sher Capital Management Report, Part 1 - Output growth exceeded what were once considered lofty expectations during the third quarter, as real GDP (inflation adjusted Gross Domestic Product) rose by a 3.5% annual pace from the previous quarter.
Online PR News – 26-August-2010 – Fisher Capital Management Report, Part 1 - Output growth exceeded what were once considered lofty expectations during the third quarter, as real GDP (inflation adjusted Gross Domestic Product) rose by a 3.5% annual pace from the previous quarter. To be sure, this was the first gain in economic activity after four consecutive quarterly declines in GDP. While technically this indicates an end to the recession, we point out that on a year-over-year (YOY) basis, economic activity has still declined 2.3%, yet it represents an improvement from the -3.8% YOY in the second quarter, the worst annual drop in seven decades. The components of GDP were led by growth in personal consumption, which increased 3.4% as stimulus programs such as “Cash for Clunkers” allowed consumer spending to increase by the largest amount in two years. Home construction surged at an annual rate of 23%, spurred on by the $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers. Another decline in business inventories also added to output, as did the growth in government spending (2.3%). Though businesses increased spending on equipment and software, fixed investment remained weak.
Market Performance, US Economy: Fisher Capital Management Report - As the positive effects of federal stimuli diminish, we continue to project an economic recovery that is “less spectacular” than in previous experiences. While output growth has improved as government programs spurred consumption relative to housing and autos, our concern rests on the economy¹s ability to sustain these rates of growth as government programs wane. Indeed, personal spending fell 0.5% in September after the “Cash for Clunkers” program concluded in August. Consumer confidence also weakened in October as the unemployment rate approached 10%. Until we experience a sustainable floor in housing and a ceiling on the unemployment rate, we suspect output growth will rely on exports, inventories, and government outlays, areas that we characterize as “cushions” for growth.
Market Performance, US Economy: Fisher Capital Management Report - As the unemployment rate lingers within the range of 10% and Fed policymakers remain committed to keeping interest rates low for an “extended period,” we look for real GDP to expand at an average rate of approximately 2.5% in 2010.
Fisher Capital Management, Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
As a full service company Fisher Capital Management, Korea provides a full range of investment banking services including advanced risk management, corporate strategy and structure, plus raising capital through debt and equity markets. With this as our backbone we continue to provide a client service second to none.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
* austin0170 * Fisher Capital Management: Market Overview First Quarter: India .
As a full service company Fisher Capital Management Korea provides a full range of investment banking services including advanced risk management, corporate strategy and structure, plus raising through debt and equity markets
Head of Dallas Federal Reserve to Speak on Economic Recovery
Address Targets Corporate Treasurers and CFOs at AFP Annual Conference
WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Richard W. Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a serving member of the Federal Open Market Committee, will speak at the Executive Institute of the 2010 AFP Annual Conference in San Antonio about the state of the economy and business environment. The audience will include CFOs and treasurers of the largest U.S. corporations.
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Mr. Fisher will present an in-depth analysis of the current state of the economy and business environment. He will share his thoughts on the economic recovery and obstacles the nation currently faces. With vast international experience in private sector finance, Mr. Fisher will provide an insightful overview of what the future holds for financial systems and the broader economy.
WHAT: The Road to Economic Recovery
SPEAKER: Richard Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and a serving member of the FOMC
Richard W. Fisher is the former vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Previously he held positions at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. as well as his own businesses, Fisher Capital Management and Fisher Ewing Partners. Mr. Fisher served as assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Carter administration, where he worked on the dollar crisis of 1978-79. He was also deputy U.S. trade representative during the second Clinton administration, overseeing the implementation of NAFTA, negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the bilateral accords for the accession of China and Taiwan to the WTO.
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The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. is the exclusive sponsor for SPONSOR: AFP's Executive Institute. WHEN: Monday, November 8, 2010 - 12:00 - 1:15 p.m. WHERE: 2010 AFP Annual Conference Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center 200 E. Market St. San Antonio, TX. 78205 Executive Institute, Room 007, River level
*Reporters who have pre-registered online may pick up background materials at the East Registration Area of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center or proceed directly to the event. The address will be in room 007 on the River Level.
MEDIA COVERAGE AND REGISTRATION: Reporters are invited to cover Mr. Fisher's speech. Pre-registration is required: www.afponline.org/presspass Reporters and photographers should have their own equipment and power sources for this address, due to room configuration. Limited seating for reporters will be available near the podium. Please direct questions to pr@afponline.org
ABOUT AFP: The Association for Financial Professionals(R), the global resource and advocate for the finance profession, is the host of this event. (www.afponline.org/about)
SOURCE Association for Financial Professionals
WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Richard W. Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a serving member of the Federal Open Market Committee, will speak at the Executive Institute of the 2010 AFP Annual Conference in San Antonio about the state of the economy and business environment. The audience will include CFOs and treasurers of the largest U.S. corporations.
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Emailemail
imageprint
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imagenewsletter
imagecomments
imageshare
imagedel.icio.us
imageDigg It!
imageyahoo
imageFacebook
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imagerss
Yahoo! Buzz
Mr. Fisher will present an in-depth analysis of the current state of the economy and business environment. He will share his thoughts on the economic recovery and obstacles the nation currently faces. With vast international experience in private sector finance, Mr. Fisher will provide an insightful overview of what the future holds for financial systems and the broader economy.
WHAT: The Road to Economic Recovery
SPEAKER: Richard Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and a serving member of the FOMC
Richard W. Fisher is the former vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Previously he held positions at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. as well as his own businesses, Fisher Capital Management and Fisher Ewing Partners. Mr. Fisher served as assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Carter administration, where he worked on the dollar crisis of 1978-79. He was also deputy U.S. trade representative during the second Clinton administration, overseeing the implementation of NAFTA, negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the bilateral accords for the accession of China and Taiwan to the WTO.
Related Stories
* Volcker Dishes Dirt On The Federal Reserve
* Paul Volcker Talks Financial Reform
* How To Profit From Mergers And Acquisitions
* Live Blogging The President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board Meeting On Taxes
* Forbes.com Extras
Related Videos
* Bad Medicine Begets Bad Economy
* The Economics of the NFL
* FASB Chairman Retires
* Paul Volcker Revisits The Fed
* The Volcker Rule Has Teeth
* Stories
* Videos
Rate This Story
*
Your Rating
*
Overall Rating
Reader Comments
Post a Comment
The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. is the exclusive sponsor for SPONSOR: AFP's Executive Institute. WHEN: Monday, November 8, 2010 - 12:00 - 1:15 p.m. WHERE: 2010 AFP Annual Conference Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center 200 E. Market St. San Antonio, TX. 78205 Executive Institute, Room 007, River level
*Reporters who have pre-registered online may pick up background materials at the East Registration Area of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center or proceed directly to the event. The address will be in room 007 on the River Level.
MEDIA COVERAGE AND REGISTRATION: Reporters are invited to cover Mr. Fisher's speech. Pre-registration is required: www.afponline.org/presspass Reporters and photographers should have their own equipment and power sources for this address, due to room configuration. Limited seating for reporters will be available near the podium. Please direct questions to pr@afponline.org
ABOUT AFP: The Association for Financial Professionals(R), the global resource and advocate for the finance profession, is the host of this event. (www.afponline.org/about)
SOURCE Association for Financial Professionals
Chief Executive of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas to Speak at UCSB
Chief Executive of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas to Speak at UCSB
August 20, 2009
Richard W. Fisher
Click for downloadable image
Richard W. Fisher
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Richard W. Fisher, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, will speak at UC Santa Barbara on Thursday, September 3.
His talk, which will focus on current economic issues and the economic outlook, will begin at 6 p.m. in the campus's Corwin Pavilion. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the presentation. A reception at 5 p.m. on the patio overlooking the lagoon outside Corwin Pavilion will precede the event, which is sponsored by UCSB's Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance (LAEF).
As the chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Fisher serves as a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve's principal monetary policymaking group. After beginning his career at the private bank of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co in 1975, he became assistant to the secretary of the Treasury during the Carter administration. In that capacity, Fisher worked on issues related to the dollar crisis of 1978-79. After returning to Brown Brothers to found their Texas operations in Dallas, he created Fisher Capital Management and a separate funds-management firm, Fisher Ewing Partners, in 1987.
From 1997 to 2001, he served as a deputy U.S. trade representative with the rank of ambassador, overseeing the implementation of the North American Fair Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and various agreements with Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Chile, and Singapore. In addition, he was a senior member of the team that negotiated the bilateral accords for China's and Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization.
A first-generation American, Fisher is equally fluent in Spanish and English, having spent his formative years in Mexico. He attended the United States Naval Academy, graduated with honors from Harvard University, read Latin American politics at Oxford University, and earned his master's degree in business administration at Stanford University. In 2006, Fisher received the Service to Democracy Award and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Public Service. In April of this year, he was inducted into the Dallas Business Hall of Fame.
The Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance at UCSB was established in 2005 to address important questions on growth and fluctuations in national –– or aggregate –– economies. Under the direction of Nobel Prize-winning economist Finn Kydland, the Jeffrey Henley Professor of Economics at UCSB, the laboratory identifies timely economic questions, issues, and/or anomalies that may be addressed in a conference workshop setting. The laboratory also serves as an environment in which resident and visiting scholars can conduct topical research in quantitative aggregate theory.
Issued: 8/20/09; Updated: 9/2/09
August 20, 2009
Richard W. Fisher
Click for downloadable image
Richard W. Fisher
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Richard W. Fisher, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, will speak at UC Santa Barbara on Thursday, September 3.
His talk, which will focus on current economic issues and the economic outlook, will begin at 6 p.m. in the campus's Corwin Pavilion. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the presentation. A reception at 5 p.m. on the patio overlooking the lagoon outside Corwin Pavilion will precede the event, which is sponsored by UCSB's Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance (LAEF).
As the chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Fisher serves as a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve's principal monetary policymaking group. After beginning his career at the private bank of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co in 1975, he became assistant to the secretary of the Treasury during the Carter administration. In that capacity, Fisher worked on issues related to the dollar crisis of 1978-79. After returning to Brown Brothers to found their Texas operations in Dallas, he created Fisher Capital Management and a separate funds-management firm, Fisher Ewing Partners, in 1987.
From 1997 to 2001, he served as a deputy U.S. trade representative with the rank of ambassador, overseeing the implementation of the North American Fair Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and various agreements with Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Chile, and Singapore. In addition, he was a senior member of the team that negotiated the bilateral accords for China's and Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization.
A first-generation American, Fisher is equally fluent in Spanish and English, having spent his formative years in Mexico. He attended the United States Naval Academy, graduated with honors from Harvard University, read Latin American politics at Oxford University, and earned his master's degree in business administration at Stanford University. In 2006, Fisher received the Service to Democracy Award and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Public Service. In April of this year, he was inducted into the Dallas Business Hall of Fame.
The Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance at UCSB was established in 2005 to address important questions on growth and fluctuations in national –– or aggregate –– economies. Under the direction of Nobel Prize-winning economist Finn Kydland, the Jeffrey Henley Professor of Economics at UCSB, the laboratory identifies timely economic questions, issues, and/or anomalies that may be addressed in a conference workshop setting. The laboratory also serves as an environment in which resident and visiting scholars can conduct topical research in quantitative aggregate theory.
Issued: 8/20/09; Updated: 9/2/09
Friday, August 27, 2010
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management
Head of Dallas Federal Reserve to Speak on Economic Recovery
Address Targets Corporate Treasurers and CFOs at AFP Annual Conference
WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Richard W. Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a serving member of the Federal Open Market Committee, will speak at the Executive Institute of the 2010 AFP Annual Conference in San Antonio about the state of the economy and business environment. The audience will include CFOs and treasurers of the largest U.S. corporations.
Mr. Fisher will present an in-depth analysis of the current state of the economy and business environment. He will share his thoughts on the economic recovery and obstacles the nation currently faces. With vast international experience in private sector finance, Mr. Fisher will provide an insightful overview of what the future holds for financial systems and the broader economy.
WHAT: The Road to Economic Recovery
SPEAKER: Richard Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and a serving member of the FOMC
Richard W. Fisher is the former vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Previously he held positions at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. as well as his own businesses, Fisher Capital Management and Fisher Ewing Partners. Mr. Fisher served as assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Carter administration, where he worked on the dollar crisis of 1978–79. He was also deputy U.S. trade representative during the second Clinton administration, overseeing the implementation of NAFTA, negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the bilateral accords for the accession of China and Taiwan to the WTO.
SPONSOR:
The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. is the exclusive sponsor for AFP's Executive Institute.
WHEN:
Monday, November 8, 2010 - 12:00 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE:
2010 AFP Annual Conference
Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center
200 E. Market St.
San Antonio, TX. 78205
Executive Institute, Room 007, River level
*Reporters who have pre-registered online may pick up background materials at the East Registration Area of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center or proceed directly to the event. The address will be in room 007 on the River Level.
MEDIA COVERAGE AND REGISTRATION: Reporters are invited to cover Mr. Fisher's speech. Pre-registration is required: www.afponline.org/presspass Reporters and photographers should have their own equipment and power sources for this address, due to room configuration. Limited seating for reporters will be available near the podium. Please direct questions to pr@afponline.org
ABOUT AFP: The Association for Financial Professionals®, the global resource and advocate for the finance profession, is the host of this event. (www.afponline.org/about)
SOURCE Association for Financial Professionals
Back to top
Address Targets Corporate Treasurers and CFOs at AFP Annual Conference
WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Richard W. Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a serving member of the Federal Open Market Committee, will speak at the Executive Institute of the 2010 AFP Annual Conference in San Antonio about the state of the economy and business environment. The audience will include CFOs and treasurers of the largest U.S. corporations.
Mr. Fisher will present an in-depth analysis of the current state of the economy and business environment. He will share his thoughts on the economic recovery and obstacles the nation currently faces. With vast international experience in private sector finance, Mr. Fisher will provide an insightful overview of what the future holds for financial systems and the broader economy.
WHAT: The Road to Economic Recovery
SPEAKER: Richard Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and a serving member of the FOMC
Richard W. Fisher is the former vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Previously he held positions at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. as well as his own businesses, Fisher Capital Management and Fisher Ewing Partners. Mr. Fisher served as assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Carter administration, where he worked on the dollar crisis of 1978–79. He was also deputy U.S. trade representative during the second Clinton administration, overseeing the implementation of NAFTA, negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the bilateral accords for the accession of China and Taiwan to the WTO.
SPONSOR:
The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. is the exclusive sponsor for AFP's Executive Institute.
WHEN:
Monday, November 8, 2010 - 12:00 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE:
2010 AFP Annual Conference
Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center
200 E. Market St.
San Antonio, TX. 78205
Executive Institute, Room 007, River level
*Reporters who have pre-registered online may pick up background materials at the East Registration Area of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center or proceed directly to the event. The address will be in room 007 on the River Level.
MEDIA COVERAGE AND REGISTRATION: Reporters are invited to cover Mr. Fisher's speech. Pre-registration is required: www.afponline.org/presspass Reporters and photographers should have their own equipment and power sources for this address, due to room configuration. Limited seating for reporters will be available near the podium. Please direct questions to pr@afponline.org
ABOUT AFP: The Association for Financial Professionals®, the global resource and advocate for the finance profession, is the host of this event. (www.afponline.org/about)
SOURCE Association for Financial Professionals
Back to top
Fisher Capital Management: Market Overview First Quarter: India
Fisher Capital Management: Market Overview First Quarter: India
The central government budget which set the tone for reducing fiscal deficit and an unexpected increase in the policy rate to rein in inflation has convinced the markets and economists that India is on its way to having a robust economic growth.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – May 27, 2010 – India is in a sweet spot. The central government budget which set the tone for reducing fiscal deficit and an unexpected increase in the policy rate to rein in inflation has convinced the markets and economists that India is on its way to having a robust economic growth. Industrial output also continued to grow at a fast pace in January as companies produced more cars and cement. In the fiscal year 2011 that ends in March 2011, GDP growth of 8.5% is achievable. Long-term predictions for the southwest monsoons are expected to be normal, giving a boost
to agricultural production and domestic demand.
Inflation in India has been surging, driven by a low base and high food prices as the weakest monsoon rains in 37 years last year hurt farm output. Inflation running at 8.5% may have peaked and it is expected to ease by April as the winter-sown crop comes to market. The year-on-year inflation rate for food articles was 16.22% in the week ending March 13, far above the comfortable zone for the central bank and the government. In order to manage the inflationary expectations, the central bank increased overnight lending and borrowing rates by 0.25 percentages point each, making it one of the first major central banks to raise rates. The central bank further announced that it would continue to roll back its loose monetary policy to manage prices, as the country can’t have sustained strong growth with high inflation.
We expect a 0.25-percentage-point rate hike in mid-April and another increase of one percentage point through March 2011.
Fisher Capital Management Korea News: The rebound in industrial activity also saw a surge in India’s exports for the third month running in January. Exports in January rose 11.5% from a year earlier to $14.34 billion, after having increased 9.3% to $14.61 billion in December. Imports increased 35.5% in January to $24.70 billion while oil imports rose by 56% to $7.05 billion. Non-oil imports, a barometer of investment activity, grew 28.8% to $17.65 billion.
On the back of robust economic numbers and policy pronouncements, the rating agency Standard & Poor’s raised its rating outlook to stable, expecting the fiscal situation to recover and growth to remain strong in the coming years. The government’s commitment to follow the recommendations of the 13th Finance Commission, as well as its move to reduce fertilizer subsidies and raise domestic fuel prices were taken as positive indicators. The country’s external position continues to be in a comfortable zone.
It is unlikely that India will benefit from the Google-China spat as the Indian government will not provide the kind of benefits China extends to the manufacturing sector in China. But some relocation is likely to emerge. For example, American companies GoDaddy and Dell have threatened to pull out of China and relocate themselves in India.
Fisher Capital Management Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
As a full service company Fisher Capital Management Korea provides a full range of investment banking services including advanced risk management, corporate strategy and structure, plus raising capital through debt and equity markets. With this as our backbone we continue to provide a client service second to none.
# # #
Fisher Capital Management Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
The central government budget which set the tone for reducing fiscal deficit and an unexpected increase in the policy rate to rein in inflation has convinced the markets and economists that India is on its way to having a robust economic growth.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – May 27, 2010 – India is in a sweet spot. The central government budget which set the tone for reducing fiscal deficit and an unexpected increase in the policy rate to rein in inflation has convinced the markets and economists that India is on its way to having a robust economic growth. Industrial output also continued to grow at a fast pace in January as companies produced more cars and cement. In the fiscal year 2011 that ends in March 2011, GDP growth of 8.5% is achievable. Long-term predictions for the southwest monsoons are expected to be normal, giving a boost
to agricultural production and domestic demand.
Inflation in India has been surging, driven by a low base and high food prices as the weakest monsoon rains in 37 years last year hurt farm output. Inflation running at 8.5% may have peaked and it is expected to ease by April as the winter-sown crop comes to market. The year-on-year inflation rate for food articles was 16.22% in the week ending March 13, far above the comfortable zone for the central bank and the government. In order to manage the inflationary expectations, the central bank increased overnight lending and borrowing rates by 0.25 percentages point each, making it one of the first major central banks to raise rates. The central bank further announced that it would continue to roll back its loose monetary policy to manage prices, as the country can’t have sustained strong growth with high inflation.
We expect a 0.25-percentage-point rate hike in mid-April and another increase of one percentage point through March 2011.
Fisher Capital Management Korea News: The rebound in industrial activity also saw a surge in India’s exports for the third month running in January. Exports in January rose 11.5% from a year earlier to $14.34 billion, after having increased 9.3% to $14.61 billion in December. Imports increased 35.5% in January to $24.70 billion while oil imports rose by 56% to $7.05 billion. Non-oil imports, a barometer of investment activity, grew 28.8% to $17.65 billion.
On the back of robust economic numbers and policy pronouncements, the rating agency Standard & Poor’s raised its rating outlook to stable, expecting the fiscal situation to recover and growth to remain strong in the coming years. The government’s commitment to follow the recommendations of the 13th Finance Commission, as well as its move to reduce fertilizer subsidies and raise domestic fuel prices were taken as positive indicators. The country’s external position continues to be in a comfortable zone.
