it couldn’t do without it.

The deal signifies the importance of setting up strategic relationships with possible acquirers, especially in this environment, said the aforementioned investor, Matthew McCall, a managing director with Draper Fisher Jurvetson Portage Venture Partners.

“When your hair’s on fire as a corporation, you’ll try anything to make the pain go away,” he said. “Now’s a great opportunity [for start-ups] to enter partnerships, distribution agreements, and dialogues with larger corporations.”

Matthew McCall´s advice continues:

  • Form a strategic relationship with a potential buyer,
  • Look at it from the acquirer’s perspective,
  • Identify the alternatives,
  • Finally, make sure at least two mortal enemies are bidding on your start-up.

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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Chaos Reigns in the PC Industry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The popularity of netbooks, Acer’s rise, Lenovo’s fall, the struggles of component makers to sell virtually anything — it all makes for a crazy time in the personal computer market these days.

The major PC component suppliers –- companies like Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, Seagate and Western Digital –- are reeling as hardware sales dry up. The credit crunch took its toll on business spending, then American corporations shut down in December in a bid to save money and now companies in China have halted their spending as the Chinese New Year approaches.

As Auguste Richard, a chip analyst with Piper Jaffray, told me, “There is nothing going on right now. This is as dark and deep as it goes, with companies not buying or selling anything.”

Read the full article here.

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“Maximizing Enterprise Value through Balance Sheet Restructuring”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 7, 2009| 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 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 $750 million of such obligations. These 75 deals 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.

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. In the past 60 months, Gerbsman Partners has been involved in maximizing value for 50 Technology, Life Science and Medical Device companies and their Intellectual Property and has restructured/terminated over $750 million of real estate executory contracts and equipment lease/sub-debt obligations. Since inception, 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, San Francisco, Europe and Israel.

For more information, please contact Steven Gerbsman at steve@gerbsmanpartners.com

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