High Tech Contributions and Policies that Enable the Smart Grid

The Women’s High Tech Coalition and the Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment are teaming to present an exciting event that will highlight high tech contributions that enable and empower the Smart Grid. These contributions range from semiconductors and electronic components, to software, hardware, applications and payment systems all driving optimization of the fields of generation, distribution and use of energy. Audience will learn about smart grid technology innovations, policy drivers and obstacles, and deployment benefits and challenges.

Click here to register

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Corporate Counsel Webseries: Securities Enforcement Trends – SEC and DOJ Respond to the Crisis

Public outcry resulting from the ongoing financial market turbulence and corresponding loss of investor confidence has given the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a clear mandate to bring to justice the individuals and firms that contributed to the current crisis. Taking advantage of new leadership and resources to try to restore domestic and international trust in our national markets, these agencies are responding to this call to action by reinvigorating their approaches to investigation and enforcement.Please join Suzanne McDermott, Chief Compliance Officer and Associate General Counsel of Halcyon Asset Management LLC, and Bruce Bettigole and Sean Casey, both formerly with the DOJ and the SEC and now partners in Mayer Brown’s Securities Enforcement & Investigations group, for a discussion of recent developments in securities enforcement, including:

  • An introduction to the administration’s new regulators and prosecutors who will be aggressively leading the charge to investigate and prosecute securities law violations.
  • The key enforcement areas where the government will be focused, including the causes of the sub-prime crisis, Ponzi schemes, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and institutional insider trading.
  • What the reinvigorated enforcement approach could mean to the hedge fund industry.
  • The parallel investigation approach that the DOJ and SEC will take as they combine forces to respond to the public demand for a rigorous enforcement regime.

Register here.

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Emerging Governance Trends, SOX and Beyond

Did SOX have the intended effect? Is it a success? Has similar Canadian regulation been appropriate for our particular markets and culture?

Governance expert, Janis Riven, will provide a review of the changing landscape of governance since the emergence of Sarbanes Oxley and similar legislation and regulation to deal with the ‘Enron Scandals’ almost 10 years ago.

Note that this will be a formal sit-down dinner followed by our speakers.

Event Registration at https://awfandcma.eventbrite.com

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2009 Oil and Gas Technology Leaders

Energy Hot Topics Series: Tomorrow’s Technology Today – 2009 Oil and Gas Technology Leaders

CALL FOR PAPERS!

Deadline for submission: 1 February 2009

Please submit via email to Abstracts@WorldOil.com

Gulf Publishing invites you to submit an abstract for review for the upcoming Energy Hot Topics Series – Tomorrow’s Technology Today: 2009 Oil and Gas Technology Leaders. This conference will discuss leading edge, breakthrough technologies and technology-related business issues in the following areas:

• Recent technology advances that may significantly impact/change the industry

• Key business issues related to technology development (impact of down market, etc.)

• The new horizon in oil and gas technology – what’s next?

• Unconventional resources and outlook for continued investment

Submitted abstracts should be approximately 250 words in length and include all authors, affiliations, pertinent contact information and proposed speaker. Presentations should be non-commercial in nature and appeal to management from operating and service companies, investors, academia, and decision makers in technical fields.

Selected papers may be candidates for publishing in World Oil magazine. Please e-mail Events@GulfPub.com for more information.

For more information or to Register


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In Case You Missed It: News Round-up

martin.jpgContributed by Martin Mitchell of the Corporate Training Group

In case you were too busy to have kept up with all the news, contributor Martin Mitchell has gathered some important market events from last week to help you start this week well informed:

Mergers and Acquisitions

  • Abu Dhabi-based Aabar Investments is to take a 9.1% stake in Daimler, the German car manufacturer. The deal will see Aabar pay a total of €1.95bn, €20.27 per share, and Daimler will increase it number of shares in issue by 10% to facilitate the investment.

  • Canadian oil company Suncor Energy is to buy rival Petro-Canada for C$19.6bn (£11bn) in an agreed all-share deal, creating North America’s 5th largest oil and gas producer. CIBC and Morgan Stanley advised Suncor, RBC and Deutsche advised Petro-Canada.

  • UK oil and gas company BG Group has won control of Australian group Pure Energy. 70% of the target’s shareholders have said yes, in a deal that could cost BG A$1.03bn (£497m).

  • Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is preparing to take a significant stake (estimated at 10%) in Aspen Pharmacare of South Africa. Aspen has a market capitalisation of R17bn (£1.23bn).

  • The Australian government cited national security concerns as it blocked a A$2.6bn ($1.8bn) bid by China’s Minmetals for Oz Minerals. Oz Minerals has a flagship asset located in a military zone in South Australia. Read more

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International Corporate Citizenship Conference

Corporate Citizenship: Leading Change, Finding Opportunity

How can recent gains in corporate citizenship be sustained during this enormously challenging economic time?What are the best corporate citizenship practices during a recession? What opportunities does the economic downturn present? These are no ordinary times. And so the 2009 International Corporate Citizenship Conference will be no ordinary conference. Now, more than ever, we will focus with laser-like precision on how companies can restore trust, rebuild brand equity and re-establish relationships with investors, customers and employees.

To register, click here.

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“Opt Out” or Pushed Out: Are Women Choosing to Leave the Legal Profession?

“Opt Out” or Pushed Out will address the controversial phenomenon described by some as “opting out,” the supposed trend of professional women leaving the workplace to devote their energies to family care-taking, full time. This conference will focus on the dynamics of the “trend” within the legal profession, inviting legal practitioners, professional students, and scholars to critically assess the structural, institutional, and societal reasons why women lawyers may be departing from the workplace.