It is unlikely that India will benefit from the Google-China spat as the Indian government will not provide the kind of benefits China extends to the manufacturing sector in China. But some relocation is likely to emerge. For example, American companies GoDaddy and Dell have threatened to pull out of China and relocate themselves in India.
Fisher Capital Management Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
As a full service company Fisher Capital Management Korea provides a full range of investment banking services including advanced risk management, corporate strategy and structure, plus raising capital through debt and equity markets. With this as our backbone we continue to provide a client service second to none.
# # #
Fisher Capital Management Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
Fisher Capital Management: Market Performance – US Economy
Output growth exceeded what were once considered lofty expectations during the third quarter, as real GDP rose by a 3.5% annual pace from the previous quarter
Seoul, Korea, August 27 2010 - Fisher Capital Management Report, Part 1 - Output growth exceeded what were once considered lofty expectations during the third quarter, as real GDP (inflation adjusted Gross Domestic Product) rose by a 3.5% annual pace from the previous quarter. To be sure, this was the first gain in economic activity after four consecutive quarterly declines in GDP. While technically this indicates an end to the recession, we point out that on a year-over-year (YOY) basis, economic activity has still declined 2.3%, yet it represents an improvement from the -3.8% YOY in the second quarter, the worst annual drop in seven decades. The components of GDP were led by growth in personal consumption, which increased 3.4% as stimulus programs such as “Cash for Clunkers” allowed consumer spending to increase by the largest amount in two years. Home construction surged at an annual rate of 23%, spurred on by the $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers. Another decline in business inventories also added to output, as did the growth in government spending (2.3%). Though businesses increased spending on equipment and software, fixed investment remained weak.
Market Performance, US Economy: Fisher Capital Management Report - As the positive effects of federal stimuli diminish, we continue to project an economic recovery that is “less spectacular” than in previous experiences. While output growth has improved as government programs spurred consumption relative to housing and autos, our concern rests on the economy¹s ability to sustain these rates of growth as government programs wane. Indeed, personal spending fell 0.5% in September after the “Cash for Clunkers” program concluded in August. Consumer confidence also weakened in October as the unemployment rate approached 10%. Until we experience a sustainable floor in housing and a ceiling on the unemployment rate, we suspect output growth will rely on exports, inventories, and government outlays, areas that we characterize as “cushions” for growth.
Market Performance, US Economy: Fisher Capital Management Report - As the unemployment rate lingers within the range of 10% and Fed policymakers remain committed to keeping interest rates low for an “extended period,” we look for real GDP to expand at an average rate of approximately 2.5% in 2010.
Fisher Capital Management Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
As a full service company Fisher Capital Management Korea provides a full range of investment banking services including advanced risk management, corporate strategy and structure, plus raising capital through debt and equity markets. With this as our backbone we continue to provide a client service second to none.
Fisher Capital management
Gangnam-Gu, Seoul,
Korea 135-909
fax +82 2 3782 4624
tel +82 2 3782 4623
Seoul, Korea, August 27 2010 - Fisher Capital Management Report, Part 1 - Output growth exceeded what were once considered lofty expectations during the third quarter, as real GDP (inflation adjusted Gross Domestic Product) rose by a 3.5% annual pace from the previous quarter. To be sure, this was the first gain in economic activity after four consecutive quarterly declines in GDP. While technically this indicates an end to the recession, we point out that on a year-over-year (YOY) basis, economic activity has still declined 2.3%, yet it represents an improvement from the -3.8% YOY in the second quarter, the worst annual drop in seven decades. The components of GDP were led by growth in personal consumption, which increased 3.4% as stimulus programs such as “Cash for Clunkers” allowed consumer spending to increase by the largest amount in two years. Home construction surged at an annual rate of 23%, spurred on by the $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers. Another decline in business inventories also added to output, as did the growth in government spending (2.3%). Though businesses increased spending on equipment and software, fixed investment remained weak.
Market Performance, US Economy: Fisher Capital Management Report - As the positive effects of federal stimuli diminish, we continue to project an economic recovery that is “less spectacular” than in previous experiences. While output growth has improved as government programs spurred consumption relative to housing and autos, our concern rests on the economy¹s ability to sustain these rates of growth as government programs wane. Indeed, personal spending fell 0.5% in September after the “Cash for Clunkers” program concluded in August. Consumer confidence also weakened in October as the unemployment rate approached 10%. Until we experience a sustainable floor in housing and a ceiling on the unemployment rate, we suspect output growth will rely on exports, inventories, and government outlays, areas that we characterize as “cushions” for growth.
Market Performance, US Economy: Fisher Capital Management Report - As the unemployment rate lingers within the range of 10% and Fed policymakers remain committed to keeping interest rates low for an “extended period,” we look for real GDP to expand at an average rate of approximately 2.5% in 2010.
Fisher Capital Management Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
As a full service company Fisher Capital Management Korea provides a full range of investment banking services including advanced risk management, corporate strategy and structure, plus raising capital through debt and equity markets. With this as our backbone we continue to provide a client service second to none.
Fisher Capital management
Gangnam-Gu, Seoul,
Korea 135-909
fax +82 2 3782 4624
tel +82 2 3782 4623
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management - Stocks closed lower in October for the first time in seven months, as investors questioned whether the huge rally off the March lows had exceeded the economy’s ability to generate growth...
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management - Stocks closed lower in October for the first time in seven months, as investors questioned whether the huge rally off the March lows had exceeded the economy’s ability to generate growth in output and profits.
Indeed, equities capped off a volatile month (the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) experienced triple-digit moves in ten trading sessions!) with a volatile week, as the S&P 500 Index experienced its worst five-day span since early July.
For the month, the DJIA eked out a fractional gain, while all the other major equity market indices suffered losses. Small cap stocks, which had been among the performance leaders of the seven-month rally, experienced the worst hit, with the Russell 2000� Index falling by almost 7%. In another sign that the market may be growing skeptical of the “higher risk, higher reward” strategy, the NASDAQ Composite Index, dominated by technology holdings, declined 3.6% for the month.
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management - Yet perhaps emblematic of the struggles experienced in the markets recently, growth stocks outperformed value in October, contradicting the idea that the pursuit of “risk” had become out of favor over the past several weeks. Moreover, the weakness in U.S. markets failed to extend beyond our borders last month, as developed markets (MSCI EAFE) experienced just a fractional loss, while the emerging markets (MSCI EM) managed to rise by up to 1%, adding to their impressive year-to-date (YTD) returns.
From a sector perspective, two of the three leading performers off the March lows (financials and materials) declined by the largest amounts in October, as investors appeared to lock in gains of approximately 150% for the financials sector and 75% for the materials sector. Despite the weakness in the technologyladen NASDAQ Composite last month, the higher-quality and larger-cap tech names comprising the S&P 500 Index’s information technology sector simply dropped fractionally. Rising oil prices pushed the energy sector higher by 3%, and the “defensive trade” was still evident within the consumer staples sector, which held on for a 1% gain.
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management - In other asset classes, fixed-income was mixed last month. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note backed up by seven basis points, as traders likely moved funds elsewhere as the Federal Reserve concluded its $300 billion Treasury purchase program. The dollar continued to weaken, hovering near 14-month lows, which helped drive up the prices for oil, gold, and most commodities.
Fisher Capital Management Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
As a full service company Fisher Capital Management Korea provides a full range of investment banking services including advanced risk management, corporate strategy and structure, plus raising capital through debt and equity markets. With this as our backbone we continue to provide a client service second to none.
Company Contact Information
Fisher Capital managementext
Fisher Capital
Gangnam-Gu, Seoul, Korea fax +82 2 3782 4624
135-909
+82 2 3782 4623
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management - Stocks closed lower in October for the first time in seven months, as investors questioned whether the huge rally off the March lows had exceeded the economy’s ability to generate growth in output and profits.
Indeed, equities capped off a volatile month (the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) experienced triple-digit moves in ten trading sessions!) with a volatile week, as the S&P 500 Index experienced its worst five-day span since early July.
For the month, the DJIA eked out a fractional gain, while all the other major equity market indices suffered losses. Small cap stocks, which had been among the performance leaders of the seven-month rally, experienced the worst hit, with the Russell 2000� Index falling by almost 7%. In another sign that the market may be growing skeptical of the “higher risk, higher reward” strategy, the NASDAQ Composite Index, dominated by technology holdings, declined 3.6% for the month.
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management - Yet perhaps emblematic of the struggles experienced in the markets recently, growth stocks outperformed value in October, contradicting the idea that the pursuit of “risk” had become out of favor over the past several weeks. Moreover, the weakness in U.S. markets failed to extend beyond our borders last month, as developed markets (MSCI EAFE) experienced just a fractional loss, while the emerging markets (MSCI EM) managed to rise by up to 1%, adding to their impressive year-to-date (YTD) returns.
From a sector perspective, two of the three leading performers off the March lows (financials and materials) declined by the largest amounts in October, as investors appeared to lock in gains of approximately 150% for the financials sector and 75% for the materials sector. Despite the weakness in the technologyladen NASDAQ Composite last month, the higher-quality and larger-cap tech names comprising the S&P 500 Index’s information technology sector simply dropped fractionally. Rising oil prices pushed the energy sector higher by 3%, and the “defensive trade” was still evident within the consumer staples sector, which held on for a 1% gain.
Market Overview December 2009: Fisher Capital Management - In other asset classes, fixed-income was mixed last month. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note backed up by seven basis points, as traders likely moved funds elsewhere as the Federal Reserve concluded its $300 billion Treasury purchase program. The dollar continued to weaken, hovering near 14-month lows, which helped drive up the prices for oil, gold, and most commodities.
Fisher Capital Management Korea is a leading global financial institution holding extensive relationships with financial institutions, institutional investors and corporations across the world.
As a full service company Fisher Capital Management Korea provides a full range of investment banking services including advanced risk management, corporate strategy and structure, plus raising capital through debt and equity markets. With this as our backbone we continue to provide a client service second to none.
Company Contact Information
Fisher Capital managementext
Fisher Capital
Gangnam-Gu, Seoul, Korea fax +82 2 3782 4624
135-909
+82 2 3782 4623
FRB: Press Release--Richard W. Fisher named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas--December 21, 2004
Federal Reserve Release, Press Release; image with eagle logo links to home page
Release Date: December 21, 2004
For immediate release
Richard W. Fisher will become President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas effective April 4, 2005. The appointment of Mr. Fisher was announced today by Ray L. Hunt, Chairman of the Bank's Board of Directors. Mr. Fisher will succeed Robert D. McTeer, Jr., who resigned November 4, 2004, to become chancellor of the Texas A&M University System.
Mr. Fisher, 55, is currently Vice Chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State of the United States of America.
As President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Mr. Fisher will head one of the 12 regional Reserve Banks, which with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the Federal Reserve System, the nation's central bank. He will participate in meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee, a principal policy-making body in the Federal Reserve System, and during 2005, and every third year following, will be a voting member of that Committee.
The Dallas Reserve Bank serves the Eleventh Federal Reserve District, which includes all of Texas, as well as portions of Louisiana and New Mexico. The Federal Reserve is responsible for managing the country's money supply, supervising banks and depository institutions, and serving as fiscal agent for the federal government. The Federal Reserve also provides services to depository institutions.
Ray Hunt, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said, "We are extremely pleased with the fact that Richard Fisher will soon be joining us as our new President. Richard possesses a superb knowledge of the nation's economic and monetary system and his direct personal involvement in a number of very important international economic treaties and activities make him uniquely qualified to provide the very forward-looking leadership for which the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has become known."
Mr. Fisher graduated with honors from Harvard in economics, earned an MBA from Stanford, and studied engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy and Latin American politics at Oxford University. He began his career as a banker at the private bank of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. At Brown Brothers, Mr. Fisher was assistant to Robert Roosa, a former senior official of the Federal Reserve and Under Secretary of the Treasury who had trained several leading financial officials, among them Paul Volcker, who went on to become Federal Reserve Board Chairman before Mr. Greenspan.
In 1977, Mr. Fisher was "loaned out" by Brown Brothers to serve as Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Carter Administration, where he worked on issues related to the dollar crisis of 1978 and 1979, then returned to Brown Brothers to found their Texas operations in Dallas. In 1987, he created Fisher Capital Management, an investment advisory firm, and a separate funds management firm, Fisher Ewing Partners, which focused heavily on investing in distressed banks, savings and loans, and thrifts. He sold his controlling interests in both firms when he again joined the government in 1997.
From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Fisher served as Deputy United States Trade Representative with the rank of Ambassador. Ambassador Fisher oversaw the implementation of NAFTA, negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the initiation of the U.S.- Chile Free Trade Agreement negotiations. He negotiated several major agreements on behalf of the United States in Asia, including the Bilateral Trade Agreement with Vietnam signed by President Bush, the U.S.-Korea Auto Agreement of 1998, and the initiation of the Free Trade agreement with Singapore, and was a senior member of the team that negotiated the bilateral accords for China and Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Under an agreement struck between President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto, Ambassador Fisher co-chaired the U.S.-Japan Enhanced Initiative on Competition and Deregulation which led to significant changes in the financial, telecommunications, commercial and legal sectors of the Japanese economy.
"I am excited at the prospect of working for the brilliant staff at the Dallas Fed. This is a homecoming in more than one way. I started my career at Brown Brothers as the assistant to Robert Roosa, a legendary figure in both the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury. He and the partners there taught me the bond, stock, and foreign exchange markets and the investment trade. It was Mr. Roosa's ardent wish that someday I would 'pay it back' by joining the Federal Reserve, which he considered the 'purest form of public service, above and beyond the reach of partisan politics.' He is probably grinning up in heaven right now," said Mr. Fisher.
RICHARD W. FISHER BACKGROUND
Richard W. Fisher is Vice Chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a partnership with Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and Mack McLarty, former White House Chief of Staff in the Clinton Administration. He additionally serves in an honorific capacity as Senior Advisor to the law firm of Covington & Burling, and as Senior Advisor to FCM Investments, an SEC registered investment advisory firm he founded in 1987 and sold outright in 1997.
Mr. Fisher has served on numerous for-profit and not-for-profit boards throughout his career, ranging from the U.S-Russia Fund and the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) to the Institute for Contemporary German Studies and the Dallas Museum of Art. Presently, he is a Director of Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS), the Brookings Institution, the American Council on Germany, and the Pacific Council. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission, and immediate past Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations' Congressional Roundtable on International Trade & Economics. He is Chairman of the American Assembly and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Fisher was Deputy United States Trade Representative with the rank of Ambassador. During this period, Ambassador Fisher oversaw trade policy for Asia and the Pacific and the Americas. He represented the U.S. at both the 1999 New Zealand and 2000 Australia Ministerial meetings of the 21-member states of APEC. Ambassador Fisher negotiated the U.S.-Korea Auto Agreement of 1998; the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement, which was signed by President Bush in 2001; and the initiation of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He was a member of the team that negotiated the U.S.-China agreement for Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization and, separately, the bilateral aspects of Taiwan's accession. He chaired the American delegation for the Enhanced Initiative on Competition and Deregulation of the Japanese Economy for three years, an exercise that resulted in significant changes in the structure of Japan's telecommunications (the deregulation of NTT's telephone monopoly), housing, energy, health care, legal, retailing (the "Large Scale Retail Store Law"), and financial sectors.
During his tenure at USTR, Ambassador Fisher oversaw the implementation of NAFTA, the largest trading relationship of the U.S., accounting for 40% of U.S. exports and 30% of U.S. imports. He had oversight responsibilities for the development of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, representing the U.S. at the Ministerial level for multilateral negotiations with the 33 nations involved. He negotiated numerous high-profile issues throughout the hemisphere, including the deregulation of Telmex, the removal of Canadian restrictions on U.S. magazine publications, the protection of U.S. companies' intellectual property rights in Argentina and Brazil, and the initiation of the U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement.
Throughout his tenure at USTR, Ambassador Fisher served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). He was also a member of the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council.
Before joining USTR, Mr. Fisher was Managing Partner of Fisher Capital Management and Fisher Ewing Partners from 1987 through 1997. With $500 million in equity capital, both firms specialized in buying claims to publicly-traded assets selling significantly below true value in securities markets of the U.S., Europe and throughout Asia; Mr. Fisher resided in Tokyo in 1990. Fisher Ewing's fund created in 1989, Value Partners, earned compound returns of 24% per annum until Mr. Fisher joined the government.
Previously, Mr. Fisher was Senior Manager of the private banking firm of Brown Brothers Harriman and Co., where he began his career in 1975 as an assistant to Robert Roosa specializing in fixed income and foreign exchange markets. He served in the U.S. Treasury Department from 1977-79 as Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, then returned to Brown Brothers to found their business in Texas, which he managed until 1987 before creating his own firms.
Mr. Fisher is a first generation American. He is equally fluent in Spanish and English, having spent his formative years in Mexico. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy ('67-'69), graduated with honors from Harvard in economics ('71), read Latin American politics at Oxford ('72-'73), and received an MBA from Stanford University ('75).
Throughout his career, Mr. Fisher has maintained his academic interests starting in 1982-84 when he served as Chairman of the Trustees of the Stanford University Business School Trust. Subsequently, he chaired the Board of the Institute of the Americas at the University of California at San Diego; was Adjunct Professor at the L.B.J. School at the University of Texas where he taught a second year Masters degree course "Governing America in the New Century;" was a Trustee of the Institute for Contemporary German Studies at John Hopkins University and also of the School for Advanced International Studies; and served on the Visiting Committees of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and the Center for International Affairs. He was a Weatherhead Fellow at Harvard in 2001. He was recently elected an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College at Oxford University, and serves on the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Advisory Board.
Mr. Fisher took leave of his senses in 1993 and ran for the United States Senate as a conservative Democrat. To his surprise, he won the nomination in a run-off against an incumbent Congressman and a former Texas Attorney General, but garnered only 1,639,615 votes (38%) in the general election of 1994 to the Republican incumbent. "I labored briefly in the vineyards of partisan politics," Mr. Fisher said, "but all it yielded was prune juice. I was a lousy politician."
Mr. Fisher has been married for 31 years to Nancy Miles Collins. They have four children: Anders (Harvard '99; Stanford MBA '04), Alison (Harvard '02), James (Harvard '06), and Texana (Harvard '07).
2004 Other announcements
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Last update: December 21, 2004
Release Date: December 21, 2004
For immediate release
Richard W. Fisher will become President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas effective April 4, 2005. The appointment of Mr. Fisher was announced today by Ray L. Hunt, Chairman of the Bank's Board of Directors. Mr. Fisher will succeed Robert D. McTeer, Jr., who resigned November 4, 2004, to become chancellor of the Texas A&M University System.
Mr. Fisher, 55, is currently Vice Chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State of the United States of America.
As President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Mr. Fisher will head one of the 12 regional Reserve Banks, which with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the Federal Reserve System, the nation's central bank. He will participate in meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee, a principal policy-making body in the Federal Reserve System, and during 2005, and every third year following, will be a voting member of that Committee.
The Dallas Reserve Bank serves the Eleventh Federal Reserve District, which includes all of Texas, as well as portions of Louisiana and New Mexico. The Federal Reserve is responsible for managing the country's money supply, supervising banks and depository institutions, and serving as fiscal agent for the federal government. The Federal Reserve also provides services to depository institutions.
Ray Hunt, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said, "We are extremely pleased with the fact that Richard Fisher will soon be joining us as our new President. Richard possesses a superb knowledge of the nation's economic and monetary system and his direct personal involvement in a number of very important international economic treaties and activities make him uniquely qualified to provide the very forward-looking leadership for which the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has become known."
Mr. Fisher graduated with honors from Harvard in economics, earned an MBA from Stanford, and studied engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy and Latin American politics at Oxford University. He began his career as a banker at the private bank of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. At Brown Brothers, Mr. Fisher was assistant to Robert Roosa, a former senior official of the Federal Reserve and Under Secretary of the Treasury who had trained several leading financial officials, among them Paul Volcker, who went on to become Federal Reserve Board Chairman before Mr. Greenspan.
