Category: News

Archie Comics are definitely not what they used to be. In keeping up with the times, comic writers are taking on controversial issues one at a time, and Archie and his pals aren’t immune to the social climate.

In 1941, when Archie debuted, a same-sex kiss would be as likely on the front cover as a woman in astronaut gear; but even now, seven decades later, there are groups who take issue with homosexuality and condemn it, and that’s exactly what the latest issue of Archie Comics is about.

The issue deals with Kevin Keller, an openly gay character, kissing his boyfriend Devon at Pop Tate’s Diner in front of everyone. When a woman sees the kiss and gets irate about it, Veronica records the scene and uploads it to a YouTube-like video sharing site, where it quickly goes viral.

“We certainly pride ourselves on being contemporary, but that’s not the reason why we’re showing ‘The Kiss.’ Just like when Kevin first told Jughead he was gay, it was in the natural course of conversation,” said publisher Jon Goldwater. “We are creating this in the same way. It’s just part of the story.”

Dan Parent, who wrote and illustrated the issue, said he created it because of a One Million Moms protest in which they urged Toys ‘R Us not to display an issue which showed Keller getting married near the checkout aisles. But Archie Comics got the last laugh; the issue went on to sell out despite being taken down by the toy store.

The new issue goes on sale August 7.

It’s safe to say that Apple CEO Tim Cook won’t be having much fun on Tuesday when he testifies before the Senate about his company’s alleged tax dodging practices. The Hill reports that a new report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found that Apple has allegedly “funneled money through three offshore companies to dodge billions in taxes,” which some senators say highlights major holes in U.S. tax law.

Continue reading…

Yahoo is a media and technology giant. It is claimed that around 700 million people still visit Yahoo websites every month, and yet I personally can’t remember the last time I went to a Yahoo site, and I don’t know anyone who uses Yahoo for search, email, or news — or visits the fabled Yahoo home page.

To me Yahoo mostly exists in the past, largely forgotten and gathering dust. I have photos stored on Flickr, but I haven’t uploaded anything there for ages. The last time I tried Yahoo — following a lackluster revamp of the site — I stumbled across broken link after broken link and gave up.

The firm had a disastrous decade in which it lost a fortune for investors, turned down a $40 billion takeover bid from Microsoft, fumbled promising acquisitions (GeoCities and Del.icio.us to name just two), ignored mobile, alienated users, and employed CEOs who didn’t just take their eyes off the ball, they turned their backs on the ball altogether.

Current CEO Marissa Mayer is doing her best to reverse the company’s slide into irrelevancy, and doing a pretty fine job of trying to repair the damage a decade of complacency and incompetency has caused Yahoo.

In a year she’s overseen various acquisitions (such as MileWise, GoPollGo, Loki Studios, Summly, and Astrid), and under her stewardship Yahoo has launched a Summly-powered Android app, a weather app for iOS, and an improved Flickr app. The company has overhauled its mail service and rolled out new mobile apps for it, introduced tweets into Yahoo’s homepage newsfeed, and gained the rights to distribute the entire 38-year archive of Saturday Night Live.

And yesterday of course Yahoo purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion (with the promise not to screw it up) and made Flickr attractive once again with a fresh redesign and the offer of 1TB of free space.

These last two moves are Yahoo’s most ambitious by far to date and lift the company back into the public consciousness. How long it will stay there is another matter. Can Yahoo make itself cool again? That remains to be seen.

When Google acquired YouTube it purchased a rising star with a problem — the video site’s meteoric rise was fuelled by illegal content. Google’s greatest triumph was shifting YouTube’s focus to legal, user generated uploads.

Tumblr, as good as it could be for Yahoo, is a sputtering star with falling page views and (according to web measurement company SimilarGroup) a major porn problem — 11.4 percent of Tumblr’s top 200,000 domains contain pornography. Yahoo has vowed to keep Tumblr independent, but it will be interesting to see how it addresses this issue. Mainstream advertisers aren’t keen on being associated with adult content.

So What Next?

Yahoo has taken the first steps to get back in the game, but it’s what happens from now that really counts.