It will also devote significant energy to the experiences of men and how they may be similar to – or different from – those of female attorneys. Conference panels will touch on topics of parenthood, social expectations that treat men and women differently, and how the legal field can learn from other professions that have begun to accommodate the reality of male and female professionals’ multi-faceted lives.

Men and women in the legal profession — practitioners, students, and scholars — will come together to critically assess the structural, institutional and societal pressures that affect all attorneys and have made balance particularly elusive for women. The aim is to generate concrete goals and methods for improving the structure of the workplace and social perceptions of the occupational choices that attorneys make.

Speakers Include:

  • E.J. Graff, Senior Researcher at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism and head of the Gender and Justice Project
  • Pamela Stone, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and author of Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home
  • Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much
  • Pat Gillette, Founder of the Opt-In Project
  • Wendy Schmidt, Principal, Deloitte and former national leader of Deloitte’s U.S. Women’s Initiative Network (WIN)
  • The Honorable Nancy Gertner, Judge, U. S. District Court, District of Massachusetts and member of the Equality Commission
  • Francine Deutsch, Professor of Psychology and Education, Mount Holyoke College

Registration is FREE for Yale students, faculty, and staff, only $10 for students from other schools, and $35 for the general public. Click here to register.

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2009 Salute to Women’s Business Enterprises: The Bridge to Quality

WBENC’s annual Salute to Women’s Business Enterprises: The Bridge to Quality highlights the contributions of WBEs to the United States economy and pays tribute to the 14 WBE Stars representing our organizational partners nationwide. Educational workshops

for more information visit:

www.wbenc.org

or contact

padams@wbenc.org

202-872-5515, ext. 8020

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The Global Private Equity Imperative

Recognizing the diverse and intricate challenges of the global economy and the opportunities presented to private equity investors, Thunderbird is pleased to host its 5th Annual Global Private Equity Investing Conference.

Some featured panels are:

Alternative Energy Investing Workshop
Moderator: John Moran, Director for Business Development & Client Relations, Overseas Private Investment Coroporation (OPIC)

Panelists:
H. Jeffrey Leonard, Chairman, Global Environment Fund
Nicolas Parker, Executive Chairman, Cleantech Group LLC

Corporate Venture Workshop
Moderator: Erik Sebusch ’01, Portfolio Manager-Alternative Investments, UPS Investments

The Globalization Imperative
Joseph Quinlan, Managing Director & Chief Market Strategist, Bank of America Investment Strategies Group; TPEC Advisory Board Member

Introduction by: F. John Mathis, PhD, Director, Thunderbird Global Financial Services Center; Professor of Global Finance

The Potential Threat of New Regulation on Global Private Equity
Douglas Lowenstein, President, Private Equity Council

Introduction by: Larry K. Mellinger ’68, Private Equity Advisor, LKM Advisors, LLC; former Head of AIG Global Private Equity; Vice Chairman, TPEC Advisory Board

The Impact on Returns of Global Investing
Moderator: Jarl Kallberg, PhD, Professor of Global Finance, Thunderbird School of Global Management

Panelists:
Amit Ratanpal, Head of Fund of Funds (Private Equity), ICICI Bank Ltd.
Jesse Reyes, Managing Director, Bear Stearns Private Funds Group (A J.P. Morgan Company)
Emmanuel Roubinowitz, Managing Director, Fondinvest Capital
Maninder Saluja, Co-Head, Emerging Markets Private Equity Group, Quilvest

Fireside Chat: Distressed Debt Opportunities
Moderator: Larry K. Mellinger ’68, Private Equity Advisor, LKM Advisors, LLC; Former Head of AIG Global Private Equity; Vice Chairman, TPEC Advisory Board

Register here

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On The Chopping Block: The Women of Wall Street

wall_street.JPG
by Anna Collins, Esq. (Portland, Maine)

While the current economic crisis has been undeniably devastating for Wall Street, some say the women of Wall Street are at the sharpest edge of the chopping block. As reported by Forbes Magazine, financial services and insurance firms have cut 260,000 jobs. The majority of layoffs, however, have impacted women. Seventy-two percent (72%) of the workers laid off have been women, even though they constituted sixty-four percent (64%) of employment before the crash began.

Louise Marie Roth, Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona and author of “Selling Women Short: Gender Inequality on Wall Street”, notes that several factors may explain why the women of Wall Street are at risk during this financial crisis.

Being “One of a Kind” Makes Women Easy Scapegoats

First, the women are often isolated from other women in their company, especially at the highest executive levels. On the one hand, strong company performance or individual achievement brings attention of employees and colleagues towards the women. On the other hand, being “one of a kind” makes it easier to become a scapegoat when things are not as rosy. “A weak woman stands out more than a weak man,” Roth explains. While men’s weaknesses get ignored in a crowd, the rarity of women leaders on Wall Street makes it easier to amplify their weaknesses — whether real or not.

Contradictory Expectations Lead to Negative Impressions

Another factor that may explain why women are at risk is that they are especially vulnerable to a classic double standard when it comes to expectations of behavior. On the one hand, there is an expectation that because Wall Street is driven by “masculine” behaviors, women must be firm, tough, and aggressive. Yet, if they are too much so, they are seen as behaving inappropriately. As women, after all, they are expected to be nice and feminine. “For many women I talked to,” Roth explains “this is hard to do.”

Often, Roth notes, the expectations are contradictory and women simply do not know which expectation is being invoked. Even worse, if both expectations are invoked at the same time, women are left without a winning strategy. Regardless of which expectation they meet, their actions are not sufficient.

Read more

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