In 1977, Mr. Fisher was "loaned out" by Brown Brothers to serve as Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Carter Administration, where he worked on issues related to the dollar crisis of 1978 and 1979, then returned to Brown Brothers to found their Texas operations in Dallas. In 1987, he created Fisher Capital Management, an investment advisory firm, and a separate funds management firm, Fisher Ewing Partners, which focused heavily on investing in distressed banks, savings and loans, and thrifts. He sold his controlling interests in both firms when he again joined the government in 1997.
From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Fisher served as Deputy United States Trade Representative with the rank of Ambassador. Ambassador Fisher oversaw the implementation of NAFTA, negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the initiation of the U.S.- Chile Free Trade Agreement negotiations. He negotiated several major agreements on behalf of the United States in Asia, including the Bilateral Trade Agreement with Vietnam signed by President Bush, the U.S.-Korea Auto Agreement of 1998, and the initiation of the Free Trade agreement with Singapore, and was a senior member of the team that negotiated the bilateral accords for China and Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Under an agreement struck between President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto, Ambassador Fisher co-chaired the U.S.-Japan Enhanced Initiative on Competition and Deregulation which led to significant changes in the financial, telecommunications, commercial and legal sectors of the Japanese economy.
"I am excited at the prospect of working for the brilliant staff at the Dallas Fed. This is a homecoming in more than one way. I started my career at Brown Brothers as the assistant to Robert Roosa, a legendary figure in both the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury. He and the partners there taught me the bond, stock, and foreign exchange markets and the investment trade. It was Mr. Roosa's ardent wish that someday I would 'pay it back' by joining the Federal Reserve, which he considered the 'purest form of public service, above and beyond the reach of partisan politics.' He is probably grinning up in heaven right now," said Mr. Fisher.
RICHARD W. FISHER BACKGROUND
Richard W. Fisher is Vice Chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a partnership with Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and Mack McLarty, former White House Chief of Staff in the Clinton Administration. He additionally serves in an honorific capacity as Senior Advisor to the law firm of Covington & Burling, and as Senior Advisor to FCM Investments, an SEC registered investment advisory firm he founded in 1987 and sold outright in 1997.
Mr. Fisher has served on numerous for-profit and not-for-profit boards throughout his career, ranging from the U.S-Russia Fund and the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) to the Institute for Contemporary German Studies and the Dallas Museum of Art. Presently, he is a Director of Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS), the Brookings Institution, the American Council on Germany, and the Pacific Council. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission, and immediate past Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations' Congressional Roundtable on International Trade & Economics. He is Chairman of the American Assembly and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Fisher was Deputy United States Trade Representative with the rank of Ambassador. During this period, Ambassador Fisher oversaw trade policy for Asia and the Pacific and the Americas. He represented the U.S. at both the 1999 New Zealand and 2000 Australia Ministerial meetings of the 21-member states of APEC. Ambassador Fisher negotiated the U.S.-Korea Auto Agreement of 1998; the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement, which was signed by President Bush in 2001; and the initiation of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He was a member of the team that negotiated the U.S.-China agreement for Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization and, separately, the bilateral aspects of Taiwan's accession. He chaired the American delegation for the Enhanced Initiative on Competition and Deregulation of the Japanese Economy for three years, an exercise that resulted in significant changes in the structure of Japan's telecommunications (the deregulation of NTT's telephone monopoly), housing, energy, health care, legal, retailing (the "Large Scale Retail Store Law"), and financial sectors.
During his tenure at USTR, Ambassador Fisher oversaw the implementation of NAFTA, the largest trading relationship of the U.S., accounting for 40% of U.S. exports and 30% of U.S. imports. He had oversight responsibilities for the development of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, representing the U.S. at the Ministerial level for multilateral negotiations with the 33 nations involved. He negotiated numerous high-profile issues throughout the hemisphere, including the deregulation of Telmex, the removal of Canadian restrictions on U.S. magazine publications, the protection of U.S. companies' intellectual property rights in Argentina and Brazil, and the initiation of the U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement.
Throughout his tenure at USTR, Ambassador Fisher served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). He was also a member of the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council.
Before joining USTR, Mr. Fisher was Managing Partner of Fisher Capital Management and Fisher Ewing Partners from 1987 through 1997. With $500 million in equity capital, both firms specialized in buying claims to publicly-traded assets selling significantly below true value in securities markets of the U.S., Europe and throughout Asia; Mr. Fisher resided in Tokyo in 1990. Fisher Ewing's fund created in 1989, Value Partners, earned compound returns of 24% per annum until Mr. Fisher joined the government.
Previously, Mr. Fisher was Senior Manager of the private banking firm of Brown Brothers Harriman and Co., where he began his career in 1975 as an assistant to Robert Roosa specializing in fixed income and foreign exchange markets. He served in the U.S. Treasury Department from 1977-79 as Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, then returned to Brown Brothers to found their business in Texas, which he managed until 1987 before creating his own firms.
Mr. Fisher is a first generation American. He is equally fluent in Spanish and English, having spent his formative years in Mexico. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy ('67-'69), graduated with honors from Harvard in economics ('71), read Latin American politics at Oxford ('72-'73), and received an MBA from Stanford University ('75).
Throughout his career, Mr. Fisher has maintained his academic interests starting in 1982-84 when he served as Chairman of the Trustees of the Stanford University Business School Trust. Subsequently, he chaired the Board of the Institute of the Americas at the University of California at San Diego; was Adjunct Professor at the L.B.J. School at the University of Texas where he taught a second year Masters degree course "Governing America in the New Century;" was a Trustee of the Institute for Contemporary German Studies at John Hopkins University and also of the School for Advanced International Studies; and served on the Visiting Committees of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and the Center for International Affairs. He was a Weatherhead Fellow at Harvard in 2001. He was recently elected an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College at Oxford University, and serves on the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Advisory Board.
Mr. Fisher took leave of his senses in 1993 and ran for the United States Senate as a conservative Democrat. To his surprise, he won the nomination in a run-off against an incumbent Congressman and a former Texas Attorney General, but garnered only 1,639,615 votes (38%) in the general election of 1994 to the Republican incumbent. "I labored briefly in the vineyards of partisan politics," Mr. Fisher said, "but all it yielded was prune juice. I was a lousy politician."
Mr. Fisher has been married for 31 years to Nancy Miles Collins. They have four children: Anders (Harvard '99; Stanford MBA '04), Alison (Harvard '02), James (Harvard '06), and Texana (Harvard '07).
2004 Other announcements
Home | News and events
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Last update: December 21, 2004
Richard Fisher President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Richard W. Fisher assumed the office of president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas on April 4, 2005.
Mr. Fisher is former vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Richard Fisher began his career in 1975 at the private bank of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., where he specialized in fixed income and foreign exchange markets. He became assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Carter Administration, working on issues related to the dollar crisis of 1978–79. He then returned to Brown Brothers to establish their Texas operations in Dallas.
In 1987, Fisher created Fisher Capital Management and a separate funds-management firm, Fisher Ewing Partners.
From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Fisher was Deputy U.S. Trade Representative with the rank of ambassador. He oversaw the implementation of NAFTA, negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and various agreements with Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Chile and Singapore.
He attended the U.S. Naval Academy (1967–69), graduated with honors from Harvard University in economics (1971), read Latin American politics at Oxford (1972–73) and received an M.B.A. from Stanford University (1975).
Mr. Fisher is former vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Richard Fisher began his career in 1975 at the private bank of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., where he specialized in fixed income and foreign exchange markets. He became assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Carter Administration, working on issues related to the dollar crisis of 1978–79. He then returned to Brown Brothers to establish their Texas operations in Dallas.
In 1987, Fisher created Fisher Capital Management and a separate funds-management firm, Fisher Ewing Partners.
From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Fisher was Deputy U.S. Trade Representative with the rank of ambassador. He oversaw the implementation of NAFTA, negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and various agreements with Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Chile and Singapore.
He attended the U.S. Naval Academy (1967–69), graduated with honors from Harvard University in economics (1971), read Latin American politics at Oxford (1972–73) and received an M.B.A. from Stanford University (1975).
Fool Him Twice: Jerome Fisher
I’ve found the worst investor ever. I mean this has to be him right? His name is Jerome Fisher, the name may be slightly familiar as the founder of shoe-company Nine West. But he has done so much more than that. He lost a significant chunk of change in not one, but two of the biggest hedge fund scams in history, KL Group and Bernie Madoff Investment Securities.
He was an investor with the KL Group, a hedge fund run by Korean-American scam artists who defrauded investors of nearly $200 million. Maybe he should get a pass for this one as it was tough to imagine this being a fraud. I mean, according to the linked article, there were no telltale signs of anything but trustworthy, diligent investment management.
The aura of success and exclusivity around the firm was so strong that investors often begged to be let into its funds, some of which were said to have astounding annualized returns of 125 percent for several years.
…
And there was never a formal independent audit to verify whether the remarkable returns reported by the funds were real.
…
NOT that it was all that difficult for KL to persuade investors to jump into the funds with both feet. Its main fund reported strong returns of 70 percent in 2003 and 40 percent in 2004, according to statements given to investors. The lifestyle of the funds’ original three principals also supported the picture of a business doing well. The young men drove flashy cars: Maseratis, Porsche 911′s and Mercedes SL 500′s. (The firm’s personal masseuse drove a Jaguar X-Type that was provided by KL.) End-of-year holiday parties were held in Las Vegas, where Mr. Kim and Mr. Lee were high-rolling VIP’s at several casinos.
The crown jewel was KL’s luxurious offices in the new Esperante building in downtown West Palm Beach. The large sunlit offices were filled with gorgeous desks designed by Dakota Jackson and a conference table that had to be hoisted 17 floors through the building’s elevator shaft. Some walls were covered in a gray suede fabric, and in the corner of Mr. Kim’s office was a $6,000 massage chair. The trading floor had large flat-panel televisions scattered throughout.
It all was a great way to impress clients, who were ushered in to watch the main attraction: Mr. Kim. From his captain’s chair, he traded frenetically, surrounded by 20 computer screens.
I think we should give him a pass. Nothing in the quoted passage screams to me “I should be hesitant about entrusting my money with these people”. (Full Disclosure: LoS’s personal masseuse is provided a company car, it’s an Escalade Hybrid so it gets good gas mileage).
But we can’t give Fisher a pass for having $150 million dollars with Madoff. Sure lots of smart people were fooled by Madoff, lots of smart people invested with him, but how many of those smart people, who dumbly ignored all the warning signs and were proven to not actually be smart people, had had their fraud-sense heightened by recently having suffered a separate large hedge fund fraud? Wouldn’t that be a signal to review your investment portfolio to ensure that, for example, all your money is managed by people who have been audited by legitimate auditors? Or that your firm had adequate compliance procedures (or ANY compliance procedures)?
Recommendation: Fool you once, shame on you. Fool you twice, you suck at investing AND don’t deserve your money, and we’re just glad that the invisible hand is helping the world sort that out.
He was an investor with the KL Group, a hedge fund run by Korean-American scam artists who defrauded investors of nearly $200 million. Maybe he should get a pass for this one as it was tough to imagine this being a fraud. I mean, according to the linked article, there were no telltale signs of anything but trustworthy, diligent investment management.
The aura of success and exclusivity around the firm was so strong that investors often begged to be let into its funds, some of which were said to have astounding annualized returns of 125 percent for several years.
…
And there was never a formal independent audit to verify whether the remarkable returns reported by the funds were real.
…
NOT that it was all that difficult for KL to persuade investors to jump into the funds with both feet. Its main fund reported strong returns of 70 percent in 2003 and 40 percent in 2004, according to statements given to investors. The lifestyle of the funds’ original three principals also supported the picture of a business doing well. The young men drove flashy cars: Maseratis, Porsche 911′s and Mercedes SL 500′s. (The firm’s personal masseuse drove a Jaguar X-Type that was provided by KL.) End-of-year holiday parties were held in Las Vegas, where Mr. Kim and Mr. Lee were high-rolling VIP’s at several casinos.
The crown jewel was KL’s luxurious offices in the new Esperante building in downtown West Palm Beach. The large sunlit offices were filled with gorgeous desks designed by Dakota Jackson and a conference table that had to be hoisted 17 floors through the building’s elevator shaft. Some walls were covered in a gray suede fabric, and in the corner of Mr. Kim’s office was a $6,000 massage chair. The trading floor had large flat-panel televisions scattered throughout.
It all was a great way to impress clients, who were ushered in to watch the main attraction: Mr. Kim. From his captain’s chair, he traded frenetically, surrounded by 20 computer screens.
I think we should give him a pass. Nothing in the quoted passage screams to me “I should be hesitant about entrusting my money with these people”. (Full Disclosure: LoS’s personal masseuse is provided a company car, it’s an Escalade Hybrid so it gets good gas mileage).
But we can’t give Fisher a pass for having $150 million dollars with Madoff. Sure lots of smart people were fooled by Madoff, lots of smart people invested with him, but how many of those smart people, who dumbly ignored all the warning signs and were proven to not actually be smart people, had had their fraud-sense heightened by recently having suffered a separate large hedge fund fraud? Wouldn’t that be a signal to review your investment portfolio to ensure that, for example, all your money is managed by people who have been audited by legitimate auditors? Or that your firm had adequate compliance procedures (or ANY compliance procedures)?
Recommendation: Fool you once, shame on you. Fool you twice, you suck at investing AND don’t deserve your money, and we’re just glad that the invisible hand is helping the world sort that out.
Investor Interview: Fisher Funds Management md Carmel Fisher
Investor Interview: Fisher Funds Management md Carmel Fisher
by Jenny Ruth
Monday 28th May 2007
Text too small?
Jenny Ruth Jenny Ruth talks to Fisher Funds Management managing director Carmel Fisher in this sharechat investor interview.
Fisher Funds Management manages more than $1 billion in a number of unlisted funds and two that are listed on the New Zealand Exchange, Kingfish and Barramundi. It specialises in investing in small to medium listed companies in New Zealand and, more recently, has branched out into Australian stocks. Its flagship New Zealand Growth Fund has delivered a compound average 19.4% annual return since it was founded in August 1998. Kingfish was floated in March 2004 and the shares, issued at $1, were trading at $1.66 ahead of this interview compared to diluted net asset value (NAV) of $1.65 on May 16. Shares in Barramundi, floated in October last year at $1, were trading at $1.16 compared to NAV of $1.105. While the Kingfish issue fell short of the maximum $75 million sought, raising $58.5 million, the $100 million Barramundi issue was $26 million oversubscribed.
Sharechat: Why do you think your two listed funds are trading at slight premiums to diluted net asset value?
Carmel Fisher, managing director of Fisher Funds Management: Kingfish certainly has traded at as high as a 20% discount in the past. We're delighted with the way the shares have tracked in the last six months. In the annual report last year, we talked about the large discount. Normally, when you get a listed investment company trading at a discount, either they've had a bad track record, which we haven't, or another reason is there's an element of the company or the portfolio which is unknown - if we had an unlisted investment that had to be valued periodically. All of our holdings are listed and valued at least weekly and they're published as well, so an investor knows exactly what they're getting. Those traditional reasons don't hold for Kingfish. The other reason they could trade at a discount is if people thought they wouldn't continue to perform. We didn't understand why people would think that either. So we wrote about that in the annual report. We've tried to communicate that also to share brokers around the country. At the same time, we've also had the buyback.
SC: How important is the buyback in maintaining the KFL share price near NAV?
CF: I think that's been a significant support for the share price. If the company itself is prepared to buy back its shares, that suggests that they may be under-valued.
SC: Why don't you just cancel the bought back KFL shares?
CF: We've reissued some. The company can use some of them to pay our performance fee, because half our performance fee comes in the form of shares. Sometimes it's quite difficult to buy decent lines of Kingfish shares. There's a possibility that substantial investors might want to take a placement. It just provides Kingfish with flexibility in capital management.
SC: Why buy back the warrants? Aren't you depriving KFL of a future source of capital?
CF: We just thought it was appropriate to buy a combination of shares and warrants. There's an argument that the warrants are dilutionary. Until they're exercised, every dollar of performance is diluted by the presence of the warrants. If you buy back and cancel some, you're reducing that dilution. Fisher Funds and Kingfish aren't reliant on the warrants being exercised for capital. If by cancelling the warrants there's less dilutionary impact, then every dollar of performance is represented in NAV. That's good for investors. If there was a need for more capital, Kingfish could issue more warrants to have a capital raising in future.
SC: Why don't you use gearing in KFL because you are allowed to borrow?
CF:We prefer to just use it as and when we require it. We wouldn't gear Kingfish on an ongoing basis.
SC: Wouldn't that help improve returns?
CF: Yes, but it also introduces a significant element of risk. One could argue that there's already risk in a share investment, particularly with smaller companies. We're happy to use gearing when we see great opportunities that we want to take advantage of when we don't have a lot of cash, rather than being forced to sell an existing holding that we like. That allows you to add to your portfolio without putting your existing portfolio at risk. In circumstances such as with Waste Management, for instance, when we knew we were going to lose Waste Management from the portfolio but we weren't going to get paid out for a couple of months, that was an opportunity to use gearing. That way you're not leaving your portfolio exposed when you lose a Waste Management.
SC: Why does Barramundi still have so much cash, 25% according to the latest report?
CF: It's a whole lot less than that now. It's less than 10% now. Why was it so high? We couldn't find enough of the stocks that we wanted and we didn't want to overpay. I think Frank Jasper (Senior portfolio manager and director who is responsible for overseeing the Australian portfolios) has done a marvellous job with Barramundi. He's waited and taken advantage of a couple of placements to access stocks at a discount.
SC: When do you expect it to be more or less fully invested?
CF: I would expect in the next three months it would be close to fully invested. I think Frank was waiting for one placement that's taking place in the next week or so.
SC: Will the new PIE (portfolio investment entity which will mean that qualifying funds will no longer be liable for capital gains tax) regime change your investment style at all?
CF: I don't think it's going to change our investment style. We will still be buy and hold investors. We're still going to have concentrated portfolios. What the PIE regime's going to allow us to do is take advantage of short-term trading opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have done. I wouldn't imagine that would be a weekly thing, but there will be opportunities we can take advantage of. Recognising, for instance, that a stock might be under-valued because of bad news. We could buy with a view of selling in a few weeks. We haven't been able to do that because of the tax implications.
SC: Are you going to be a Kiwisaver provider?
CF: Yes, we are. Our Kiwisaver scheme has not yet been registered, but we would expect it to be so in June. Our's will be a growth-focused scheme rather than a balanced or widely diversified fund.
SC: FundSource categorises your funds as being high risk. Do you agree with that?
CF: I wouldn't describe our funds as high risk. I've never described our funds as high risk. We might have a slightly higher variation of returns than other funds which research houses like FundSource would categories as high risk. Our funds look quite different to other funds. Our portfolio and our approach is quite different from other funds. If you look at our returns versus other funds and versus the market indicies, the difference between our returns and everyone else's is significant but the difference in risk isn't that significant. They would describe us as higher risk because our returns are more variable. That's enabled us to be a much better performer than our peers.
SC: Your investment style is similar to that of (US fund manager of Berkshire Hathaway) Warren Buffett isn't it?
CF: The press would describe Warren Buffett as a value investor whereas we would describe ourselves as a growth investor. I think there are real similarities. Obviously, we've had to change our approach slightly to cater to the small New Zealand market, the idiosyncrasies of our local market, but in broad approach, we have a very similar approach to Warren Buffett.
SC: What has been the average turnover of stocks within the Kingfish fund each year since it has been established?
CF: How many holdings have we bought and subsequently sold? There have been two small holdings and we lost Waste Management. The average turnover has been 10% to 15% of the portfolio per annum. To put that in perspective, most portfolios in New Zealand have a turnover of between 80% and 100%. Our New Zealand Growth Fund has always been one of the lower turnover funds, averaging around 20%. Kingfish has always been lower than that. We're a true buy and hold manager.
SC: How do you manage the process of selling down large holdings such as Baycorp and Turners Auctions?
