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

  • As expected, pharmaceuticals group Pfizer unveiled a $68bn takeover of Wyeth.The bid is to be paid for using equal amounts of cash, equity and debt. The news will be good for the seven advising banks that could earn as much as $150m in fees. The lucky recipients are three lead financial advisers for Pfizer (Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase) plus another two financial advisers (Barclays and Citigroup), the advisers to Wyeth are Morgan Stanley and Evercore Partners.
  • Dow Chemical’s planned $15bn takeover of Rohm & Haas is in jeopardy since Dow does not have the funds to close the deal. The deal was struck last summer before valuations collapsed and Dow saw a potential cash infusion of $9.5bn from Kuwait for a planned joint venture vanish. However, the US Federal Trade Commission has now cleared the deal, which under the original terms means Dow should now complete the takeover. Dow is scrambling to get together the finance and is considering cutting its dividend. This would save around $1.6bn, but Dow has not cut its dividend since 1912! Rohm & Haas have asked a US court to enforce the transaction at the original price.
  • Swiss drugmaker Roche launched a surprise $42bn hostile bid for the 44% of Californian biotech company Genentech Inc that it doesn’t own. It bid $86.50 per share against an $89 per share bid that was rejected in August.

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Leadership Conference on Global Corporate Citizenship

Agenda Highlights Include:

Opening Keynote Presentation:

A senior executive from Bayer Corporation will discuss how they incorporate CSR as an integral part of its business plan for global leadership.

Citizenship and Corporate Social Responsibility:

The Landscape Carl Bauer, Director, National Energy Technology Laboratory, Department of Energy William Guyton, President, World Cocoa Foundation Dr. Jonathan Margolis, Deputy Coordinator Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State Jim Thomas, Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, JCPenney

Proving Return on Investment for Citizenship and CSR Initiatives:

Moderator Gordon Feller, Chief Executive Officer, Urban Age Institute Speakers Jeff Erikson, Vice President, SustainAbility, Inc. David Logan, President, Corporate Citizenship Andrew Mercy, President, AngelPoints, Inc.

Luncheon: CSR and the Value to the Bottom Line Introduction:

David Vidal, Research Director, Global Corporate Citizenship, The Conference Board Presenter Sir Mark Moody–Stuart, Chairman, Anglo-American plc, London, England

For more information on topics, or to view the Pre-Conference Workshop, or to Register

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5th Insurance Linked Securities Summit

Insurance linked securities, whether in the form of catastrophe bonds or synthetic life settlements, offer investors both a high potential for growth and a diversified and uncorrelated asset. Following a landmark year in 2007, the catastrophe bond market has faced challenges in 2008. With insurance prices softening, bond issuances are down and the need to find value and the appropriate risk level is paramount. It is in times like these that innovation prevails, and the convergence of the reinsurance and capital markets is poised to respond. Meanwhile, the life settlement products market is growing at a rapid pace, with sophistication in products increasing to fulfill the demand of an increasingly sophisticated investor base. With the support of capital market financing, the insurance and life settlement industries are set to become one of the most lucrative markets in the coming years. The need to transfer risk and the appetite to take on risk will always be present, and the insurance-linked securities industry has the potential for innovation to develop the solutions to survive any market cycle.

Who should attend?

• Hedge Funds

• Dedicated ILS Funds

• Pension Funds

• Reinsurance Companies

• Life Settlements Investors

• Risk Managers

• Portfolio Managers

• Capital Markets Specialists

• Chief Underwriting Officers

• Life Settlement Providers

• Fixed Income Investment

• Managers

• ABS Investors

• Alternative Risk Transfer

• Specialists

• Weather Risk Managers

• Actuarial Consultants

For more information and to Register

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State of the Clean Green Industry

SDForum, in partnership with FountainBlue, is delighted to invite you to our second annual State of the Clean Green Industry, featuring policy-makers, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and investors, updating the larger Silicon Valley community on the opportunities and challenges in the clean green space.

Panel Discussion: ‘Where’s the Green in Clean?’ This discussion will feature a wide range of investorsin clean energy organizations, from angels to VCs to investment bankers.

Panel Discussion: ‘Doing Well While Doing Good’ Panelists will discuss what their organization is doinginternally to minimize their carbon footprint, and how their products and services are better servingtheir customers, how their efforts will stimulate innovation in clean technology.

Panel Discussion: ‘Clean Green Success Stories’

Register here

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She’s Geeky in the Bay Area

Join us for the second She’s Geeky in the Bay Area
You can register here.

This is a beautiful venue with lots of natural light. You can take Cal Train to the Mountain View stop and on weekdays get a shuttle there. We are going to work to support women who want to carpool to the venue from through out the bay area – when you registered you will be asked about this.

Schedule
January 29
Pre-Conference informal no-host drinks and dinner – location TBD in Mountain View

Friday and Saturday
Will be full of peer-to-peer learning and discussion sessions. All the women at the conference will gather on Saturday morning and make an agenda for the day. A list of proposed topics appears on the She’s Geeky wiki.
Breakfast snacks, coffee, and lunch will be provided.