The media giant still has an identity problem (or should that be the tech giant still has an identity problem), it can’t seem to properly monetize its own web pages (and monetizing Tumblr sites will be even harder), there’s still a slapdash half-finished approach to many of its products, and a brief stroll around Yahoo this morning reveals many of its properties feel about 15 years old.

I admire what Marissa Mayer has done with Yahoo, or is attempting to do with it at least, and later on today I’ll actually upload some new photos to Flickr, and maybe even update my thingsthatlooklikehitler Tumblr for the first time in a while.

But I still can’t see how Yahoo intends to shake off its dusty old threads and come charging into the modern age. Where’s the innovation, the products that no one else offers? And where are the products everyone else offers? Being able to use Dropbox in Yahoo Mail is great, but where’s Yahoo Drive?

It took a $1.1 billion purchase to get Yahoo back in the news. What will the company need to do next to keep people talking about it, to get people excited about it once more? Getting back to the question I asked initially: What do you think it will take for people to care about Yahoo again?

An online petition was posted early this past weekend, asking that “the TEDGlobal conference organizers remove George Papandreou from the speakers list.”

Papandreou is the former prime minister of Greece. He was prime minister in 2009, when the euro crisis flared up. Under pressure from the markets and from Greek citizens protesting harsh austerity measures, he resigned in 2011 to make way for a national unity government.

He has been invited to share his views on these events and other themes at TEDGlobal 2013, which will take place in three weeks. With all due respect for those who have signed the petition, the TEDGlobal program won’t change. Papandreou’s experience as the PM of his country during a phase of political and economic turmoil is an interesting lens into the broader problems that continue to trouble Europe. That’s why we invited him to TEDGlobal. What he learned from his period in office gives him a rare insiders’ viewpoint, at a crucial moment for the continent.

For the record, any politicians coming to TED are asked to give a talk that is framed around ideas and insights, rather than partisanship. And like all our speakers, Papandreou is not being paid to speak at TEDGlobal.

A little bit of serendipity hit my inbox yesterday. On Saturday, while looking for something to do, my wife suggested we play video games. Fine by me. She rummaged through our drawer of PS3 games and nonchalantly said, “We have You Don’t Know Jack, but I’d just wipe the floor with you anyway.” Game on. We played, and she beat me — she always does. It reminded me of just how much I love that kooky little quiz game.

Much to my joy, a press release showed up in my inbox this morning touting the availability of You Don’t Know Jack for Android. You might remember a YDNJ announcement from last year, when developer Jellyvision launched a Facebook version. That took home some awards, and is now also available on iOS. The Android version plugs into these networks, creating an even larger online community.

If you’ve never played YDNJ, there’s not much I can do for you at this point. The game is definitely a little wacky, which helps it stand out from your run of the mill quiz games. There are many different types of questions, so you’re not just answering multiple choice queries all day. And yes, you’ll get insulted if you answer incorrectly.

(Or you’ll get the Wrong Answer of the Day and turn a $2,000 loss into an $8,000 gain.)

Back in the day, YDNJ worked great on PC, because in those days you would gather your friends all in one place to play video games. Ah yes, the days when we played four-player Goldeneye on a 25-inch TV. Alas, these days video games are played online, which means you can play your friends no matter where your locale. It will certainly be nice to play YDNJ again with my old high school buddies.

As with most things Android, YDNJ is free. You can download it from Google Play.

The post You Don’t Know Jack Now Available for Android appeared first on MobileMoo.

The Windows Azure Cloud is expanding its footprint in the Asia-Pacific Region. Microsoft is building a new data center in Singapore, with a facility expected online in 2014, the company has confirmed. No other details are available at this time, beyond the company confirming it is building a major project there.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced plans for additional data centers in Australia, with new Azure sub-regions in New South Wales and Victoria. These sites will use a geo-redundant configuration, making it easier for customers to back up their data within Australia, meeting rules for “data sovereignty” in disaster recovery.

Hot in Singapore

Singapore is perhaps the hottest AsiaPacific data center market, with all the major providers either building or looking for projects there over the last few years. Bottom line: Singapore is the primary hub for AsiaPac cloud going forward.