CF: We applied the same strategy with both of them. We don't actually sell very often and when we do sell, we typically sell the entire holding. When we sell, it's because our entire view has changed on the stock and we don't want to hold it anymore. Because of that view, we're not as price sensitive. If we've lost confidence in the company or the management, we don't want to be there. We don't want to be selling out of a stock over a six month period. We want to be out of it quickly. We will typically try and move the entire holding in one line. To do so, we would be prepared to accept a discount of even up to 10%. With Baycorp, the average discount on the selling was 3%, relative to where the share price was trading. With Turners Auctions, we didn't have to sell at a discount. We actually sold at a slight premium to the market. GPG was the buyer and they regarded it as a strategic stake. For all of our holdings, we have what we call a liquidity map. We're always talking to investment bankers to get a handle on who are the other major investors, who are the likely buyers. For each of our stocks, we have a broad idea of who might be a buyer if we decided to sell. I think we would have a problem if we sold over a six-month period. Word would get out. That's why we would look to do it quickly and get it over and done with. Even if the price falls on the day, it will quickly come back to equilibrium. That's much better than being an ongoing seller over a period of time.
SC: How great is the risk that you can't sell such holdings without accepting huge discounts?
CF: There is a risk that we will have to accept a discount. I don't know about a huge discount. Ten percent would be the biggest discount we've had to accept. I don't think that's huge in the scheme of things. Similarly, when we purchase stocks we've had to pay a premium. I don't think that's a huge issue. Because of the returns we expect to get from our stocks, a 5% or 10% premium or discount is neither here nor there.
SC: How will the new tax rules for offshore share investments affect the Barramundi fund?
CF: It will affect Barramundi - about 7% of Barramundi is invested in FDRs (the 5% "fair dividend rate" will be applied to international investments and some Australian stocks that lie outside the major share market indices will be subject to FDR just like international investments. Most mainstream Australian share market investments will be free of capital gains tax.) We don't think that's a big deal. We're not going to avoid FDR stocks. In fact, we might have more going forward. The total tax we're going to have to pay on the Barramundi portfolio is going to be marginal. We're investing for growth and we're going to carry on investing for growth rather than tax.
SC: Before you get to the stage of meeting a company's management, what steps will you have taken to assess whether to invest in that company? Where does most of your information come from?
CF: Before we invest in any company - it's a little bit different for New Zealand than Australia. In New Zealand, we're generally familiar with companies before we invest in them anyway. We keep research files on all the companies we would ever invest in. We've got quite a comprehensive library. Before we invest, we always insist on at least one company meeting. We would never invest befroe meeting the company's management. We would have a series of questions - we would never go along unprepared. There are lots of stories about American companies turning up to visit a company and they say, tell us what you do. Basically, they're here on a fishing holiday. We would never do that. In Australia, we do quite a lot more than that. We do a lot of research. Typically we will visit 20 companies in three days. Frank and (analyst) Terry Tollich will be well informed so they can get straight to the meet. Terry will have already built up his model so when they get to the company, they will get straight to the crunch. They will have looked at the competitors and done industry analysis and have a lot of information before they get in front of the chief executive. We get bits and pieces from share brokers, you start reading, you start Googling. It's really just wearing out shoe leather, talking to as many people as you can to get snippets of information about a company.
SC: Do you feel that the current level of annual growth of the funds you manage is sustainable? Why/why not?
CF: In terms of performance, we never predict future performance. If you had asked me five years ago whether I though that for the next five years we would be averaging a 20% (annual) return after tax, I would have said no, I think that's a little bit ambitious. But we have. Because we're investing in growth companies, if our companies can continue to grow their earnings at more or less the same rate as they have done over the last five years, there's no reason why we should keep performing. Share prices over time will always reflect the underlying performances of companies. As for annual growth in funds, in the last year we've doubled the size of the funds under management. The answer is no, we can't continue growth like that. We would end up owning too much of each of our companies and that would end up jeopardising our investment strategy. I think we have limited growth potential for New Zealand. We can't accept large inflows now into our New Zealand funds. We may have to close our New Zealand funds later this year. In Australia though, we still have plenty of scope to accept new funds.
SC: Does Fisher Funds play any role in the selection of directors of companies it invests in? If so, what qualities does it look for in a director?
CF: We sort of play a role - an indirect role. We have had some of our companies approach us and ask us for suggestions when they're looking at appointing or replacing directors and, of course, we vote. We would never put ourselves on a board or expect our nominee to be on a board. We do have a view which directors are good and which ones aren't. In terms of what qualities you want in a director, it depends on the company. It might be someone with international expertise or someone with legal expertise. We would look for the same things which we look for with our managing directors. People who are capable, who are passionate, who are consistent and believable - they're consistent in what they tell us. They actually deliver on what they tell us. Also that they're passionate and committed to the business.
SC: How did you get started in this industry? What tips do you have for someone wanting to follow in your footsteps?
CF: After completing my accounting degree, I then worked for a share broker in a junior role and worked my way up. I built up a client base. Then I moved into the research department of the broking firm and then moved into a research role with a fund manager that happened to be and insurance company. I think things have changed now. I think it's harder to get into the industry. When I look at the calibre of the CVs that come across my desk, I think it's very competitive. My advice to anyone who wants to get into the industry is to accept any junior role. So many people I see who decide they want to be in investment banking want to go for the glamorous roles immediately. I think you should get your feet in the door, develop a track record, develop some expertise and go from there.
SC: What was you best and your worst ever investment? Why?
CF: The best, I think, has been Ryman. The returns have just been mind blowing. It's been a wonderful company to research and be associated with. The management team have always been candid and believable. The company has just consistently delivered year in, year out with no major stuff-ups along the way, no inconsistencies, no lies, no exaggerations. Just an easy story to be involved with. We were able to get into Ryman relatively early before the share price took off. We had it to ourselves for quite a long time which was lovely. The worst probably would have to be Cadmus. The share price has been neutral. Relative to all the other stocks we've had, it's done nothing. There have been some changes but they haven't delivered on what they were going to do, although the last three months look more promising. It's a tiny holding. Often the small holdings get way more attention from investors than they should do. Others will have looked at what holdings we've got and bought in. They probably bought a lot more than 1% of their portfolios. We accept that responsibility because people will follow us.
by Jenny Ruth
Monday 28th May 2007
Text too small?
Jenny Ruth Jenny Ruth talks to Fisher Funds Management managing director Carmel Fisher in this sharechat investor interview.
Fisher Funds Management manages more than $1 billion in a number of unlisted funds and two that are listed on the New Zealand Exchange, Kingfish and Barramundi. It specialises in investing in small to medium listed companies in New Zealand and, more recently, has branched out into Australian stocks. Its flagship New Zealand Growth Fund has delivered a compound average 19.4% annual return since it was founded in August 1998. Kingfish was floated in March 2004 and the shares, issued at $1, were trading at $1.66 ahead of this interview compared to diluted net asset value (NAV) of $1.65 on May 16. Shares in Barramundi, floated in October last year at $1, were trading at $1.16 compared to NAV of $1.105. While the Kingfish issue fell short of the maximum $75 million sought, raising $58.5 million, the $100 million Barramundi issue was $26 million oversubscribed.
Sharechat: Why do you think your two listed funds are trading at slight premiums to diluted net asset value?
Carmel Fisher, managing director of Fisher Funds Management: Kingfish certainly has traded at as high as a 20% discount in the past. We're delighted with the way the shares have tracked in the last six months. In the annual report last year, we talked about the large discount. Normally, when you get a listed investment company trading at a discount, either they've had a bad track record, which we haven't, or another reason is there's an element of the company or the portfolio which is unknown - if we had an unlisted investment that had to be valued periodically. All of our holdings are listed and valued at least weekly and they're published as well, so an investor knows exactly what they're getting. Those traditional reasons don't hold for Kingfish. The other reason they could trade at a discount is if people thought they wouldn't continue to perform. We didn't understand why people would think that either. So we wrote about that in the annual report. We've tried to communicate that also to share brokers around the country. At the same time, we've also had the buyback.
SC: How important is the buyback in maintaining the KFL share price near NAV?
CF: I think that's been a significant support for the share price. If the company itself is prepared to buy back its shares, that suggests that they may be under-valued.
SC: Why don't you just cancel the bought back KFL shares?
CF: We've reissued some. The company can use some of them to pay our performance fee, because half our performance fee comes in the form of shares. Sometimes it's quite difficult to buy decent lines of Kingfish shares. There's a possibility that substantial investors might want to take a placement. It just provides Kingfish with flexibility in capital management.
SC: Why buy back the warrants? Aren't you depriving KFL of a future source of capital?
CF: We just thought it was appropriate to buy a combination of shares and warrants. There's an argument that the warrants are dilutionary. Until they're exercised, every dollar of performance is diluted by the presence of the warrants. If you buy back and cancel some, you're reducing that dilution. Fisher Funds and Kingfish aren't reliant on the warrants being exercised for capital. If by cancelling the warrants there's less dilutionary impact, then every dollar of performance is represented in NAV. That's good for investors. If there was a need for more capital, Kingfish could issue more warrants to have a capital raising in future.
SC: Why don't you use gearing in KFL because you are allowed to borrow?
CF:We prefer to just use it as and when we require it. We wouldn't gear Kingfish on an ongoing basis.
SC: Wouldn't that help improve returns?
CF: Yes, but it also introduces a significant element of risk. One could argue that there's already risk in a share investment, particularly with smaller companies. We're happy to use gearing when we see great opportunities that we want to take advantage of when we don't have a lot of cash, rather than being forced to sell an existing holding that we like. That allows you to add to your portfolio without putting your existing portfolio at risk. In circumstances such as with Waste Management, for instance, when we knew we were going to lose Waste Management from the portfolio but we weren't going to get paid out for a couple of months, that was an opportunity to use gearing. That way you're not leaving your portfolio exposed when you lose a Waste Management.
SC: Why does Barramundi still have so much cash, 25% according to the latest report?
CF: It's a whole lot less than that now. It's less than 10% now. Why was it so high? We couldn't find enough of the stocks that we wanted and we didn't want to overpay. I think Frank Jasper (Senior portfolio manager and director who is responsible for overseeing the Australian portfolios) has done a marvellous job with Barramundi. He's waited and taken advantage of a couple of placements to access stocks at a discount.
SC: When do you expect it to be more or less fully invested?
CF: I would expect in the next three months it would be close to fully invested. I think Frank was waiting for one placement that's taking place in the next week or so.
SC: Will the new PIE (portfolio investment entity which will mean that qualifying funds will no longer be liable for capital gains tax) regime change your investment style at all?
CF: I don't think it's going to change our investment style. We will still be buy and hold investors. We're still going to have concentrated portfolios. What the PIE regime's going to allow us to do is take advantage of short-term trading opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have done. I wouldn't imagine that would be a weekly thing, but there will be opportunities we can take advantage of. Recognising, for instance, that a stock might be under-valued because of bad news. We could buy with a view of selling in a few weeks. We haven't been able to do that because of the tax implications.
SC: Are you going to be a Kiwisaver provider?
CF: Yes, we are. Our Kiwisaver scheme has not yet been registered, but we would expect it to be so in June. Our's will be a growth-focused scheme rather than a balanced or widely diversified fund.
SC: FundSource categorises your funds as being high risk. Do you agree with that?
CF: I wouldn't describe our funds as high risk. I've never described our funds as high risk. We might have a slightly higher variation of returns than other funds which research houses like FundSource would categories as high risk. Our funds look quite different to other funds. Our portfolio and our approach is quite different from other funds. If you look at our returns versus other funds and versus the market indicies, the difference between our returns and everyone else's is significant but the difference in risk isn't that significant. They would describe us as higher risk because our returns are more variable. That's enabled us to be a much better performer than our peers.
SC: Your investment style is similar to that of (US fund manager of Berkshire Hathaway) Warren Buffett isn't it?
CF: The press would describe Warren Buffett as a value investor whereas we would describe ourselves as a growth investor. I think there are real similarities. Obviously, we've had to change our approach slightly to cater to the small New Zealand market, the idiosyncrasies of our local market, but in broad approach, we have a very similar approach to Warren Buffett.
SC: What has been the average turnover of stocks within the Kingfish fund each year since it has been established?
CF: How many holdings have we bought and subsequently sold? There have been two small holdings and we lost Waste Management. The average turnover has been 10% to 15% of the portfolio per annum. To put that in perspective, most portfolios in New Zealand have a turnover of between 80% and 100%. Our New Zealand Growth Fund has always been one of the lower turnover funds, averaging around 20%. Kingfish has always been lower than that. We're a true buy and hold manager.
SC: How do you manage the process of selling down large holdings such as Baycorp and Turners Auctions?
CF: We applied the same strategy with both of them. We don't actually sell very often and when we do sell, we typically sell the entire holding. When we sell, it's because our entire view has changed on the stock and we don't want to hold it anymore. Because of that view, we're not as price sensitive. If we've lost confidence in the company or the management, we don't want to be there. We don't want to be selling out of a stock over a six month period. We want to be out of it quickly. We will typically try and move the entire holding in one line. To do so, we would be prepared to accept a discount of even up to 10%. With Baycorp, the average discount on the selling was 3%, relative to where the share price was trading. With Turners Auctions, we didn't have to sell at a discount. We actually sold at a slight premium to the market. GPG was the buyer and they regarded it as a strategic stake. For all of our holdings, we have what we call a liquidity map. We're always talking to investment bankers to get a handle on who are the other major investors, who are the likely buyers. For each of our stocks, we have a broad idea of who might be a buyer if we decided to sell. I think we would have a problem if we sold over a six-month period. Word would get out. That's why we would look to do it quickly and get it over and done with. Even if the price falls on the day, it will quickly come back to equilibrium. That's much better than being an ongoing seller over a period of time.
SC: How great is the risk that you can't sell such holdings without accepting huge discounts?
CF: There is a risk that we will have to accept a discount. I don't know about a huge discount. Ten percent would be the biggest discount we've had to accept. I don't think that's huge in the scheme of things. Similarly, when we purchase stocks we've had to pay a premium. I don't think that's a huge issue. Because of the returns we expect to get from our stocks, a 5% or 10% premium or discount is neither here nor there.
SC: How will the new tax rules for offshore share investments affect the Barramundi fund?
CF: It will affect Barramundi - about 7% of Barramundi is invested in FDRs (the 5% "fair dividend rate" will be applied to international investments and some Australian stocks that lie outside the major share market indices will be subject to FDR just like international investments. Most mainstream Australian share market investments will be free of capital gains tax.) We don't think that's a big deal. We're not going to avoid FDR stocks. In fact, we might have more going forward. The total tax we're going to have to pay on the Barramundi portfolio is going to be marginal. We're investing for growth and we're going to carry on investing for growth rather than tax.
SC: Before you get to the stage of meeting a company's management, what steps will you have taken to assess whether to invest in that company? Where does most of your information come from?
CF: Before we invest in any company - it's a little bit different for New Zealand than Australia. In New Zealand, we're generally familiar with companies before we invest in them anyway. We keep research files on all the companies we would ever invest in. We've got quite a comprehensive library. Before we invest, we always insist on at least one company meeting. We would never invest befroe meeting the company's management. We would have a series of questions - we would never go along unprepared. There are lots of stories about American companies turning up to visit a company and they say, tell us what you do. Basically, they're here on a fishing holiday. We would never do that. In Australia, we do quite a lot more than that. We do a lot of research. Typically we will visit 20 companies in three days. Frank and (analyst) Terry Tollich will be well informed so they can get straight to the meet. Terry will have already built up his model so when they get to the company, they will get straight to the crunch. They will have looked at the competitors and done industry analysis and have a lot of information before they get in front of the chief executive. We get bits and pieces from share brokers, you start reading, you start Googling. It's really just wearing out shoe leather, talking to as many people as you can to get snippets of information about a company.
SC: Do you feel that the current level of annual growth of the funds you manage is sustainable? Why/why not?
CF: In terms of performance, we never predict future performance. If you had asked me five years ago whether I though that for the next five years we would be averaging a 20% (annual) return after tax, I would have said no, I think that's a little bit ambitious. But we have. Because we're investing in growth companies, if our companies can continue to grow their earnings at more or less the same rate as they have done over the last five years, there's no reason why we should keep performing. Share prices over time will always reflect the underlying performances of companies. As for annual growth in funds, in the last year we've doubled the size of the funds under management. The answer is no, we can't continue growth like that. We would end up owning too much of each of our companies and that would end up jeopardising our investment strategy. I think we have limited growth potential for New Zealand. We can't accept large inflows now into our New Zealand funds. We may have to close our New Zealand funds later this year. In Australia though, we still have plenty of scope to accept new funds.
SC: Does Fisher Funds play any role in the selection of directors of companies it invests in? If so, what qualities does it look for in a director?
CF: We sort of play a role - an indirect role. We have had some of our companies approach us and ask us for suggestions when they're looking at appointing or replacing directors and, of course, we vote. We would never put ourselves on a board or expect our nominee to be on a board. We do have a view which directors are good and which ones aren't. In terms of what qualities you want in a director, it depends on the company. It might be someone with international expertise or someone with legal expertise. We would look for the same things which we look for with our managing directors. People who are capable, who are passionate, who are consistent and believable - they're consistent in what they tell us. They actually deliver on what they tell us. Also that they're passionate and committed to the business.
SC: How did you get started in this industry? What tips do you have for someone wanting to follow in your footsteps?
CF: After completing my accounting degree, I then worked for a share broker in a junior role and worked my way up. I built up a client base. Then I moved into the research department of the broking firm and then moved into a research role with a fund manager that happened to be and insurance company. I think things have changed now. I think it's harder to get into the industry. When I look at the calibre of the CVs that come across my desk, I think it's very competitive. My advice to anyone who wants to get into the industry is to accept any junior role. So many people I see who decide they want to be in investment banking want to go for the glamorous roles immediately. I think you should get your feet in the door, develop a track record, develop some expertise and go from there.
SC: What was you best and your worst ever investment? Why?
CF: The best, I think, has been Ryman. The returns have just been mind blowing. It's been a wonderful company to research and be associated with. The management team have always been candid and believable. The company has just consistently delivered year in, year out with no major stuff-ups along the way, no inconsistencies, no lies, no exaggerations. Just an easy story to be involved with. We were able to get into Ryman relatively early before the share price took off. We had it to ourselves for quite a long time which was lovely. The worst probably would have to be Cadmus. The share price has been neutral. Relative to all the other stocks we've had, it's done nothing. There have been some changes but they haven't delivered on what they were going to do, although the last three months look more promising. It's a tiny holding. Often the small holdings get way more attention from investors than they should do. Others will have looked at what holdings we've got and bought in. They probably bought a lot more than 1% of their portfolios. We accept that responsibility because people will follow us.
Fisher Investments Acquires Lighthouse Capital Management Assets
Renowned Investment Management Firm Continues Acquisition Strategy
WOODSIDE, Calif., Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Fisher Investments, a leading
independent investment management company, today announced the acquisition
of assets from Lighthouse Capital Management L.P. of Houston, TX, which
managed over $460 million as of June 27, 2008. Financial terms were not
disclosed. Lighthouse clients will be served by Fisher Investments' Private
Client Group.
The Lighthouse acquisition is Fisher's second in six months. On
December 31st, Fisher closed a transaction with Econostrat, of Bloomfield
Hills, MI.
"Lighthouse has a rich history of serving clients over the last 20
years, a tradition we will build upon as Lighthouse's clients are entrusted
to our care," said Mark Scalzo, Group Vice President and Head of M&A at
Fisher Investments. "From an M&A perspective, the shortage of other RIA
buyers, created by the scarcity of capital and financial disarray among
some larger financial institutions, leaves Fisher Investments
well-positioned to quickly act on opportunities such as Lighthouse."
Paul Horton, Lighthouse Founder and Principal, said: "Fisher
Investments' performance record, global perspective and dedication to
client service makes this the right decision for our clients."
Luis Gutierrez, Senior Vice President, M&A, of Fisher Investments said:
"This acquisition, coupled with the one completed several months ago,
demonstrates our ability to successfully acquire RIAs. In these
transactions and other on-going conversations, many traditional issues of
concern for RIA owners -- for instance, maintaining a local presence --
have been successfully addressed after learning more about Fisher
Investments' robust client service and portfolio management capabilities."