January 30
Registration Opens at 8am
Breakfast begins at 8am – begals, coffee, yogurt, fruit
Introductions and Agenda making begins at 9am
2 sessions
Lunch
3 sessions
Closing 5-5:30
Drinks and Snacks
Ada Lovelace Movie 6pm
Organized Group Dinners in Mountain View (no host) 7pm
January 31
Registration Opens at 8am
Breakfast begins at 8am – begals, coffee, yogurt, fruit
Introductions and Agenda making begins at 9am
3 sessions
Lunch
2 sessions
Closing 4:30-5
Upcoming Event
Women in Boston and DC are working to bring She’s geeky to their city in the Spring. Please let us know if you want to help with those events by sending e-mail at info@shesgeeky.org

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Looking for the Lost You: From Banking to Fashion

iStock_000004554966XSmall_2_.jpgContributed by Kathleen Lucente of Red Fan Communications

With a little bit of brainstorming and “outside the box” thinking, you might just find yourself working in an industry you didn’t expect to!

When you’re sitting behind your desk, do you ever daydream about leaving your chosen industry – whether it’s banking, law or business operations — in favor of something else entirely? Something a bit far afield that might even shock your friends and colleagues?
Are their days when you feel that you are operating on all cylinders, yet that there are creative skills you possess which have gone untapped for years? Or that, somehow, there are hidden talents and attributes that you possess which have gone untapped?

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High Water Women

logo_home.gifby Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

“We want to share our selves, not just our pocketbooks,” says Sandra Poe, partner with Wilmer and Hale, of the women involved with High Water Women. Poe is on the board of directors of this non-profit organization that provides opportunities for women in the financial services sector to support philanthropies.

High Water Women was founded in 2005 by women in the hedge fund industry. They had been involved in a black tie gala fundraising event but found the experience lacking. “Black tie galas are necessary,” says Poe, “but they weren’t satisfying the demand for many women who wanted to get involved.”

“They are mostly one night check writing things,” she says. “We saw a real demand for women in our industry who wanted to feel, touch and help.”

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Will Jill Come Tumbling After?

crackedglass.JPGby Paige Churchman (New York City)

Have you heard of the glass cliff? It seems that, when a company is ailing, it is more likely, if ever, to tap a woman to lead. So just when a woman thinks she’s finally broken through-that at last the playing field is level-she may actually be on a dangerous precipice. More so than a man would be. Men, who are more likely to be chosen to lead successful companies, aren’t scrutinized as harshly and are less likely to be blamed for failures.

It was Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam who put a name to this phenomenon. In 2005 they published “The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over-Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions.” The two University of Exeter researchers wanted to find out if having women on their boards really “wreaked havoc on companies’ performance and share prices” as Elizabeth Judge said in a London Times article. Studying the FTSE 100, Ryan and Haslam found was that the said companies “had experienced consistently poor performance in the months preceding the appointment” of a woman to their boards and that share prices actually showed a “marked increase after the appointment.”

USA Today has been studying women CEOs and share price since 2003. The first two years, the female CEOs outperformed the males. But in 2005 (the year Carly Fiorina was ousted), things began to change, with women’s companies slightly underperforming those led by men. In 2006 and 2007, men and women CEOs ran even, judged by share price, and “2008 knew no gender in its devastation.”

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Top Companies for Women

by Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

Fortune Magazine recently released its annual list of “100 Best Companies to Work For.” Flexibility and integrating personal and professional lives are key considerations for prospective employees today –especially for women. The top companies recognize this and have added programs to ease employee’s personal workloads and child-rearing responsibilities. For example, more than one-fourth of the “Best Companies” offer an onsite child-care center. Another example: 82 percent of the companies allow employees to telecommute or work at home at least 20 percent of the time. Finally, 15 companies on this list pay 100% of their employees’ health-care premiums.

This year, Silicon Valley company NetApp tops the list, knocking Google from the perch it held for two years in a row. Among a slew of employee perks at this technology company, two stand out: adoption aid and autism coverage. NetApp, not coincidentally, also made the list of companies with the most women. Twenty-four percent of the employees are female. The companies with the highest percentage of women include a daycare provider (Bright Horizons, which has an almost all female team), a teddy bear giant (Build-a-Bear), and several healthcare companies.

Read more

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Corporate Image and Branding Conference

Join us at the 2009 Corporate Image and Branding Conference and participate as the world’s most innovative companies discuss their strategies and solutions.

Speakers include:

John Volkman Corporate Vice President Branding, AMD

Gaston Legorburu Chief Creative Officer Sapient Corporation

Lee Hornick Program Director The Conference Board

James Kelly US Brand Leader PricewaterhouseCoopers

James Cerruti Executive Vice President Managing Director – Research BrandLogic

Bill Samuels, Jr. Chief Executive Officer and President Maker’s Mark Bourbon

For more information or to Register

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