There’s many reasons why Microsoft would choose Singapore as a major data center hub. It allows it to extend delivery of its services to the Asia-Pacific market, where it’s currently seeing the highest growth rates. Office365 and Azure are its major plays going forward in the region. All major analyst firms expect explosive growth in the region for cloud services over the next few years, and Microsoft diligently studies where its opportunities lie.

Singapore is one of the region’s leading financial and business centers, with many customers looking to deploy critical business applications there. However, there’s historically been a limited supply of enterprise data center quality supply, which has lead to most major providers looking to build and set up shop to address growing demand. Singapore also represents a location where many global customers are looking to set up shop. According to the Singapore Economic Development Board, Singapore is currently home to approximately 50 percent of South East Asia’s data center capacity.

A look at projects in Singapore over the years also gives indication into the region’s data center boom.

• First and foremost, Amazon added AWS Singapore making its cloud available in the Asia Pacific Region. Microsoft needs Azure to compete in AsiaPac and can’t do so without a strong, local presence.
• Equinix is like Starbucks in that it does a ton of research into where it locates its data centers. Its continual investment and expansion in the region is one big indicator of the future of Singapore and its growing prominence as a connectivity hub. It keeps announcing a series of major projects there.
• Digital Realty Trust purchased a Singapore Data Center in 2010, citing the Asia-Pacific region as the logical target for its next phase of growth. It has seen strong leasing in the region, signing blue chip tenants, IBM, Adobe, and SoftLayer.
• In 2011, IBM opened a cloud data center in Singapore. While cloud services have been attractive in the past, concerns about the consistency of the service performance due to the potential impact of network latency and the location of the data have inhibited their uptake for anything that was a critical workload. This was the reason IBM chose a location in Singapore. This increased availability of enterprise-class cloud services will underpin the acceleration of cloud services in APEJ as cloud service shifts from the SMB sector to the large enterprise.
• SoftLayer leases sizeable space from Digital Realty in Singapore. The hosting giant recently gave a few reasons why Singapore was so attractive.
• Going even further up the stack, Salesforce.com located a data center there to accommodate strong adoption of Salesforce CRM and Force.com platform. “Asia-Pacific is our fastest growing market, and there has never been a better time for enterprise cloud computing,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Our new Singapore data center represents continued investment in our global real-time infrastructure to accelerate customer success with cloud computing worldwide.”

There’s also Savvis, BT and NTT Communications, which has a strong foothold in Singapore and surrounding regions. IO announced a partnership to bring modules to Singapore last week. T5 Data Centers, which has facilities in Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles is also looking deeply at Singapore for a wholesale play.

Are we forgetting someone? Most likely. There’s a ton of activity in Singapore as it turns into the premiere AsiaPac Connectivity hub. Any cloud provider that wants to win some of the market share in AsiaPac needs a presence in Singapore.

Adaptive Planning said Tuesday it secured $45 million in venture funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Existing investors ONSET Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), RBC Venture Partners, Cardinal Venture Capital, and Monitor Ventures also participated. Mountain View, Calif.-based Adaptive Planning provides cloud-based business analytics solutions for companies and nonprofits.

PRESS RELEASE

San Francisco, Calif., May 21, 2013 – Adaptive Planning, the worldwide leader in cloud-based business analytics solutions for companies and nonprofits of all sizes, today announced at its Accelerate 2013 global user conference that it has secured a major new round of $45 million in venture funding.  Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), a premier global venture capital firm, led the round, with existing investors ONSET Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), RBC Venture Partners, Cardinal Venture Capital, and Monitor Ventures also participating.  Adaptive Planning will use the additional capital to scale its direct sales and partner channels in North America, expand into attractive new enterprise and international markets, and drive new product innovation.