About Fisher Investments
Fisher Asset Management, LLC, doing business as Fisher Investments,
founded in 1979, is a respected investment management company serving the
needs of investors demanding superior performance, competitive fees and
exceptional service. Fisher Investments' clients include large corporate
and public pension plans, foundations and endowments, as well as more than
20,000 high net worth investors. As of June 30, 2008, the firm managed over
$45 billion in assets under management. The firm is headquartered in
Woodside, California, and registered as an investment adviser with the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Ken Fisher, founder, CEO and
Chief Investment Officer, is the author of four finance books and many
academic studies, and is a well-respected market forecaster, having written
Forbes magazine's "Portfolio Strategy" financial investment column since
1984. In 2007, in association with John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Fisher
Investments introduced Fisher Investments Press, a publishing imprint
offering advice and education for broad investment audiences.
http://www.fi.com
About Lighthouse Capital Management
Lighthouse Capital Management, L.P. was established in 1988 with the
guiding principles of providing exceptional client service and always
putting the client's interests first. Lighthouse offered investment
management and financial support services to individuals, families, trusts
and institutions with the mission of providing superior performance over
time in the creation and preservation of wealth for clients while being
mindful of their unique, personal needs. Lighthouse is registered as an
investment adviser with the SEC but will soon be withdrawing its
registration. https://www.lighthousecapital.com/
WOODSIDE, Calif., Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Fisher Investments, a leading
independent investment management company, today announced the acquisition
of assets from Lighthouse Capital Management L.P. of Houston, TX, which
managed over $460 million as of June 27, 2008. Financial terms were not
disclosed. Lighthouse clients will be served by Fisher Investments' Private
Client Group.
The Lighthouse acquisition is Fisher's second in six months. On
December 31st, Fisher closed a transaction with Econostrat, of Bloomfield
Hills, MI.
"Lighthouse has a rich history of serving clients over the last 20
years, a tradition we will build upon as Lighthouse's clients are entrusted
to our care," said Mark Scalzo, Group Vice President and Head of M&A at
Fisher Investments. "From an M&A perspective, the shortage of other RIA
buyers, created by the scarcity of capital and financial disarray among
some larger financial institutions, leaves Fisher Investments
well-positioned to quickly act on opportunities such as Lighthouse."
Paul Horton, Lighthouse Founder and Principal, said: "Fisher
Investments' performance record, global perspective and dedication to
client service makes this the right decision for our clients."
Luis Gutierrez, Senior Vice President, M&A, of Fisher Investments said:
"This acquisition, coupled with the one completed several months ago,
demonstrates our ability to successfully acquire RIAs. In these
transactions and other on-going conversations, many traditional issues of
concern for RIA owners -- for instance, maintaining a local presence --
have been successfully addressed after learning more about Fisher
Investments' robust client service and portfolio management capabilities."
About Fisher Investments
Fisher Asset Management, LLC, doing business as Fisher Investments,
founded in 1979, is a respected investment management company serving the
needs of investors demanding superior performance, competitive fees and
exceptional service. Fisher Investments' clients include large corporate
and public pension plans, foundations and endowments, as well as more than
20,000 high net worth investors. As of June 30, 2008, the firm managed over
$45 billion in assets under management. The firm is headquartered in
Woodside, California, and registered as an investment adviser with the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Ken Fisher, founder, CEO and
Chief Investment Officer, is the author of four finance books and many
academic studies, and is a well-respected market forecaster, having written
Forbes magazine's "Portfolio Strategy" financial investment column since
1984. In 2007, in association with John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Fisher
Investments introduced Fisher Investments Press, a publishing imprint
offering advice and education for broad investment audiences.
http://www.fi.com
About Lighthouse Capital Management
Lighthouse Capital Management, L.P. was established in 1988 with the
guiding principles of providing exceptional client service and always
putting the client's interests first. Lighthouse offered investment
management and financial support services to individuals, families, trusts
and institutions with the mission of providing superior performance over
time in the creation and preservation of wealth for clients while being
mindful of their unique, personal needs. Lighthouse is registered as an
investment adviser with the SEC but will soon be withdrawing its
registration. https://www.lighthousecapital.com/
Lawsuit against Fisher Investments a possible indicator that more investment lawsuits and arbitration claims against financial advisers may be in the works
Lawsuit against Fisher Investments a possible indicator that more investment lawsuits and arbitration claims against financial advisers may be in the works
Earlier this month, our securities fraud law firm published a blog post about a $1.2 million arbitration claim filed against Fisher Investments by a couple accusing the investment adviser of breach of fiduciary duty. Fisher Investments head Ken Fisher called the allegations “nonsense.”
He also brushed off claims made in an investment adviser lawsuit, this one filed in Houston federal court by investor Maurine Ford. The plaintiff contends that Fisher Investments is responsible for substantial losses sustained by a living trust that the firm began managing for her in June 2008. Before then, Lighthouse Capital Management LLP of Houston managed the trust. That is, until Fisher Investments purchased the client assets.
According to Ford’s complaint, the asset allocation in the trust’s account when it was transferred to Fisher Investments was 27% cash, 41% equities, and 32% fixed income. She contends that Fisher Investments recommended that the plaintiff reallocate the portfolio so that 100% would be invested in equities.
The $1.2 million investment advisor arbitration claim, filed in Georgia by Michelle and Brent Murphy, accuses Fisher Investments of keeping nearly 100% of the senior couple's investments in equities despite the market collapse that was taking place.
Mr. Fisher maintains that both cases against his firm are going to hit concrete walls. He has called the lawyers handling both cases “incompetent” and said that the clients “will be sorry in the end” for paying for legal fees when they end up empty-handed.
In response to Fisher’s claims, Stockbroker Fraud Attorney William Shepherd says, “While it is true that attorneys not accustomed to handling investors’ claims are indeed not competent to handle such cases, Mr. Fisher may discover that all lawyers are not incompetent in this area of the law. Investors who hire a legal team that has handled hundreds – or even thousands - of claims by investors, such as our firm, very well may surprise Fisher. We look forward to providing him with that learning experience.” Mr. Shepherd is the founder of securities fraud law firm Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas, LLP.
Following the majority of past market collapses, investors were most likely to try recouping their investment losses from broker-dealers and stockbrokers. Industry experts, however, are anticipating that this time around, investors may also seek to get their money back by filing lawsuits and arbitration claims against liable financial advisers.
Earlier this month, our securities fraud law firm published a blog post about a $1.2 million arbitration claim filed against Fisher Investments by a couple accusing the investment adviser of breach of fiduciary duty. Fisher Investments head Ken Fisher called the allegations “nonsense.”
He also brushed off claims made in an investment adviser lawsuit, this one filed in Houston federal court by investor Maurine Ford. The plaintiff contends that Fisher Investments is responsible for substantial losses sustained by a living trust that the firm began managing for her in June 2008. Before then, Lighthouse Capital Management LLP of Houston managed the trust. That is, until Fisher Investments purchased the client assets.
According to Ford’s complaint, the asset allocation in the trust’s account when it was transferred to Fisher Investments was 27% cash, 41% equities, and 32% fixed income. She contends that Fisher Investments recommended that the plaintiff reallocate the portfolio so that 100% would be invested in equities.
The $1.2 million investment advisor arbitration claim, filed in Georgia by Michelle and Brent Murphy, accuses Fisher Investments of keeping nearly 100% of the senior couple's investments in equities despite the market collapse that was taking place.
Mr. Fisher maintains that both cases against his firm are going to hit concrete walls. He has called the lawyers handling both cases “incompetent” and said that the clients “will be sorry in the end” for paying for legal fees when they end up empty-handed.
In response to Fisher’s claims, Stockbroker Fraud Attorney William Shepherd says, “While it is true that attorneys not accustomed to handling investors’ claims are indeed not competent to handle such cases, Mr. Fisher may discover that all lawyers are not incompetent in this area of the law. Investors who hire a legal team that has handled hundreds – or even thousands - of claims by investors, such as our firm, very well may surprise Fisher. We look forward to providing him with that learning experience.” Mr. Shepherd is the founder of securities fraud law firm Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas, LLP.
Following the majority of past market collapses, investors were most likely to try recouping their investment losses from broker-dealers and stockbrokers. Industry experts, however, are anticipating that this time around, investors may also seek to get their money back by filing lawsuits and arbitration claims against liable financial advisers.
Lending's Blind Spot
Lending's Blind Spot
Gallery
Wall Street in Turmoil
Global stocks have experienced wild fluctuations this week in the wake of the U.S. government's seizure of insurance giant American International Group, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the disappearance of Merrill Lynch as an independent company and reports the U.S. government will set up a government entity to take on bad debts from financial institutions.
» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY
By Peter R. Fisher
Saturday, September 20, 2008
How can a financial system that was thought to be so well capitalized just 18 months ago have proved to be so much more highly leveraged, and so much more poorly capitalized, than we thought? How did this leverage so abruptly and persistently translate into a lack of liquidity in the banking system and falling credit asset values?
This Story
*
Back to Basics in Banking
*
Lending's Blind Spot
*
Day of Reckoning
The answers are likely to be found in the degradation of our credit markets caused by the prevalence of asset-based -- or "repo-based" -- secured financing.
Much analysis of "what went wrong" has focused on "agency problems" -- the misalignment of incentives -- in the underwriting of home mortgages; those who wrote an individual mortgage failed to examine the borrower's ability to repay because of their own intention to sell that mortgage to other investors. In our highly evolved financial system, there is a daisy chain of agency problems both in the creation of credit (from asset originators to asset distributors to asset managers) and in the investment process (from beneficial owners of assets, to boards of directors, to staffs, to consultants and again to asset managers). These problems are not new. In fact, they could have been cited just as easily in 1978, 1988 and 1998 as today.
Yet while there are significant differences between the events of 2008 and 1998, there is a haunting parallel in the mechanics that repo-based financing played in the story of Long-Term Capital Management and in the system-wide dynamics that began to unfold more than a year ago.
The degradation of our credit process comes about when lenders stop paying attention to borrowers' ability to repay out of cash flow and make decisions solely on the basis of the expected value of the collateral, and whatever loan down payment or equivalent securities "haircut" the lender can secure, whether the borrowers be households or hedge funds.
ad_icon
With all the discussion about underwriting standards for home mortgages, it is more than a little odd that we have been analyzing the crisis in our financial system for more than a year and nobody has spoken about underwriting standards for lending to hedge funds, or structured investment vehicles, or real estate investment trusts, or collateralized debt obligations, or broker-dealers or even to banks themselves. This glaring omission is a reflection of how deeply we are immersed in a culture of asset-based finance, in which lenders lend against the expected momentum in asset values.
Perhaps after a quarter-century of a bull market in credit asset values -- brought on by the persistent decline in nominal interest rates caused, in sequence, by disinflation, productivity gains and an extended period of abnormally low real rates -- we should not be surprised that "credit" has come to mean secured financing that presumes, rather than inquires into, the cash flows of borrowers. But as we have discovered to our peril, if no one is looking at the borrowers' ability to repay their loans, the value of the assets composed of those loans is not very good security.
In this system of transaction-based leverage, the haircut becomes the loss absorber of first recourse. But the haircut is only a slice of the asset itself and, thus, the "capital" available to absorb losses on the asset is perfectly correlated with the asset. As the asset rises in value, this correlation creates an additional cushion and appears to justify the wisdom of the loan; but when the asset's value falls, the cushion decays at the same rate. As lenders seek to protect themselves by increasing their implicit capital cushion through increasing haircuts (as commonly occurred in the first half of this year) their actions both confess their failure to look to the borrowers' cash flow as the first recourse and demonstrate the inherent weakness of asset-based financing as the impact of rising haircuts on asset values becomes self-defeating.
This cycle explains how our financial system became so much more highly leveraged than we thought it was and why there is such an extraordinary divergence between the value of credit as priced in the market and the value of the underlying cash flows that reflect borrowers' ability to repay their loans.
In reconsidering the Basel capital rules, maybe regulators should begin by looking at the treatment of secured lending. In reflecting on the lessons learned, maybe bankers need look no further than their own underwriting standards.
Peter R. Fisher, who was Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance from August 2001 to October 2003, is co-head of fixed-income portfolio management at BlackRock. This article is based on comments he presented last month at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Gallery
Wall Street in Turmoil
Global stocks have experienced wild fluctuations this week in the wake of the U.S. government's seizure of insurance giant American International Group, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the disappearance of Merrill Lynch as an independent company and reports the U.S. government will set up a government entity to take on bad debts from financial institutions.
» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY
By Peter R. Fisher
Saturday, September 20, 2008
How can a financial system that was thought to be so well capitalized just 18 months ago have proved to be so much more highly leveraged, and so much more poorly capitalized, than we thought? How did this leverage so abruptly and persistently translate into a lack of liquidity in the banking system and falling credit asset values?
This Story
*
Back to Basics in Banking
*
Lending's Blind Spot
*
Day of Reckoning
The answers are likely to be found in the degradation of our credit markets caused by the prevalence of asset-based -- or "repo-based" -- secured financing.
Much analysis of "what went wrong" has focused on "agency problems" -- the misalignment of incentives -- in the underwriting of home mortgages; those who wrote an individual mortgage failed to examine the borrower's ability to repay because of their own intention to sell that mortgage to other investors. In our highly evolved financial system, there is a daisy chain of agency problems both in the creation of credit (from asset originators to asset distributors to asset managers) and in the investment process (from beneficial owners of assets, to boards of directors, to staffs, to consultants and again to asset managers). These problems are not new. In fact, they could have been cited just as easily in 1978, 1988 and 1998 as today.
Yet while there are significant differences between the events of 2008 and 1998, there is a haunting parallel in the mechanics that repo-based financing played in the story of Long-Term Capital Management and in the system-wide dynamics that began to unfold more than a year ago.
The degradation of our credit process comes about when lenders stop paying attention to borrowers' ability to repay out of cash flow and make decisions solely on the basis of the expected value of the collateral, and whatever loan down payment or equivalent securities "haircut" the lender can secure, whether the borrowers be households or hedge funds.
ad_icon
With all the discussion about underwriting standards for home mortgages, it is more than a little odd that we have been analyzing the crisis in our financial system for more than a year and nobody has spoken about underwriting standards for lending to hedge funds, or structured investment vehicles, or real estate investment trusts, or collateralized debt obligations, or broker-dealers or even to banks themselves. This glaring omission is a reflection of how deeply we are immersed in a culture of asset-based finance, in which lenders lend against the expected momentum in asset values.
Perhaps after a quarter-century of a bull market in credit asset values -- brought on by the persistent decline in nominal interest rates caused, in sequence, by disinflation, productivity gains and an extended period of abnormally low real rates -- we should not be surprised that "credit" has come to mean secured financing that presumes, rather than inquires into, the cash flows of borrowers. But as we have discovered to our peril, if no one is looking at the borrowers' ability to repay their loans, the value of the assets composed of those loans is not very good security.
In this system of transaction-based leverage, the haircut becomes the loss absorber of first recourse. But the haircut is only a slice of the asset itself and, thus, the "capital" available to absorb losses on the asset is perfectly correlated with the asset. As the asset rises in value, this correlation creates an additional cushion and appears to justify the wisdom of the loan; but when the asset's value falls, the cushion decays at the same rate. As lenders seek to protect themselves by increasing their implicit capital cushion through increasing haircuts (as commonly occurred in the first half of this year) their actions both confess their failure to look to the borrowers' cash flow as the first recourse and demonstrate the inherent weakness of asset-based financing as the impact of rising haircuts on asset values becomes self-defeating.
This cycle explains how our financial system became so much more highly leveraged than we thought it was and why there is such an extraordinary divergence between the value of credit as priced in the market and the value of the underlying cash flows that reflect borrowers' ability to repay their loans.
In reconsidering the Basel capital rules, maybe regulators should begin by looking at the treatment of secured lending. In reflecting on the lessons learned, maybe bankers need look no further than their own underwriting standards.
Peter R. Fisher, who was Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance from August 2001 to October 2003, is co-head of fixed-income portfolio management at BlackRock. This article is based on comments he presented last month at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
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Home > Library > Business & Finance > Hoover's Profiles
Contact Information
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
2882 Sand Hill Rd., Ste. 150
Menlo Park, CA 94025
CA Tel. 650-233-9000
Fax 650-233-9233
Type: Private
On the web: http://www.dfj.com
Employees: 39
Venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) provides early-stage operating capital to startup firms. It has traditionally focused on information technology segments as Internet applications and services, semiconductors, telecommunications, and networking software, but has expanded its focus to include life sciences and clean energy technologies. Since 1985 the active investor has backed more than 300 companies, including such Internet hits as Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft), Skype (acquired by eBay), and Baidu. The company has more than 30 offices and maintains a network of more than a dozen affiliates that seek out deals in the US and abroad. DFJ manages some $4 billion in committed capital.
Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2008:
Sales: $4.8M
Officers:
Managing Director: Timothy C. (Tim) Draper
Managing Director and CFO: Mark J. Greenstein
Network Associate: Marta Bulaich
Competitors:
Benchmark Capital
Hummer Winblad
NEA
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Company History:
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Home > Library > Business & Finance > Company Histories
Company Perspectives
DFJ's mission is to identify, serve, and provide capital for extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who are determined to change the world.
Key Dates
* 1985: Timothy Draper establishes Draper Associates.
* 1991: John Fisher becomes a partner.
* 1995: Steve Jurvetson is named firm's third partner.
* 1999: European and Asian funds are offered through ePlanet affiliate.
* 2005: Firm enjoys major successes with Skype and Baidu investments.
* 2007: London-based Esprit Capital Partners becomes European affiliate.
Incorporated: 1985 as Draper Associates
NAIC: 523999 Miscellaneous Financial Investment Activities
SIC: 6289 Security & Commodity Services Nec; 6799 Investors Nec
Based in Menlo Park, California, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is a venture capital firm focusing on start-up companies involved in emerging markets offering fast growth. More than just looking for diamonds in the rough, the firm focuses on entrepreneurs who want to change the world. Areas of interest include information technology, Internet applications, wireless services, semiconductors, data communications and bandwidth enhancements, nanotechnology, life sciences, and clean energy technologies. Among DFJ's most successful investments are Hotmail, Skype, and Baidu. In addition to its main investment funds, the firm has expanded its reach globally through a network of affiliated funds totaling about $5 million in capital commitments. Through these funds, DFJ maintains a presence in 30 cities around the world.
Draper Family, Post-World War II Venture Capital Pioneers
DFJ was founded by Timothy C. Draper, a third-generation Silicon Valley venture capitalist. As undersecretary of the Army, his grandfather General William H. Draper, Jr., had played a key role in administering the Marshall Plan following World War II, helping to revive the economies of Germany and Japan. He retired to what became Silicon Valley in the 1950s. He formed something of an investors club to back some of the technology spinoffs of Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild. In 1958 he founded the first West Coast venture capital firm, teaming up with Rowan Gaither, who had started Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, and retired Air Force General Frederick L. Anderson to form Draper, Gaither & Anderson. A year later his son, William H. Draper III, joined the firm and after three years teamed up with Franklin "Pitch" Johnson to start a new investment firm, Draper & Johnson. The younger Draper then launched Sutter Hill Ventures in 1965, becoming an early backer of such companies as Apollo Computer, LSI Logic, and Quantum. He managed the firm until 1981 when he quit to join the Reagan administration in Washington, D.C., becoming chairman of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and CEO of the United Nations Development Program. He had been among the first users of a limited-partner arrangement that proved to be a key development in the rise of the modern venture capital system. Under this structure the venture capital firm served as the general partner, receiving a management fee and slice of the profits, while the limited partners--banks, insurance companies, and other institutional investors, in addition to wealthy individuals and families--supplied the capital. Draper resumed his venture capital career in 1995, launching Draper International to focus on investments in India.
Tim Draper graduated from Harvard Business School in 1984. "The last thing I wanted to do was to get into the same business my father and grandfather were in," Draper told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005. "I wanted to start a business, but when I was coming out of business school, I realized that starting a business was going to be limiting because I had ideas for a thousand different businesses. One was going to be video on demand, and one was going to be submarines." At the same time, he felt pressure to find a job after graduation and took a position at the investment bank Alex. Brown & Sons, splitting his time between investment banking and venture capital. Dissatisfied with investment banking, after two years he left to launch an investing career, establishing Draper Associates, and initially raising funds by borrowing against family assets. He was also able to borrow $6 million from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Altogether his first fund, Draper Associates/California Partners, was capitalized with $8 million. The fund struggled in the early years to score successes and after three years Draper was on the verge of losing the backing of the SBA. "I flew to Washington," Draper told Venture Capital Journal, "and said, if you just hang in there for another year, we'll be able to pull this thing out." Saving the day for Draper Associates was an investment in Parametric Technology Corporation, a cutting-edge computer-aided design software company. Draper's investment of $270,000 was returned 500 times when Parametric was taken public in 1989 and became the most successful initial public offering (IPO) of the year. Several more profitable IPOs followed in 1990, including Digidesign, maker of digital musical editing systems. As a result, the fund that had been on the brink of disaster turned into the best performing fund of its type.