“The addition of Bessemer as an investor is a great testament to our market leadership – to our exceptional customer growth, product innovation, and high levels of customer satisfaction,” said John Herr, CEO of Adaptive Planning.  “We grew new software bookings by 90 percent last year with high capital efficiency.  As such, we didn’t need to raise more capital, but did so to take advantage of a huge opportunity in front of us to build a dominant global presence in a rapidly growing market.  What’s more, BVP is a great partner with an outstanding SaaS track record, and we look forward to working closely with them to maximize this business opportunity.”
As part of the funding, Byron Deeter, a BVP partner and an industry leader in cloud technology investments, will join Adaptive Planning’s board of directors.  “We see the stars aligning with Adaptive Planning:  the company is at the intersection of increasing cloud adoption, an acute market need for better analytics, and a customer base that is passionate about its products,” said Byron Deeter, whose firm is one of the leading cloud/Saas venture firms with successful cloud investments in companies such as Box, Cornerstone OnDemand, DocuSign, Eloqua, LinkedIn, and Skype.  “Combining cloud leadership in a huge, and largely untapped, market with a top-notch team to lead the company’s growth, Adaptive is poised to win.”

“Adaptive Planning is on an impressive trajectory,” added Sergio Monsalve, Partner at NVP.  “The company has built and significantly expanded its cloud business analytics platform to empower finance and operational teams. Its unique ability to transform planning, consolidations, reporting and analysis has resulted in improved costs, productivity and critical business decisions for thousands of brand name customers worldwide.”

With 5x more customers than all other cloud competitors combined, Adaptive Planning has become the solution of choice for cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) and business intelligence (BI).  Addressing a $33 billion market, Adaptive Planning has more than 1,600 customers in 80 countries worldwide, with the number one market share and the top customer satisfaction rating among all cloud providers in its category.

“Adaptive Planning has always been very effective at anticipating and capitalizing on evolving market drivers to create strong demand.  The rapid move to cloud computing, the rise of mobile computing, and the need to make better, faster, data-driven decisions have been great opportunities for the company, “ said Terry Opdendyk, Founder and Partner of ONSET Ventures, which has been an investor in the company since its formation.  “As an alternative to manual, spreadsheet-based processes and legacy on-premises software, Adaptive Planning is establishing a new standard for cloud-based BI and CPM solutions.”

“Adaptive’s rapid growth path is a function of its customers’ satisfaction,” commented Robert Antoniades, a Partner at RBC Venture Partners, an existing investor in Adaptive Planning.  “The new infusion of capital will help accelerate the company’s market leadership, world-class product innovation, and global expansion.”
The funding announcement is part of the news announced this week at Adaptive Planning’s annual user conference, Accelerate 2013, at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco on May 21-22.  The conference is the largest annual global gathering of cloud BI and CPM professionals, with approximately 500 Adaptive Planning customers and partners attending.
The news comes on the heels of an announcement last month of Adaptive Consolidation, a breakthrough new integrated cloud-based solution for comprehensive and intuitive financial consolidation and analysis.  Adaptive Consolidation introduces powerful new capabilities, coupled with an intuitive user interface, that make incredibly complex and time-consuming processes appear to be easy. Businesses can close their books accurately, quickly, and painlessly, with intuitive definition of rules that are automatically applied to the consolidation process each period.

Adaptive Planning also introduced late last year its Adaptive Discovery solution, breakthrough new cloud-based visual analytics featuring interactive data visualization and alerting and an intuitive and highly interactive way for managers across an organization to access, analyze, and explore key financial and operational data. With Adaptive Discovery, CFOs, VPs of Sales, and other business leaders can quickly and easily gain insights into the underlying trends in the business, allowing them to make more intelligent business decisions that drive greater success.

About Adaptive Planning
Adaptive Planning is the worldwide leader in cloud-based business analytics solutions for companies and nonprofits of all sizes.  The company’s software as a service (SaaS) platform allows finance and management teams to work together to plan, monitor, report on, and analyze financial and operational performance. With capabilities for budgeting, forecasting, reporting, consolidation, dashboards, and business intelligence, Adaptive Planning enables finance, sales, and other business leaders to make better, faster, more collaborative decisions that drive a true competitive advantage.
Adaptive Planning is used by over 1,600 organizations worldwide, from midsized companies and nonprofits to large corporations, including AAA, Boston Scientific, CORT, Konica Minolta, NetSuite, Philips, and Vail Resorts.  The company is the 5th fastest growing software company in Silicon Valley on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ list; has the #1 brand in midmarket CPM; and ranks #1 in customer satisfaction in independent industry surveys.  With customers and partners in 81 countries worldwide, the company has the strongest channel ecosystem in the cloud CPM space, with worldwide partners including Armanino McKenna, Intacct, IntuitiveTek, Plex Systems, SAP, and NetSuite, which offers a specialized version of Adaptive Planning as the NetSuite Financial Planning module. Adaptive Planning is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and is funded by Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), ONSET Ventures, Monitor Ventures, and Cardinal Venture Capital.

The post Bessemer Venture Leads $45 Mln Round for Adaptive Planning appeared first on peHUB.

By now most every truck fan knows that Ford has been charge air cooler humidity issue causing limp mode. Is the lawsuit a big deal or small potatoes?

The lawsuit, so far, has just three owners who are saying that 3.5-L V6 EcoBoost engine “contained serious latent design, manufacturing, or assembly defects,” according to an Autoweek.com story. Essentially, the complaint is that these defects cause the truck to go into limp mode (a rather scary driving event).

Now we have covered this issue before, the issue resides in humidity building up in the charge air cooler. This build up leads to the water getting to the engine which triggers safety sensors that puts the engine in “safe” (or limp) mode. The story we hear is that the part is actually performing “too well” and it is cooling the hot humid air too quickly causing condensation to build up.

Ford has developed a replacement part and is fixing vehicles on a as needed basis. The haven’t issued any recall yet nor have they directly notified owners of the issue (as far as we know).

Here is the truth as we see it. The lawsuit is garbage in that the design doesn’t have any latent design, manufacturing or assembly defects. Frankly, the problem is simply the design works too well. The place where we take exception is in the communication of the problem. Ford SHOULD have come right out and said, we know there is a problem, here is the fix and please have it fixed for free. They could have easily notified the NHTSA about the issue, gathered a list of owners and mailed a letterTHAT is the piece that the lawsuit should address.

Now, we could very well see this lawsuit grow and become a class action suit. It is interesting that all three of the owners are in Ohio (why not Florida, Alabama, Georgia, etc…). They could easily find more owners having this issue by searching forums and auto registration data.

The facts are that we live in a world with immediate information sharing, video and social media. Automakers, as a whole, have to know that if one owner experiences an issue the rest will know within a short matter of time. They need to be pro-active on the public relations end of things and not re-active.

What do you think? Is the lawsuit a big deal?

Related Posts:

• Ford F-150 EcoBoost Problems: Shuddering, Power Loss & Limp Mode
• BREAKING NEWS: Ford – F150 EcoBoost Shudder Fix Confirmed
• Ford EcoBoost Turbo Replacement Cost? About $2250

The post Ford EcoBoost Lawsuit – Defects, Flaws, Assembly Problems appeared first on Tundra Headquarters Blog.

ASHBURN, Va. – Hossein Fateh has a head for numbers. When the discussion turns to the cost of building and operating a data center, he can quickly run through the cost of individual line items in the cost equation.

Fateh, the President and CEO of DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT), believes these numbers point to a huge shift ahead, as more companies shift their IT operations to third-party facilities built by developers that specialize in data center construction and operations. In a cost-averse world in which Internet growth is creating an explosion of demand for data center space, he believes the economics favor huge facilities operated by small teams of specialists.

An example is ACC5, a data center here in Ashburn, Virginia which is more than 1,100 feet long, and has more than 36 megawatts of power – enough to power a small city. ACC5 is the largest building on a campus that houses thousands of servers for Internet giants such as Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Rackspace – but only until the even larger ACC7 comes online next year at 41.6 megawatts.

Few companies can afford to built 40 megawatt IT facilities to capture those operating savings. So DuPont Fabros will build them, and pass the savings on to their tenants. ”With operating expenses, our scale is a benefit to our clients,” said Fateh. “As our size grows, we have more and more buying power.”

218 Megawatts of Server Power

That power is growing steadily. DuPont Fabros operates more than 2.5 million square feet of data center space across four cities, providing 218 megawatts of electricity to power their tenants’ Internet and IT operations. It is one of a small but growing group of companies that provide “wholesale” data center space, consisting of pre-built suites of raised-floor space to house servers.

This approach has won over some of the largest Internet players, companies like Apple, Facebook and Rackspace that comprise the new breed of “super wholesale” users -companies that have the capability to build their own data centers, but have opted to lease server space, swayed by the economics of buying versus building.