Fisher Joins Draper: 1991
Flush with success, Draper prepared to launch an even larger fund in 1991 and recruited a partner to help him. He tapped a former colleague at Alex. Brown, John H. N. Fisher, who had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. In addition to a stint at Alex. Brown, Fisher worked at Bank of America before joining Draper. According to a 1999 Forbes profile of DFJ, Fisher became the firm's straight man while Draper supplied the personality. He was "a guy known for showing up at board meetings dressed as a clown and skiing in blizzards in nothing but boxer shorts." As for Fisher, according to Forbes, "Not a week goes by when he doesn't challenge the other partners to slow down. 'I'm the yin to Tim's yang,' he says."
In 1991 Draper and Fisher launched the Draper Associates II fund, which enjoyed a strong run. Some of the most notable successes of the $20 million fund included Medior, a user-interface design company acquired by AOL; Combinet, maker of ISDN remote-access networking products, acquired by Cisco Systems Inc.; Cybermedia, an Internet company that merged with Network Associates; Software Quality Automation, which was taken public; T/Maker, a PC software company, sold for cash to Deluxe Corporation; and Convoy Corporation, provider of application integration software for PeopleSoft applications, acquired by New Era of Networks Inc. (NEON).
The third principal of DFJ, Steve Jurvetson, introduced himself to Draper and Fisher by way of letter in late 1994. At the time he was a second-year business student at Stanford University. Earlier he had completed an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Stanford in just two and a half years while graduating at the top of his class. He then earned a master's in electrical engineering at Stanford and worked as a consultant with Bain & Co. before enrolling in the Stanford Business School M.B.A. program. The obvious intelligence and enthusiasm of the letter writer piqued the interest of Draper and Fisher, who invited Jurvetson to their offices to chat. Despite the young man's lack of investment experience, they quickly realized they had met a technologist who could play a key role with the firm's next fund, Draper Fisher Associates III. The 28-year-old Jurvetson joined the firm in 1995, and quickly proved his worth. In just six months he made partner. For the firm's third fund, which raised $50 million, he helped in the decision to invest in Internet companies Four 11, provider of Internet white pages, and Hotmail. The latter investment was an accident in some respects. Hotmail's founder, Sabeer Bhatia, had pitched to them a company called JavaSoft, maker of web database tools, already rejected by about 20 other venture capital firms. DFJ was on the verge of passing as well when the partners asked if Bhatia and his team had any other ideas. As it happened, they did: free e-mail.
DFJ liked the concept and quickly agreed to invest $300,000 in what became Hotmail. The Internet venture also pioneered the concept of viral marketing, the web's version of word of mouth. It was Tim Draper's idea to include a linked message ("Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com ") at the bottom of each e-mail delivered by Hotmail. He claimed to have actually wanted the message to read: "P.S. I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail," which he hoped would also spread good cheer around the world as well as promote Hotmail. In any event, as Hotmail users began sending e-mails, many of the recipients clicked on the link to obtain their own free accounts, and sent more messages that spread the Hotmail application in ever widening circles. Hotmail was sold to Microsoft in 1997 for a reported $400 million, presenting DFJ with a sizable profit.
A fourth fund, which raised $90 million, was launched in 1997. Many of the early investments were Internet plays but by 1999 the company's interests, especially Jurvetson's, were turning in other directions. While attending a conference at the Foresight Institute, Jurvetson learned of the advances being made in nanotechnology and became smitten with the field's potential. A decade earlier he had taken a course with K. Eric Drexler, who had coined the term "nanotechnology" in 1986 and was the founder of the Foresight Institute. While the idea of building machines to manipulate molecules had always been attractive to Jurvetson, he was stunned by the advances that had taken place in such a short time. According to Forbes, "He began reading everything he could find on the subject, telling his partners he wanted to see any business plan that proposed to exploit nanotechnology." Under Jurvetson's direction, DFJ became the backer of nanotechnology start-ups, investing nearly $50 million in 13 companies over the next three years.
In the late 1990s DFJ sought to become the first of the Silicon Valley venture firms to gain a national and global footprint, rather than be content to limit itself to local investments. The firm in effect franchised its venture model, establishing affiliates in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia. An international vehicle, London-based DFJ ePlanet, was formed in 1999, leading to the opening of offices throughout Europe and Asia.
A Pair of Hits: 2005
While DFJ was building a stake in the nanotechnology field and spreading its reach across the oceans, it had to contend in the new century with the aftermath of the technology meltdown in the stock market, especially the numerous failures among Internet ventures. The flamboyant Tim Draper made an easy target for the naysayers. In a 2001 article in eCompany Now, Draper was singled out as one of the "dumbest" venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Draper accepted the criticism in good humor, but in truth he was better known for dressing up as Batman, arriving at a party riding an elephant, and other antics than for his investment success stories. While his firm scored some nice paydays, they had yet to land a massive one. That lack would be remedied and then some in 2006 when Tim Draper was able to polish his reputation. In addition, the firm's effort at globalization proved its worth. In a single month in 2005, DFJ was involved in two major deals. One was the $4.1 billion sale of Skype, a European Internet telephone company, which returned a sizable profit on the firm's investment of about $14 million. DFJ invested a similar amount in Baidu, a Chinese Internet search engine. Baidu was taken public, raising $109 million, and once the shares began trading, their value increased more than 350 percent on the first day, giving DFJ a stake worth more than $500 million.
DFJ and ePlanet went their separate ways in 2005, leaving an international void in DFJ's operations. The firm began to rebuild its global network of affiliates and took a major step in August 2007 when it forged a deal with London-based Esprit Capital Partners, which became a part of DFJ's affiliate network. Plans were also in the works to extend the network to such countries as India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Russia, and Turkey.
Principal Competitors
Benchmark Capital Management Co., L.L.C.; Hummer Winblad Venture Partners; New Enterprise Associates.
Further Reading
Alexander, Jan, "Prince of Silicon Valley," Worth Magazine, July 1, 2007.
Corcoran, Elizabeth, "Mr. Nanotech," Forbes, June 23, 2003, p. 128.
Foremski, Tom, "Living in the Golden Age," Financial Times, May 5, 1999, p. 7.
Harris, Scott, "The Education of Tim Draper," Industry Standard, October 16, 2000, p. 173.
Kroll, Luisa, "The Wild Bunch," Forbes, May 31, 1999, p. 122.
Lashinsky, Adam, "Venture Capital Is Not for Girlie Men," Fortune, October 17, 2005, p. 38.
Loizos, Constance, "Why Tim Draper Feels Like Captain America," Venture Capital Journal, February 2006.
Marshall, Matt, "Silicon Valley Lives Changed by Globalization: Financier's Global Vision Leads Way," San Jose Mercury News, December 28, 2005.
"On the Record: Tim Draper," San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 2005.
"Top of the World: How Steve Jurvetson and Four More Broke into Venture Capital," Red Herring, June 12, 2006.
— Ed Dinger
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Wikipedia:
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
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Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
This article is about the venture capital firm. For the former country, see Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (DFY, or DFJ).
Draper Fisher Jurvetson Draper Fisher Jurvetson Partners
Type Private Ownership
Industry Private Equity
Founded 1985
Founder(s) Timothy C. Draper
John H. N. Fisher
Steve Jurvetson
Headquarters Menlo Park, California, United States
Products Venture capital
Total assets $4.5 billion
Website www.dfj.com
Draper Fisher Jurvetson - Silicon Valley Office
Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with affiliate offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $4.5 billion in capital commitments.
The firm has funded well-known technology companies including Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft), Overture (acquired by Yahoo), Skype (acquired by eBay) and Glam Media. Other notable investments include Tesla Motors, SugarCRM, Technorati, Interwoven, Meebo and Baidu among others.
DFJ was founded in 1985 by Timothy C. Draper and John H. N. Fisher as Draper Associates. Draper and Fisher left Alex. Brown & Sons, where they were officemates. The firm's current name is attributed to Draper and Fisher as well as co-founder and managing director Steve Jurvetson.
Contents [hide]
* 1 Network
o 1.1 DFJ-branded affiliates
o 1.2 Other affiliates
* 2 See also
* 3 External links
Network
DFJ maintains a loosely affiliated network of semi-independent venture capital firms in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America.
DFJ-branded affiliates
* DFJ Athena Korea - Seoul, Korea
* Draper Atlantic - Washington, DC
* DFJ DragonFund China - Shanghai, China, San Jose, California
* DFJ Element - Radnor, Pennsylvania
* DFJ Esprit - London, England
* DFJ FIR Brazil - São Paulo, Brazil
* DFJ Frontier - Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, California, Santa Barbara, California
* DFJ Gotham -New York, New York
* DFJ Growth Fund - Menlo Park, California
* DFJ Mercury - Houston, Texas
* DFJ New England - Boston, Massachusetts
* DFJ Polaris - Anchorage, Alaska
* DFJ Portage Ventures - Chicago, Illinois
* DFJ Tamir Fishman - Tel Aviv, Israel
* Draper Triangle - Cleveland, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
* DFJ VTB Aurora - Moscow, Russia
* DFJ VinaCapital - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Other affiliates
* Access Ventures - Austin, Texas, Denver, Colorado
* Element Partners - Radnor, Pennsylvania
* Timberline Ventures - Seattle, Washington
* Watasch Ventures - Salt Lake City, Utah, Albuquerque, New Mexico
* Zone Ventures - Los Angeles California
See also
* Draper, Gaither & Anderson
* Draper Richards
External links
* Official site
* Tim Draper speaks at Stanford, video
* Element Partners
[hide]
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Private equity and venture capital investment firms
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Venture · Growth · Mezzanine · Secondaries
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History
History of private equity and venture capital · Early history of private equity · Private equity in the 1980s · Private equity in the 1990s · Private equity in the 2000s
Investors
Institutional Investors · Pension funds · Insurance companies · Endowments · Investment Banks · Commercial Banks · Fund of funds · High net worth individuals · Angel investors · Family offices · Sovereign wealth funds
Private equity firms · Venture capital firms · Portfolio companies
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Contact Information
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
2882 Sand Hill Rd., Ste. 150
Menlo Park, CA 94025
CA Tel. 650-233-9000
Fax 650-233-9233
Type: Private
On the web: http://www.dfj.com
Employees: 39
Venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) provides early-stage operating capital to startup firms. It has traditionally focused on information technology segments as Internet applications and services, semiconductors, telecommunications, and networking software, but has expanded its focus to include life sciences and clean energy technologies. Since 1985 the active investor has backed more than 300 companies, including such Internet hits as Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft), Skype (acquired by eBay), and Baidu. The company has more than 30 offices and maintains a network of more than a dozen affiliates that seek out deals in the US and abroad. DFJ manages some $4 billion in committed capital.
Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2008:
Sales: $4.8M
Officers:
Managing Director: Timothy C. (Tim) Draper
Managing Director and CFO: Mark J. Greenstein
Network Associate: Marta Bulaich
Competitors:
Benchmark Capital
Hummer Winblad
NEA
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Company History:
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Home > Library > Business & Finance > Company Histories
Company Perspectives
DFJ's mission is to identify, serve, and provide capital for extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who are determined to change the world.
Key Dates
* 1985: Timothy Draper establishes Draper Associates.
* 1991: John Fisher becomes a partner.
* 1995: Steve Jurvetson is named firm's third partner.
* 1999: European and Asian funds are offered through ePlanet affiliate.
* 2005: Firm enjoys major successes with Skype and Baidu investments.
* 2007: London-based Esprit Capital Partners becomes European affiliate.
Incorporated: 1985 as Draper Associates
NAIC: 523999 Miscellaneous Financial Investment Activities
SIC: 6289 Security & Commodity Services Nec; 6799 Investors Nec
Based in Menlo Park, California, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is a venture capital firm focusing on start-up companies involved in emerging markets offering fast growth. More than just looking for diamonds in the rough, the firm focuses on entrepreneurs who want to change the world. Areas of interest include information technology, Internet applications, wireless services, semiconductors, data communications and bandwidth enhancements, nanotechnology, life sciences, and clean energy technologies. Among DFJ's most successful investments are Hotmail, Skype, and Baidu. In addition to its main investment funds, the firm has expanded its reach globally through a network of affiliated funds totaling about $5 million in capital commitments. Through these funds, DFJ maintains a presence in 30 cities around the world.
Draper Family, Post-World War II Venture Capital Pioneers
DFJ was founded by Timothy C. Draper, a third-generation Silicon Valley venture capitalist. As undersecretary of the Army, his grandfather General William H. Draper, Jr., had played a key role in administering the Marshall Plan following World War II, helping to revive the economies of Germany and Japan. He retired to what became Silicon Valley in the 1950s. He formed something of an investors club to back some of the technology spinoffs of Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild. In 1958 he founded the first West Coast venture capital firm, teaming up with Rowan Gaither, who had started Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, and retired Air Force General Frederick L. Anderson to form Draper, Gaither & Anderson. A year later his son, William H. Draper III, joined the firm and after three years teamed up with Franklin "Pitch" Johnson to start a new investment firm, Draper & Johnson. The younger Draper then launched Sutter Hill Ventures in 1965, becoming an early backer of such companies as Apollo Computer, LSI Logic, and Quantum. He managed the firm until 1981 when he quit to join the Reagan administration in Washington, D.C., becoming chairman of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and CEO of the United Nations Development Program. He had been among the first users of a limited-partner arrangement that proved to be a key development in the rise of the modern venture capital system. Under this structure the venture capital firm served as the general partner, receiving a management fee and slice of the profits, while the limited partners--banks, insurance companies, and other institutional investors, in addition to wealthy individuals and families--supplied the capital. Draper resumed his venture capital career in 1995, launching Draper International to focus on investments in India.
Tim Draper graduated from Harvard Business School in 1984. "The last thing I wanted to do was to get into the same business my father and grandfather were in," Draper told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005. "I wanted to start a business, but when I was coming out of business school, I realized that starting a business was going to be limiting because I had ideas for a thousand different businesses. One was going to be video on demand, and one was going to be submarines." At the same time, he felt pressure to find a job after graduation and took a position at the investment bank Alex. Brown & Sons, splitting his time between investment banking and venture capital. Dissatisfied with investment banking, after two years he left to launch an investing career, establishing Draper Associates, and initially raising funds by borrowing against family assets. He was also able to borrow $6 million from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Altogether his first fund, Draper Associates/California Partners, was capitalized with $8 million. The fund struggled in the early years to score successes and after three years Draper was on the verge of losing the backing of the SBA. "I flew to Washington," Draper told Venture Capital Journal, "and said, if you just hang in there for another year, we'll be able to pull this thing out." Saving the day for Draper Associates was an investment in Parametric Technology Corporation, a cutting-edge computer-aided design software company. Draper's investment of $270,000 was returned 500 times when Parametric was taken public in 1989 and became the most successful initial public offering (IPO) of the year. Several more profitable IPOs followed in 1990, including Digidesign, maker of digital musical editing systems. As a result, the fund that had been on the brink of disaster turned into the best performing fund of its type.
Fisher Joins Draper: 1991
Flush with success, Draper prepared to launch an even larger fund in 1991 and recruited a partner to help him. He tapped a former colleague at Alex. Brown, John H. N. Fisher, who had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. In addition to a stint at Alex. Brown, Fisher worked at Bank of America before joining Draper. According to a 1999 Forbes profile of DFJ, Fisher became the firm's straight man while Draper supplied the personality. He was "a guy known for showing up at board meetings dressed as a clown and skiing in blizzards in nothing but boxer shorts." As for Fisher, according to Forbes, "Not a week goes by when he doesn't challenge the other partners to slow down. 'I'm the yin to Tim's yang,' he says."
In 1991 Draper and Fisher launched the Draper Associates II fund, which enjoyed a strong run. Some of the most notable successes of the $20 million fund included Medior, a user-interface design company acquired by AOL; Combinet, maker of ISDN remote-access networking products, acquired by Cisco Systems Inc.; Cybermedia, an Internet company that merged with Network Associates; Software Quality Automation, which was taken public; T/Maker, a PC software company, sold for cash to Deluxe Corporation; and Convoy Corporation, provider of application integration software for PeopleSoft applications, acquired by New Era of Networks Inc. (NEON).
The third principal of DFJ, Steve Jurvetson, introduced himself to Draper and Fisher by way of letter in late 1994. At the time he was a second-year business student at Stanford University. Earlier he had completed an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Stanford in just two and a half years while graduating at the top of his class. He then earned a master's in electrical engineering at Stanford and worked as a consultant with Bain & Co. before enrolling in the Stanford Business School M.B.A. program. The obvious intelligence and enthusiasm of the letter writer piqued the interest of Draper and Fisher, who invited Jurvetson to their offices to chat. Despite the young man's lack of investment experience, they quickly realized they had met a technologist who could play a key role with the firm's next fund, Draper Fisher Associates III. The 28-year-old Jurvetson joined the firm in 1995, and quickly proved his worth. In just six months he made partner. For the firm's third fund, which raised $50 million, he helped in the decision to invest in Internet companies Four 11, provider of Internet white pages, and Hotmail. The latter investment was an accident in some respects. Hotmail's founder, Sabeer Bhatia, had pitched to them a company called JavaSoft, maker of web database tools, already rejected by about 20 other venture capital firms. DFJ was on the verge of passing as well when the partners asked if Bhatia and his team had any other ideas. As it happened, they did: free e-mail.
DFJ liked the concept and quickly agreed to invest $300,000 in what became Hotmail. The Internet venture also pioneered the concept of viral marketing, the web's version of word of mouth. It was Tim Draper's idea to include a linked message ("Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com ") at the bottom of each e-mail delivered by Hotmail. He claimed to have actually wanted the message to read: "P.S. I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail," which he hoped would also spread good cheer around the world as well as promote Hotmail. In any event, as Hotmail users began sending e-mails, many of the recipients clicked on the link to obtain their own free accounts, and sent more messages that spread the Hotmail application in ever widening circles. Hotmail was sold to Microsoft in 1997 for a reported $400 million, presenting DFJ with a sizable profit.
A fourth fund, which raised $90 million, was launched in 1997. Many of the early investments were Internet plays but by 1999 the company's interests, especially Jurvetson's, were turning in other directions. While attending a conference at the Foresight Institute, Jurvetson learned of the advances being made in nanotechnology and became smitten with the field's potential. A decade earlier he had taken a course with K. Eric Drexler, who had coined the term "nanotechnology" in 1986 and was the founder of the Foresight Institute. While the idea of building machines to manipulate molecules had always been attractive to Jurvetson, he was stunned by the advances that had taken place in such a short time. According to Forbes, "He began reading everything he could find on the subject, telling his partners he wanted to see any business plan that proposed to exploit nanotechnology." Under Jurvetson's direction, DFJ became the backer of nanotechnology start-ups, investing nearly $50 million in 13 companies over the next three years.
In the late 1990s DFJ sought to become the first of the Silicon Valley venture firms to gain a national and global footprint, rather than be content to limit itself to local investments. The firm in effect franchised its venture model, establishing affiliates in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia. An international vehicle, London-based DFJ ePlanet, was formed in 1999, leading to the opening of offices throughout Europe and Asia.
A Pair of Hits: 2005
While DFJ was building a stake in the nanotechnology field and spreading its reach across the oceans, it had to contend in the new century with the aftermath of the technology meltdown in the stock market, especially the numerous failures among Internet ventures. The flamboyant Tim Draper made an easy target for the naysayers. In a 2001 article in eCompany Now, Draper was singled out as one of the "dumbest" venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Draper accepted the criticism in good humor, but in truth he was better known for dressing up as Batman, arriving at a party riding an elephant, and other antics than for his investment success stories. While his firm scored some nice paydays, they had yet to land a massive one. That lack would be remedied and then some in 2006 when Tim Draper was able to polish his reputation. In addition, the firm's effort at globalization proved its worth. In a single month in 2005, DFJ was involved in two major deals. One was the $4.1 billion sale of Skype, a European Internet telephone company, which returned a sizable profit on the firm's investment of about $14 million. DFJ invested a similar amount in Baidu, a Chinese Internet search engine. Baidu was taken public, raising $109 million, and once the shares began trading, their value increased more than 350 percent on the first day, giving DFJ a stake worth more than $500 million.