The big question: having proven itself with large tenants, can the wholesale model win over the legions of enterprise companies that build and maintain their own data center space? The wholesale players compete vigorously with one another for major deals, but they say the largest untapped audience is the companies that operates their own facilities, often on corporate premises or in small stand-alone facilities.

Culture, Compliance are Resistance Points

These companies have many reasons for sticking with in-house data center operations, including the need to control digital assets tied to compliance requirements and mission-critical business operations. There are also cultural issues, including in-house IT staff perceiving third-party providers as threats to their role in the organization.

These are powerful influences. But enterprises have been rethinking past assumptions in recent years, as the financial shock of 2008 and the emergence of cloud computing have prompted C-suite executives to consider a broader set of options for data center operations. That includes both “retail” colocation and wholesale data center space, as well as public cloud services.

Fateh believes large wholesale data centers can offer economies of scale that few companies can achieve. DuPont Fabros builds its massive facilities for between $7 million and $8 million per megawatt, well below the $12 million to $20 million per megawatt seen in smaller enterprise projects. The area where scale really kicks in is in operating costs, particularly as multi-tenant buildings expand beyond 18 megawatts.

Economics Improve as Scale Increases

“Our operating costs will go down when the Phase II of the asset leases up,” said Fateh. “So we may have, for example, labor of six people handle the entire Phase I of one of our data centers. When we double the size of the building and go to Phase II, we may only increase by one additional person, meaning seven DFT staff plus security, and that labor force is spread over 36.4 megawatts. So when you look at the operating costs, when we hit the Phase II, the operating costs of the building drop.

“We show that to some of our tenants, and they very much appreciate it,” he said.

But will those savings convince enterprises to give up their in-house data centers are move their gear into third-party space? Thus far wholesale data center space has leased more slowly in geographic markets that are heavy on enterprise users, such as New Jersey, where DuPont Fabros has struggled to attract tenants for a large facility in Piscataway. Part of the reason for that, Fateh says, is that enterprises simply have a longer decision-making cycle.

“In New Jersey, we’re dealing with maybe 15 people making a decision within that company,” Fateh said. “And instead of two or three tours, we may have 10 tours of the same tenants before they make a decision. Much of the growth in the three of our four markets is revenue-driven, if the tenant doesn’t have additional data center space, it will impact revenue. In the New Jersey market, many of the tenants’ decision-making is solely surrounded on consolidation and trying to reduce cost by consolidating. So it’s a different tenant.”

But Fateh says DFT is committed to the New Jersey market. In a cost-sensitive environment, Fateh says, the math is shifting in favor of buying instead of building.

The death of over 800 people in the collapse of Rana Plaza, a building with garment factories in Bangladesh, spurred widespread outrage over working conditions in offshore factories. In the search for blame, many commentators point to the absence of building codes, lack of workplace safety rules, and the greed of US corporations.

Many of the solutions proposed are around paying people more to manufacture in the USA. But however well intentioned the ideas are, this is not the best use of one of the most productive workforces in the world. The true solution, we think, lies in understanding the changed nature of modern supply chains and identifying new business models better suited for managing them.

Over the last years, labor intensive production keeps moving to ever-cheaper countries. But producers in many of the newer entrants (such as Bangladesh) tend to be small and highly disaggregated. By some estimates there are over 4,000 garment factories in Bangladesh alone. This has made it increasingly hard, if not impossible, for a global retailer to ensure compliance with standards. In a knee-jerk reaction some firms have decided to just give up and exit the country altogether — a move that clearly does not serve the interest of the workers and which pulls valuable resources from developing economies.

The need to improve supply chain compliance does not come from moral arguments alone; the business consequences are also increasingly unescapable. Some apparel retailers attempted to deny that they had any connection with the Rana Plaza building that collapsed — but data at the level of each shipment is increasingly available to both researchers like us and to the general public. In fact, the press was quick to point out that some of the deniers did, in fact, source from Rana Plaza recently.

Let’s do some math to see how expensive the necessary improvements in safety and working conditions would actually be. Non-governmental organizations have calculated that it would cost about $600 million per year to bring all Bangladeshi factories up to Western standards. Given that Bangladesh exports $18 billion worth of clothing per year, we are talking about a 3.3% cost increase for garments. In other words, a T-shirt currently costing $3 to produce would cost $3.10 to produce properly. This is a very small price to pay for the ability to claim that no workers producing your closing were in any danger of dying.

In fact, ecolabeling is known to lead to price premiums of 10-50% and we believe one can expect similar price increases with “safe-workplace labeling”. What holds back improvements is thus not direct cost concerns, but the ability to ensure compliance with norms in a supply chain.

We think the answer to that problem lies in the novel business model pioneered by companies like Li & Fung Ltd., a supply chain intermediary that owns no production, transportation or retail facilities, but which is the key link in the sourcing practices of some of the world’s best known companies. This firm created a multi-billion dollar business for itself by sourcing “better” in places like Bangladesh than their customers can by going there directly.

Firms like Li and Fung ltd. have created a new business model that is based on simultaneously providing the flexibility of competitive sourcing and the confidence of long-term relationships that radically increase voluntary compliance even in complex, distributed supply chains. When suppliers and buyers have stable long-term relationships with intermediaries like Li and Fung, their incentives are better aligned, and a small factory in Bangladesh finds it in its own interest to improve workplace conditions that help maintain its long-term relationship with Li & Fung rather than risk losing it all for small gains.

An intermediary of this kind that devoted its energy to ensuring workplace safety could both bring the benefits of free trade to low-income countries and improve workplace conditions without punitive compliance costs or brand damage for the buyer. Such an intermediary organization (in this case probably an NGO) would collect the extra 3.3%, build relationships with buyers and sellers and would use the trust of its relationships to have the confidence to certify that clothing was produced according to proper standards.

Seahawks QB Josh Portis was pulled over and arrested on May 5 after he was caught doing 80 in a 60 MPH zone. Once the officer pulled him over, he noticed a “strong odor of intoxicants coming from the vehicle” and wrote on the report that Portis had “watery, bloodshot eyes”.

Portis declined to take a breathalyzer test, but eventually submitted to two of them after he was taken into custody. His blood alcohol level was .092 on one test and .078 on the other; the legal limit in Washington is .080. He reportedly admitted he had been drinking tequila at a Cinco De Mayo event, but not until he’d tried the old, “Don’t you know who I am?” card.

“Portis asked me if I knew who he was and I stated yes,” the trooper wrote. “(The passenger) exited the vehicle and began to cry. (The passenger) stated I was arresting a Seahawk, and I was going to ruin him. … (The passenger) shouted at me and stated she couldn’t believe that I was from Seattle, and was arresting a Seahawk.”

25-year old Portis just signed a contract with the Seahawks that will see him bringing in $480,000 a year for two years, though he is up against Brady Quinn and Jerrod Johnson for the position of backup quarterback behind Russell Wilson.

Recent estimates suggested devices like Google Glass and Apple’s upcoming “iWatch” could be the start of a wearable tech explosion that generates as much as $6 billion annually by 2016. According to newly published research from Credit Suisse, however, that estimate is ridiculously low. In a research note picked up by Business Insider, Credit Suisse analysts predict that the wearable technology market will balloon from the current $3 billion to $5 billion range to a whopping $30 billion to $50 billion in the next two to three years. The firm believes Apple’s upcoming iWatch will generate $10 billion annually on its own, and the growing health and fitness market will play a key role as well.

Above the Law is a tabloid blog where the legal community comes to get news and gossip — and to say terrible things about one another. Many of the reader comments on the site are so mean or hurtful that they make notorious troll forums like Gawker feel like a petting zoo. And the Above the Law staff wouldn’t have it any other way.

At a time when many publishers are trying to improve comments or else refuse to permit reader participation in the first place, Above the Law continues to let readers be as abrasive as they like. For example, here’s a screenshot of responses to a story by editor Elie Mystal about a scholarship for white people at Columbia:

I spoke this month with Mystal and John Lerner, CEO of Breaking Media (the company that owns Above the Law), to learn more about the site’s comment philosophy and its effect on business strategy.