DFJ and ePlanet went their separate ways in 2005, leaving an international void in DFJ's operations. The firm began to rebuild its global network of affiliates and took a major step in August 2007 when it forged a deal with London-based Esprit Capital Partners, which became a part of DFJ's affiliate network. Plans were also in the works to extend the network to such countries as India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Russia, and Turkey.
Principal Competitors
Benchmark Capital Management Co., L.L.C.; Hummer Winblad Venture Partners; New Enterprise Associates.
Further Reading
Alexander, Jan, "Prince of Silicon Valley," Worth Magazine, July 1, 2007.
Corcoran, Elizabeth, "Mr. Nanotech," Forbes, June 23, 2003, p. 128.
Foremski, Tom, "Living in the Golden Age," Financial Times, May 5, 1999, p. 7.
Harris, Scott, "The Education of Tim Draper," Industry Standard, October 16, 2000, p. 173.
Kroll, Luisa, "The Wild Bunch," Forbes, May 31, 1999, p. 122.
Lashinsky, Adam, "Venture Capital Is Not for Girlie Men," Fortune, October 17, 2005, p. 38.
Loizos, Constance, "Why Tim Draper Feels Like Captain America," Venture Capital Journal, February 2006.
Marshall, Matt, "Silicon Valley Lives Changed by Globalization: Financier's Global Vision Leads Way," San Jose Mercury News, December 28, 2005.
"On the Record: Tim Draper," San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 2005.
"Top of the World: How Steve Jurvetson and Four More Broke into Venture Capital," Red Herring, June 12, 2006.
— Ed Dinger
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Wikipedia:
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Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
This article is about the venture capital firm. For the former country, see Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (DFY, or DFJ).
Draper Fisher Jurvetson Draper Fisher Jurvetson Partners
Type Private Ownership
Industry Private Equity
Founded 1985
Founder(s) Timothy C. Draper
John H. N. Fisher
Steve Jurvetson
Headquarters Menlo Park, California, United States
Products Venture capital
Total assets $4.5 billion
Website www.dfj.com
Draper Fisher Jurvetson - Silicon Valley Office
Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with affiliate offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $4.5 billion in capital commitments.
The firm has funded well-known technology companies including Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft), Overture (acquired by Yahoo), Skype (acquired by eBay) and Glam Media. Other notable investments include Tesla Motors, SugarCRM, Technorati, Interwoven, Meebo and Baidu among others.
DFJ was founded in 1985 by Timothy C. Draper and John H. N. Fisher as Draper Associates. Draper and Fisher left Alex. Brown & Sons, where they were officemates. The firm's current name is attributed to Draper and Fisher as well as co-founder and managing director Steve Jurvetson.
Contents [hide]
* 1 Network
o 1.1 DFJ-branded affiliates
o 1.2 Other affiliates
* 2 See also
* 3 External links
Network
DFJ maintains a loosely affiliated network of semi-independent venture capital firms in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America.
DFJ-branded affiliates
* DFJ Athena Korea - Seoul, Korea
* Draper Atlantic - Washington, DC
* DFJ DragonFund China - Shanghai, China, San Jose, California
* DFJ Element - Radnor, Pennsylvania
* DFJ Esprit - London, England
* DFJ FIR Brazil - São Paulo, Brazil
* DFJ Frontier - Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, California, Santa Barbara, California
* DFJ Gotham -New York, New York
* DFJ Growth Fund - Menlo Park, California
* DFJ Mercury - Houston, Texas
* DFJ New England - Boston, Massachusetts
* DFJ Polaris - Anchorage, Alaska
* DFJ Portage Ventures - Chicago, Illinois
* DFJ Tamir Fishman - Tel Aviv, Israel
* Draper Triangle - Cleveland, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
* DFJ VTB Aurora - Moscow, Russia
* DFJ VinaCapital - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Other affiliates
* Access Ventures - Austin, Texas, Denver, Colorado
* Element Partners - Radnor, Pennsylvania
* Timberline Ventures - Seattle, Washington
* Watasch Ventures - Salt Lake City, Utah, Albuquerque, New Mexico
* Zone Ventures - Los Angeles California
See also
* Draper, Gaither & Anderson
* Draper Richards
External links
* Official site
* Tim Draper speaks at Stanford, video
* Element Partners
[hide]
v • d • e
Private equity and venture capital investment firms
Investment strategy
Venture · Growth · Mezzanine · Secondaries
2005 Penny Obv Unc D.png
History
History of private equity and venture capital · Early history of private equity · Private equity in the 1980s · Private equity in the 1990s · Private equity in the 2000s
Investors
Institutional Investors · Pension funds · Insurance companies · Endowments · Investment Banks · Commercial Banks · Fund of funds · High net worth individuals · Angel investors · Family offices · Sovereign wealth funds
Private equity firms · Venture capital firms · Portfolio companies
Stub icon 1 Stub icon 2 This article about a private equity or venture capital firm based in the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
v • d • e
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Donate to Wikimedia
Related topics:
viral marketing (technology)
John H. N. Fisher
Matt Meeker
Related answers:
Is noel fisher related to eddie fisher? Read answer...
Is Polly Draper Jesse Draper niece? Read answer...
Is the movie Antwone Fisher based on the rapper Antwone Fisher? Read answer...
Help us answer these:
What problems do Fishers or Fisher Cats experience?
Why is fisher price called fisher price?
Are Carrie Fisher and Frances Fisher related?
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
Hoover's Profile. © 2010 Hoover's, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
Company History. International Directory of Company Histories. Copyright © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Read more
Clean Technology & Private Equity/ VC, Company and Fund Research
BrightSource Energy
August 10, 2009 — matthewlim
About: BrightSource Energy, Inc. provides clean, reliable and low cost solar energy for utility and industrial companies worldwide. The BrightSource Energy team combines nearly three decades of experience designing, building and operating the world’s largest solar energy plants with world-class project development capabilities. The company now has contracted to sell more than 2.6 gigawatts of power to be generated using its proprietary solar thermal technology. BrightSource Energy’s solar plants are designed to minimize their impact on the environment and help customers reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Oakland, Calif., BrightSource Energy is a privately held company with operations in the United States and Israel.
www.brightsourceenergy.com
Key Personnel:
Management:
John M. Woolard, CEO and President
Israel Kroizer, Chief Operating Officer, BrightSource Energy, and President of BrightSource Industries (Israel) Ltd.
Jack Jenkins-Stark, Chief Financial Officer
Thomas P. Doyle, Executive Vice President, Global Development
Charles Ricker, Senior Vice President, Business Development
Joshua Bar-Lev, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs
Daniel T. Judge, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary
Board of Directors:
Arnold J. Goldman, Chairman & Founder
John M. Woolard, CEO and President
David Fries, Managing Director, VantagePoint Venture Partners
Geoffrey Richardson, Executive Director, Morgan Stanley
Jim Eats, Director, BrightSource Energy, Inc.
Technology:
BrightSource Energy’s proprietary Luz Power Tower 550 (LPT 550) energy system is built on proven “power tower” technology. The system uses thousands of small mirrors called heliostats to reflect sunlight onto a boiler atop a tower to produce high temperature steam. The steam is then piped to a conventional turbine which generates electricity. In order to conserve precious desert water, the LPT 550 system uses air-cooling to convert the steam back into water. The water is then returned to the boiler in an environmentally-friendly closed cycle. This fully integrated energy system is designed to offer the highest operating efficiencies and lowest capital costs in the industry.
Funding:
Series C, May 2008 – $115m
VantagePoint Venture Partners
Google.org
BP Alternative Energy
Statoil Hydro Venture
Black River Asset Management
Morgan Stanley
DBL Investors (formerly a subsidiary of JP Morgan)
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Chevron Technology Ventures
Seed capital is from VantagePoint
Total funding raised to date: More than $160m
News: On 14 July 2009, BrightSource Energy was named as one of the 25 companies to watch in energy tech by BusinessWeek. BrightSource imports its solar thermal technology from Israel where its plants have been transforming heat from the sun into electricity for decades using scores of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s heat. BrightSource has contracts with Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to build 14 plants in the sunny Southwestern US by 2017.
On 13 May 2009, PG&E announced that it has entered into a series of contracts with BrightSource for a total of 1,310MW of solar thermal power. The power purchase agreements, covering 7 projects, superseded that agreements in April 2008 for up to 900MW of solar thermal power. All 7 projects are expected to produce 3,666 gigawatt-hours of power each year, equal to the annual consumption of about 530,000 average homes. PG&E said the agreement represents the largest solar deal in the world. The first of the 7 deals, a 110MW plan in Ivanpah, Calif., is expected to begin operation in 2012. BrightSource plans to secure project financing the 2nd half of 2009.
Prior to this, in 11 Feb 2009, SCE and BrightSource signed agreement on a series of contracts for 1,300MW of clean solar thermal power, enough to serve nearly 845,000 homes. It was the world’s largest solar deal then; so now BrightSource has 2 largest solar deals. The first of the 7 solar power plants is located in Ivanpah, Calif., and is expected to produce 286,000 megawatt-hours of renewable electricity per year.
BrightSource Industries (Israel) Ltd., formerly named Luz II Ltd., is a wholly owned subsidiary of BrightSource Energy, Inc. Based in Israel, BrightSource Industries is responsible for solar technology development, plant design and engineering.
Competitors:
Ausra, Solel, eSolar, SUNRGI, Abengoa Solar, Sener, SolarReserve
Note: In this article, it said that several concentrating solar companies were founded in the past five years, but the credit crisis and economic downturn has made it very difficult to finance these expensive projects. One BrightSource Energy competitor, Ausra, has shifted its business strategy away from giant solar power plants to focus on being a technology and equipment supplier instead to begin immediately generating revenue.
brightsource
Posted in Energy Generation, Solar. Tags: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ausra, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Israel, Morgan Stanley, David Fries, BrightSource Energy, SolarReserve, Google.org, eSolar, US, Oakland, John M. Woolard, Israel Kroizer, Jack Jenkins-Stark, Thomas P. Doyle, Charles Ricker, Joshua Bar-Lev, Daniel T. Judge, Arnold J. Goldman, Geoffrey Richardson, Jim Eats, BP Alternative Energy, Statoil Hydro Venture, Black River Asset Management, DBL Investors, Chevron Technology Ventures, BusinessWeek, Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, Ivanpah, Luz II Ltd, BrightSource Industries, Solel, SUNRGI, Abengoa Solar, Sener. 2 Comments »
Cleantech Group-Deloitte Report 2008
July 22, 2009 — matthewlim
This quite detailed 80-page report has an Investor League Table 2008 that is slightly different from New Energy Finance’s. The Top Investors, measured by rounds of participation are:
1. Khosla Ventures, 21
2. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, 19
3. Quercus Trust, 16
4. RockPort Capital, 14
5. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, 13
6. Emerald Technology Ventures, 11
7. VantagePoint Venture Partners, 10
8. Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, 8
PCG Asset Management, 8
Oak Investment Partners, 8
Advanced Technology Ventures, 8
Google, 8
9. Venrock Associates, 7
Foundation Capital, 7
Polaris Venture Partners, 7
The list of investments are in the report. What I like about this report is that it contains tables that track deals in North America, Europe, China and India and table of M&A deal tracking (only for 4Q08). For example, it shows this company:
Company: Silver Spring Networks, Inc. – Provider of two-way IP-based networking communication infrastructures to utilities for advanced metering, distribution automation, and demand response. (comment: a brief description of the company is given)
Country: USA
Region: West Coast
Amount USD: $75,000,000
Stage: Follow-On (comment: it can show first round or seed for other companies)
Sector: Energy Infrastructure
Investors: Foundation Capital, JVB Properties, LLLP, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Northgate Capital (comment: it lists the investors for the company)
A note to take is that Cleantech Group does not yet cover Asia beyond China and India (including Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and others), South America (including Brazil, which has significant biofuels activity), or Africa. If there is time, we can look at these missed out countries in order not to miss out any good investment opportunities.
There’s a lot of graphs, tables and analysis in the report that we can look into it. There’s also analysis by geography, for example, India. There’s no table showing a list of top investors in India 2008 but I have to sieve through the section to come up with this ranking:
1. Acumen Fund (4)
2. IDFC Private Equity (3) (it’s the top investor: $201m)
Draper Fisher Jurvetson (3)
3. Nexus India Capital (2)
A brief summary about India: Indian companies raised $456 million in 18 disclosed deals venture capital and private equity rounds during 2008 (amount not disclosed in 1 deal). Investment in the region represented 4% of the global total. Although down by 20% from the previous year, 2008 saw new investors including Kleiner Perkins and Garage Technology Ventures, as well as corporate investors such as Applied Materials, entered the India clean technology market.
Posted in Clean Technology VC Funds, Media Research. Tags: RockPort Capital, Chrysalix Energy, New Energy Finance, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Quercus Trust, Emerald Technology Ventures, India, Silver Spring Networks, Foundation Capital, JVB Properties, Northgate Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners, PCG Asset Management, Oak Investment Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, Google, Venrock, Polaris Venture Partners, Cleantech Group, Deloitte, Acumen Fund, IDFC Private Equity, Nexus India Capital, Garage Technology Ventures, Applied Materials. 2 Comments »
VCs investing in India
July 21, 2009 — matthewlim
In this 21 Feb 2008 report by Xconomy, the 2 leading New England VCs investing in India are Matrix Partners and Canaan Partners. A report from Dow Jones VentureSource shows that venture capital investment collected by entrepreneurs in India nearly tripled in 2007, totaling $928 million across 80 separate deals, as compared to just $349 million for 36 deals in 2006. It was “easily the highest total on record for the region,” according to the Dow Jones report. Some 48% of the funding went to information technology companies, and two IT-focused New England firms, Waltham, MA-based Matrix Partners and Westport, CT-based Canaan Partners, were among the top 10 venture firms sending money to India, closing five deals between them.
Here’s the list of the top 20 investors placing equity-based venture investments in Indian companies in 2007. (All data courtesy of Dow Jones Venture Source.)
Name Type of Fund Number of Deals
Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Capital 7
IDG Ventures India Venture Capital 6
Intel Capital Corporate VC 5
Sequoia Capital Venture Capital 4
Erasmic Venture Fund Venture Capital 3
Matrix Partners Venture Capital 3
Velocity Interactive Group Venture Capital 2
Canaan Partners Venture Capital 2
Carlyle Group Private Equity 2
SVB Financial Group Investment Bank 2
Clearstone Venture Partners Venture Capital 2
UTI Venture Funds Venture Capital 2
GVFL Venture Capital 2
Temasek Holdings Other 2
ICICI Venture Funds Management Venture Capital 2
Silicon Valley Bank Other 2
SIDBI Venture Capital Venture Capital 2
Individual Investors Angel Investor 2
New Enterprise Associates Venture Capital 2
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Venture Capital 2
Comment: Since quite a significant number of the VCs invested in IT-related companies, we’ll need to look at the details of the investments which are in cleantech sector later. DFJ is definitely one of the cleantech VC players in India, having established an office in Bangalore. What to invest in Incredible India?
Posted in Media Research. Tags: Canaan Partners, Carlyle Group, Clearstone Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Erasmic Venture Fund, GVFL, ICICI Venture Funds Management, IDG Ventures India, India, Individual Investors, Intel Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Matrix Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital, SIDBI Venture Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, SVB Financial Group, Temasek Holdings, UTI Venture Funds, Velocity Interactive Group. 1 Comment »
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
July 21, 2009 — matthewlim
About: Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) backs extraordinary entrepreneurs everywhere who set out to change the world. DFJ achieves its mission through its DFJ Global Network of Partner Funds. Together, DFJ and the Network manage over $6B and have made more than 600 investments on four continents. With a 24-year history (since its founding in 1985) of success across diverse sectors and market conditions, DFJ has led the way investing in emerging technologies, from the Internet and life sciences to clean energy and nanotechnology. DFJ has been proud to back over 500 companies across many sectors including such industry changing successes such as Hotmail (acquired by MSFT), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY), United Online (UNTD), Overture (acquired by YHOO), Athenahealth (ATHN), EnerNOC (ENOC), TicketsNow (acquired by TicketMaster), Feedburner (acquired by Google), Interwoven (IWOV), Four11 (acquired by YHOO), Parametric (PMTC), and Digidesign (acquired by AVID).
The DFJ Network includes DFJ, DFJ Athena, DFJ Dragon, DFJ Esprit, DFJ FIR, DFJ Frontier, DFJ Gotham, DFJ Growth, DFJ InCube, DFJ Mercury, DFJ Portage, DFJ Tamir Fishman, Draper Triangle, DFJ Vina, DFJ-VTB Aurora, Element Partners, and Epic Ventures. DFJ has offices located in Menlo Park (US), Shanghai and Bangalore.
www.dfj.com
Key Personnel:
Tim Draper, Managing Director
John Fisher, Managing Director
Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director (interesting article on him here)
Warren Packard, Managing Director
Jennifer Fonstad, Managing Director
Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director
Raj Atluru, Managing Director (Raj speaks about DFJ & cleantech practice here)
Josh Stein, Managing Director
Don Wood, Managing Director
Mark Greenstein, Managing Director/CFO
Portfolio:
Since DFJ invested in >200 companies, we selected the relevant sector only for our blog:
Energy/Clean Technology – Attero Recycling, BioFuelBox, BrightSource Energy, Carbon Micro Battery, CoalTek, D.light design, Deeya Energy, EdenIQ, Ember, EnerNOC, Eoplex, Genomatica, Glycos Biotechnologies, GreatPoint Energy, Intematix, Jing-Jin Electric, Kaiima, Konarka, Luminus Devices, Miartech, NanoTune, Nottingham International, Oasys Water, Planet Metrics, Power Assure, Primet Precision Materials, Prudent Energy, Reva Electric, SeaMicro, Solar Junction, SolarCity, Solicore, SPSCAP, Synthetic Genomics, Tang Wind Energy, Tesla Motors, Tioga Energy, VerTerra, Widetronix.
News: July 2009: DFJ has recently rounded up $196 million in a first closing of its latest venture fund, putting the fund nearly half way to a revised $400 million target, according to a recent filing with the SEC. DFJ initially told prospective LPs that it wanted to raise $600 million for Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund X LP but later lowered its sights to $400 million due to the challenging fund-raising environment, VentureWire reported in May. DFJ also made concessions on terms that it’s offering to the limited partners, including the addition of a hurdle rate that it must clear before the firm will be entitled to the 25% premium carry. DFJ, which declined to comment on the fund, is widely known as an early-stage investor, although like many early-stage VCs it has expanded into later-stage deals in recent years with a $290 million dedicated growth equity fund, which closed in 2007.
Comment: One of the interesting things I find about this firm is that it ventured into space exploration sector by backing a Hawthorne Calif.-based company called Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as Space X. The company develops and manufactures launch vehicles for government and commercial space transportation. It was founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. Is it too early for commercial space travel/transportation investment? But Jurvetson’s a fan of space start-ups though he believes that the space tourism is too expensive. This is yet contrasted by Richard Branson’s vision of space travel by establishing the Virgin Galactic. So we’ll see who’s right in the future.
I uploaded 2 videos on Vodpod but it doesn’t seem to be able to view. I put the original links here from GigaOm Show and FoxBusiness.
dfj
Posted in Clean Technology VC Funds. Tags: Tioga Energy, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim Draper, John Fisher, Steve Jurvetson, Attero Recycling, BioFuelBox, Carbon Micro Battery, CoalTek, D.light design, Deeya Energy, EdenIQ, Ember, EnerNOC, Eoplex, Genomatica, Glycos Biotechnologies, GreatPoint Energy, Intematix, Jing-Jin Electric, Kaiima, Konarka, Luminus Devices, Miartech, NanoTune, Nottingham International, Oasys Water, Planet Metrics, Power Assure, Primet Precision Materials, Prudent Energy, Reva Electric, SeaMicro, Solar Junction, SolarCity, Solicore, SPSCAP, Synthetic Genomics, Tang Wind Energy, Tesla Motors, VerTerra, Widetronix, Raj Atluru, Space X, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic, Menlo Park, Shanghai, Bangalore, DFJ, DFJ Athena, DFJ Dragon, DFJ Esprit, DFJ FIR, DFJ Frontier, DFJ Gotham, DFJ Growth, DFJ InCube, DFJ Mercury, DFJ Portage, DFJ Tamir Fishman, Draper Triangle, DFJ Vina, DFJ-VTB Aurora, Element Partners, Epic Ventures, BrightSource Energy. 1 Comment »
New Energy Finance: League Table 2008
July 21, 2009 — matthewlim
New Energy Finance recently released the Clean Energy Leagues Table 2008 in March 2009.
The top 10 VC/PE investors by number of disclosed investments are:
1. Good Energies – 21 no. of deals ($65.3m)
2. Draper Fisher Jurvetson – 20 ($102.9m)
3. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – 16 ($187.2m)
4. RockPort Capital Partners – 14 ($166.3m)
5. Khosla Ventures – 14 ($111.5m)
6. Quercus Trust / David Gelbaum – 12 ($37.3m)
7. Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital – 12 ($12.6m)
8. Demeter Partners – 11 ($51.4m)
9. VantagePoint Venture Partners – 9 ($79.3m)
10. Emerald Technology Ventures – 8 ($41.6m)
The top 10 VC/PE investors by indicative $ amount invested are:
1. Magnum Capital – $910m (1 no. of deal)
2. Doughty Hanson & Co – $735.8m (2 deals)
3. First Reserve Corp – $707m (2)
4. Denham Capital Management LP – $375m (3)
5. Mubadala Development Company – $262.6m (6)
6. General Electric – $257.9m (6)
7. Goldman Sachs – $210.5m (4)
8. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board – $200m (1)
9. Rabobank Group – $193.1m (7)
10. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – $187.2m (16)
The list of investments are in the report.
Comment: A number of the largest amount of investments are due to PE buyout. For example, the Portuguese buyout firm Magnum Capital has the single biggest buyout deal after agreeing the €1.2bn ($1.5bn) acquisition of the renewable energy assets in Enersis owned by Babcock & Brown, the Australian investment bank and infrastructure specialist, and its listed wind power subsidiary in 4Q 2008. B&B, one of Australia’s biggest casualties of the credit crisis, has put its European wind assets up for sale in a move to raise much-needed cash.
Posted in Clean Technology VC Funds, Media Research. Tags: RockPort Capital, Chrysalix Energy, New Energy Finance, Good Energies, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Clean Energy Leagues Table, Khosla Ventures, Quercus Trust, David Gelbaum, Demeter Partners, Emerald Technology Ventures, Magnum Capital, Doughty Hanson & Co, First Reserve Corp, Denham Capital Management LP, Mubadala Development Company, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Rabobank Group, Babcock & Brown, Enersis, VantagePoint Venture Partners.
August 10, 2009 — matthewlim
About: BrightSource Energy, Inc. provides clean, reliable and low cost solar energy for utility and industrial companies worldwide. The BrightSource Energy team combines nearly three decades of experience designing, building and operating the world’s largest solar energy plants with world-class project development capabilities. The company now has contracted to sell more than 2.6 gigawatts of power to be generated using its proprietary solar thermal technology. BrightSource Energy’s solar plants are designed to minimize their impact on the environment and help customers reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Oakland, Calif., BrightSource Energy is a privately held company with operations in the United States and Israel.
www.brightsourceenergy.com
Key Personnel:
Management:
John M. Woolard, CEO and President
Israel Kroizer, Chief Operating Officer, BrightSource Energy, and President of BrightSource Industries (Israel) Ltd.
Jack Jenkins-Stark, Chief Financial Officer
Thomas P. Doyle, Executive Vice President, Global Development
Charles Ricker, Senior Vice President, Business Development
Joshua Bar-Lev, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs
Daniel T. Judge, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary
Board of Directors:
Arnold J. Goldman, Chairman & Founder
John M. Woolard, CEO and President
David Fries, Managing Director, VantagePoint Venture Partners
Geoffrey Richardson, Executive Director, Morgan Stanley
Jim Eats, Director, BrightSource Energy, Inc.
Technology:
BrightSource Energy’s proprietary Luz Power Tower 550 (LPT 550) energy system is built on proven “power tower” technology. The system uses thousands of small mirrors called heliostats to reflect sunlight onto a boiler atop a tower to produce high temperature steam. The steam is then piped to a conventional turbine which generates electricity. In order to conserve precious desert water, the LPT 550 system uses air-cooling to convert the steam back into water. The water is then returned to the boiler in an environmentally-friendly closed cycle. This fully integrated energy system is designed to offer the highest operating efficiencies and lowest capital costs in the industry.
Funding:
Series C, May 2008 – $115m
VantagePoint Venture Partners
Google.org
BP Alternative Energy
Statoil Hydro Venture
Black River Asset Management
Morgan Stanley
DBL Investors (formerly a subsidiary of JP Morgan)
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Chevron Technology Ventures
Seed capital is from VantagePoint
Total funding raised to date: More than $160m
News: On 14 July 2009, BrightSource Energy was named as one of the 25 companies to watch in energy tech by BusinessWeek. BrightSource imports its solar thermal technology from Israel where its plants have been transforming heat from the sun into electricity for decades using scores of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s heat. BrightSource has contracts with Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to build 14 plants in the sunny Southwestern US by 2017.
On 13 May 2009, PG&E announced that it has entered into a series of contracts with BrightSource for a total of 1,310MW of solar thermal power. The power purchase agreements, covering 7 projects, superseded that agreements in April 2008 for up to 900MW of solar thermal power. All 7 projects are expected to produce 3,666 gigawatt-hours of power each year, equal to the annual consumption of about 530,000 average homes. PG&E said the agreement represents the largest solar deal in the world. The first of the 7 deals, a 110MW plan in Ivanpah, Calif., is expected to begin operation in 2012. BrightSource plans to secure project financing the 2nd half of 2009.
Prior to this, in 11 Feb 2009, SCE and BrightSource signed agreement on a series of contracts for 1,300MW of clean solar thermal power, enough to serve nearly 845,000 homes. It was the world’s largest solar deal then; so now BrightSource has 2 largest solar deals. The first of the 7 solar power plants is located in Ivanpah, Calif., and is expected to produce 286,000 megawatt-hours of renewable electricity per year.
BrightSource Industries (Israel) Ltd., formerly named Luz II Ltd., is a wholly owned subsidiary of BrightSource Energy, Inc. Based in Israel, BrightSource Industries is responsible for solar technology development, plant design and engineering.
Competitors:
Ausra, Solel, eSolar, SUNRGI, Abengoa Solar, Sener, SolarReserve
Note: In this article, it said that several concentrating solar companies were founded in the past five years, but the credit crisis and economic downturn has made it very difficult to finance these expensive projects. One BrightSource Energy competitor, Ausra, has shifted its business strategy away from giant solar power plants to focus on being a technology and equipment supplier instead to begin immediately generating revenue.
brightsource
Posted in Energy Generation, Solar. Tags: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ausra, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Israel, Morgan Stanley, David Fries, BrightSource Energy, SolarReserve, Google.org, eSolar, US, Oakland, John M. Woolard, Israel Kroizer, Jack Jenkins-Stark, Thomas P. Doyle, Charles Ricker, Joshua Bar-Lev, Daniel T. Judge, Arnold J. Goldman, Geoffrey Richardson, Jim Eats, BP Alternative Energy, Statoil Hydro Venture, Black River Asset Management, DBL Investors, Chevron Technology Ventures, BusinessWeek, Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, Ivanpah, Luz II Ltd, BrightSource Industries, Solel, SUNRGI, Abengoa Solar, Sener. 2 Comments »
Cleantech Group-Deloitte Report 2008
July 22, 2009 — matthewlim
This quite detailed 80-page report has an Investor League Table 2008 that is slightly different from New Energy Finance’s. The Top Investors, measured by rounds of participation are:
1. Khosla Ventures, 21
2. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, 19
3. Quercus Trust, 16
4. RockPort Capital, 14
5. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, 13
6. Emerald Technology Ventures, 11
7. VantagePoint Venture Partners, 10
8. Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, 8
PCG Asset Management, 8
Oak Investment Partners, 8
Advanced Technology Ventures, 8
Google, 8
9. Venrock Associates, 7
Foundation Capital, 7
Polaris Venture Partners, 7
The list of investments are in the report. What I like about this report is that it contains tables that track deals in North America, Europe, China and India and table of M&A deal tracking (only for 4Q08). For example, it shows this company:
Company: Silver Spring Networks, Inc. – Provider of two-way IP-based networking communication infrastructures to utilities for advanced metering, distribution automation, and demand response. (comment: a brief description of the company is given)
Country: USA
Region: West Coast
Amount USD: $75,000,000
Stage: Follow-On (comment: it can show first round or seed for other companies)
Sector: Energy Infrastructure
Investors: Foundation Capital, JVB Properties, LLLP, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Northgate Capital (comment: it lists the investors for the company)
A note to take is that Cleantech Group does not yet cover Asia beyond China and India (including Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and others), South America (including Brazil, which has significant biofuels activity), or Africa. If there is time, we can look at these missed out countries in order not to miss out any good investment opportunities.
There’s a lot of graphs, tables and analysis in the report that we can look into it. There’s also analysis by geography, for example, India. There’s no table showing a list of top investors in India 2008 but I have to sieve through the section to come up with this ranking:
1. Acumen Fund (4)
2. IDFC Private Equity (3) (it’s the top investor: $201m)
Draper Fisher Jurvetson (3)
3. Nexus India Capital (2)
A brief summary about India: Indian companies raised $456 million in 18 disclosed deals venture capital and private equity rounds during 2008 (amount not disclosed in 1 deal). Investment in the region represented 4% of the global total. Although down by 20% from the previous year, 2008 saw new investors including Kleiner Perkins and Garage Technology Ventures, as well as corporate investors such as Applied Materials, entered the India clean technology market.
Posted in Clean Technology VC Funds, Media Research. Tags: RockPort Capital, Chrysalix Energy, New Energy Finance, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Quercus Trust, Emerald Technology Ventures, India, Silver Spring Networks, Foundation Capital, JVB Properties, Northgate Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners, PCG Asset Management, Oak Investment Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, Google, Venrock, Polaris Venture Partners, Cleantech Group, Deloitte, Acumen Fund, IDFC Private Equity, Nexus India Capital, Garage Technology Ventures, Applied Materials. 2 Comments »
VCs investing in India
July 21, 2009 — matthewlim
In this 21 Feb 2008 report by Xconomy, the 2 leading New England VCs investing in India are Matrix Partners and Canaan Partners. A report from Dow Jones VentureSource shows that venture capital investment collected by entrepreneurs in India nearly tripled in 2007, totaling $928 million across 80 separate deals, as compared to just $349 million for 36 deals in 2006. It was “easily the highest total on record for the region,” according to the Dow Jones report. Some 48% of the funding went to information technology companies, and two IT-focused New England firms, Waltham, MA-based Matrix Partners and Westport, CT-based Canaan Partners, were among the top 10 venture firms sending money to India, closing five deals between them.
Here’s the list of the top 20 investors placing equity-based venture investments in Indian companies in 2007. (All data courtesy of Dow Jones Venture Source.)
Name Type of Fund Number of Deals
Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Capital 7
IDG Ventures India Venture Capital 6
Intel Capital Corporate VC 5
Sequoia Capital Venture Capital 4
Erasmic Venture Fund Venture Capital 3
Matrix Partners Venture Capital 3
Velocity Interactive Group Venture Capital 2
Canaan Partners Venture Capital 2
Carlyle Group Private Equity 2
SVB Financial Group Investment Bank 2
Clearstone Venture Partners Venture Capital 2
UTI Venture Funds Venture Capital 2
GVFL Venture Capital 2
Temasek Holdings Other 2
ICICI Venture Funds Management Venture Capital 2
Silicon Valley Bank Other 2
SIDBI Venture Capital Venture Capital 2
Individual Investors Angel Investor 2
New Enterprise Associates Venture Capital 2
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Venture Capital 2
Comment: Since quite a significant number of the VCs invested in IT-related companies, we’ll need to look at the details of the investments which are in cleantech sector later. DFJ is definitely one of the cleantech VC players in India, having established an office in Bangalore. What to invest in Incredible India?
Posted in Media Research. Tags: Canaan Partners, Carlyle Group, Clearstone Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Erasmic Venture Fund, GVFL, ICICI Venture Funds Management, IDG Ventures India, India, Individual Investors, Intel Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Matrix Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital, SIDBI Venture Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, SVB Financial Group, Temasek Holdings, UTI Venture Funds, Velocity Interactive Group. 1 Comment »
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
July 21, 2009 — matthewlim
About: Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) backs extraordinary entrepreneurs everywhere who set out to change the world. DFJ achieves its mission through its DFJ Global Network of Partner Funds. Together, DFJ and the Network manage over $6B and have made more than 600 investments on four continents. With a 24-year history (since its founding in 1985) of success across diverse sectors and market conditions, DFJ has led the way investing in emerging technologies, from the Internet and life sciences to clean energy and nanotechnology. DFJ has been proud to back over 500 companies across many sectors including such industry changing successes such as Hotmail (acquired by MSFT), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY), United Online (UNTD), Overture (acquired by YHOO), Athenahealth (ATHN), EnerNOC (ENOC), TicketsNow (acquired by TicketMaster), Feedburner (acquired by Google), Interwoven (IWOV), Four11 (acquired by YHOO), Parametric (PMTC), and Digidesign (acquired by AVID).
The DFJ Network includes DFJ, DFJ Athena, DFJ Dragon, DFJ Esprit, DFJ FIR, DFJ Frontier, DFJ Gotham, DFJ Growth, DFJ InCube, DFJ Mercury, DFJ Portage, DFJ Tamir Fishman, Draper Triangle, DFJ Vina, DFJ-VTB Aurora, Element Partners, and Epic Ventures. DFJ has offices located in Menlo Park (US), Shanghai and Bangalore.
www.dfj.com
Key Personnel:
Tim Draper, Managing Director
John Fisher, Managing Director
Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director (interesting article on him here)
Warren Packard, Managing Director
Jennifer Fonstad, Managing Director
Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director
Raj Atluru, Managing Director (Raj speaks about DFJ & cleantech practice here)
Josh Stein, Managing Director
Don Wood, Managing Director
Mark Greenstein, Managing Director/CFO
Portfolio:
Since DFJ invested in >200 companies, we selected the relevant sector only for our blog:
Energy/Clean Technology – Attero Recycling, BioFuelBox, BrightSource Energy, Carbon Micro Battery, CoalTek, D.light design, Deeya Energy, EdenIQ, Ember, EnerNOC, Eoplex, Genomatica, Glycos Biotechnologies, GreatPoint Energy, Intematix, Jing-Jin Electric, Kaiima, Konarka, Luminus Devices, Miartech, NanoTune, Nottingham International, Oasys Water, Planet Metrics, Power Assure, Primet Precision Materials, Prudent Energy, Reva Electric, SeaMicro, Solar Junction, SolarCity, Solicore, SPSCAP, Synthetic Genomics, Tang Wind Energy, Tesla Motors, Tioga Energy, VerTerra, Widetronix.
News: July 2009: DFJ has recently rounded up $196 million in a first closing of its latest venture fund, putting the fund nearly half way to a revised $400 million target, according to a recent filing with the SEC. DFJ initially told prospective LPs that it wanted to raise $600 million for Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund X LP but later lowered its sights to $400 million due to the challenging fund-raising environment, VentureWire reported in May. DFJ also made concessions on terms that it’s offering to the limited partners, including the addition of a hurdle rate that it must clear before the firm will be entitled to the 25% premium carry. DFJ, which declined to comment on the fund, is widely known as an early-stage investor, although like many early-stage VCs it has expanded into later-stage deals in recent years with a $290 million dedicated growth equity fund, which closed in 2007.
Comment: One of the interesting things I find about this firm is that it ventured into space exploration sector by backing a Hawthorne Calif.-based company called Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as Space X. The company develops and manufactures launch vehicles for government and commercial space transportation. It was founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. Is it too early for commercial space travel/transportation investment? But Jurvetson’s a fan of space start-ups though he believes that the space tourism is too expensive. This is yet contrasted by Richard Branson’s vision of space travel by establishing the Virgin Galactic. So we’ll see who’s right in the future.
I uploaded 2 videos on Vodpod but it doesn’t seem to be able to view. I put the original links here from GigaOm Show and FoxBusiness.
dfj
Posted in Clean Technology VC Funds. Tags: Tioga Energy, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim Draper, John Fisher, Steve Jurvetson, Attero Recycling, BioFuelBox, Carbon Micro Battery, CoalTek, D.light design, Deeya Energy, EdenIQ, Ember, EnerNOC, Eoplex, Genomatica, Glycos Biotechnologies, GreatPoint Energy, Intematix, Jing-Jin Electric, Kaiima, Konarka, Luminus Devices, Miartech, NanoTune, Nottingham International, Oasys Water, Planet Metrics, Power Assure, Primet Precision Materials, Prudent Energy, Reva Electric, SeaMicro, Solar Junction, SolarCity, Solicore, SPSCAP, Synthetic Genomics, Tang Wind Energy, Tesla Motors, VerTerra, Widetronix, Raj Atluru, Space X, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic, Menlo Park, Shanghai, Bangalore, DFJ, DFJ Athena, DFJ Dragon, DFJ Esprit, DFJ FIR, DFJ Frontier, DFJ Gotham, DFJ Growth, DFJ InCube, DFJ Mercury, DFJ Portage, DFJ Tamir Fishman, Draper Triangle, DFJ Vina, DFJ-VTB Aurora, Element Partners, Epic Ventures, BrightSource Energy. 1 Comment »
New Energy Finance: League Table 2008
July 21, 2009 — matthewlim
New Energy Finance recently released the Clean Energy Leagues Table 2008 in March 2009.
The top 10 VC/PE investors by number of disclosed investments are:
1. Good Energies – 21 no. of deals ($65.3m)
2. Draper Fisher Jurvetson – 20 ($102.9m)
3. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – 16 ($187.2m)
4. RockPort Capital Partners – 14 ($166.3m)
5. Khosla Ventures – 14 ($111.5m)
6. Quercus Trust / David Gelbaum – 12 ($37.3m)
7. Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital – 12 ($12.6m)
8. Demeter Partners – 11 ($51.4m)
9. VantagePoint Venture Partners – 9 ($79.3m)
10. Emerald Technology Ventures – 8 ($41.6m)
The top 10 VC/PE investors by indicative $ amount invested are:
1. Magnum Capital – $910m (1 no. of deal)
2. Doughty Hanson & Co – $735.8m (2 deals)
3. First Reserve Corp – $707m (2)
4. Denham Capital Management LP – $375m (3)
5. Mubadala Development Company – $262.6m (6)
6. General Electric – $257.9m (6)
7. Goldman Sachs – $210.5m (4)
8. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board – $200m (1)
9. Rabobank Group – $193.1m (7)
10. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – $187.2m (16)
The list of investments are in the report.
Comment: A number of the largest amount of investments are due to PE buyout. For example, the Portuguese buyout firm Magnum Capital has the single biggest buyout deal after agreeing the €1.2bn ($1.5bn) acquisition of the renewable energy assets in Enersis owned by Babcock & Brown, the Australian investment bank and infrastructure specialist, and its listed wind power subsidiary in 4Q 2008. B&B, one of Australia’s biggest casualties of the credit crisis, has put its European wind assets up for sale in a move to raise much-needed cash.
Posted in Clean Technology VC Funds, Media Research. Tags: RockPort Capital, Chrysalix Energy, New Energy Finance, Good Energies, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Clean Energy Leagues Table, Khosla Ventures, Quercus Trust, David Gelbaum, Demeter Partners, Emerald Technology Ventures, Magnum Capital, Doughty Hanson & Co, First Reserve Corp, Denham Capital Management LP, Mubadala Development Company, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Rabobank Group, Babcock & Brown, Enersis, VantagePoint Venture Partners.
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