“If you write on the internet, people will say horrible things about you. We allow them to say it to our faces — if we didn’t, they’d say it on Twitter or Reddit or Tumblr,” said Mystal. “Anyone who wants to write professionally better be prepared for ad hominem, unfair personal criticism. That’s not just part of media in 2013.”

Above the Law’s writers, most of whom are Ivy League law school graduates, are frequent targets of personal vitriol by readers, but Mystal says he still appreciates them.

“Commenters got me my job. Online people voted me in. I remember that when they’re screaming about how I look like a walrus.”

The commenters also serve as a vital part of the site’s overall content and business strategy. Lerner explained that the story comments appear as separate web pages, which allows Above the Law to sell additional ads, and that the site also works with comment platform Disqus to sell sponsored comments on its app. And, contrary to popular wisdom, advertisers aren’t skittish about their brands appearing next to off-color stories (like this one about a lawyer who invoked the First Amendment to excuse “slut-shaming” someone who turned him down) – a quick look shows that most of ATL’s sponsors are big and boring professional firms.

“It’s not like five years ago when a lot of advertisers didin’t know how the internet works,” said Mystal. “They realize there’s horrible comments on the Washington Post too.”

Above the Law readers can flag comments as offensive but that doesn’t mean the editors will respond. The only thing likely to be pulled down is something that offends absolutely everybody — “no one one cares if you’re offended”, says Mystal, adding that moderating each comment would be a full time job.

Ultimately, the no-holds-barred policy is not just simpler for the editors to oversee, but may also offer a more authentic view of humanity than the curated comments of other forums:

“I used to work in a big firm in downtown Manhattan, and there were some racists there. We’re the legal community, and there’s people who hold racist, homophobic views — you’re going to meet people like that. Those people may be your boss.”

(Image by ArTono via Shutterstock)

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Despite the rise in school attendance in Ghana, around 440,000 kids are still out-of-school (61 million globally). The United Nations estimates it would cost $16 billion a year to get these out-of-school kids into class by 2015 to reach the Millennium Development Goal 2. Here in Ghana, while the government is expanding access, some parents are opting to pay for their children’s education. In fact, it is estimated that private schools make up a third of total schools. DFID Ghana is looking to understand more about the private sector, and we are financing the World Bank (Harry Patrinos) to carry out “Education Markets” analysis of low fee private schools.Whatever one’s ideological stance is on the role of private schools (read the BBC article which sees Sir Michael Barber go head to head with Professor Keith Lewin debating this very issue), we can’t ignore the fact that poor families are opting out of the government system. I went to visit Ghana’s Omega Schools, a chain of low fee private schools which last year received financing from Pearson’s Affordable Learning Fund. Pearson’s Affordable Learning Fund is chaired by Sir Michael Barber who was once head of Tony Blair’s Service Delivery Unit.

I just met with Sir Michael on a recent trip he made to Ghana checking up on his investment. He seemed pleased with the progress that the Omega Schools are making and would like to explore vouchers – where parents are given vouchers to spend on education. He is actually working with DFID Pakistan in Punjab on a programme that provides vouchers for poor families whose children attend private schools, providing free education to 1.1 million children in 2,233 schools.

The Omega Schools are located in Kasoa, on the outskirts of Accra – a lively and hectic place, home to migrants from Ghana’s poorest regions, working-class Ghanaians and anyone trying to eek out a living in Ghana’s capital. Kayayei girls sell goods on their heads, from plantain chips to lobsters line up at car windows, while bus drivers gather up passengers to brave the traffic into the centre and young boys hustling their car-washing skills at the traffic lights.

I met with Omega’s CEO, Ken Donkoh in their Kasoa HQ who told me about their plans, and took me around 3 of the low fee private schools.

“Our plan is to scale-up to more than 200 schools in the next 5 years. Currently we have 20 schools in Ghana with 12,000 students and we are adding 20 new schools to the chain this September. We will then add about 35 more schools every year. We want to take the model to other countries in West Africa, and we are now in Sierra Leone and will be looking for opportunities in Nigeria and Liberia.”

According to observers, Omega has been successful because of the all-inclusive (no hidden fee) daily fee model as it fits well within the earning pattern of the parents who are mostly informal workers, and don’t always get a regular salary. Just as “pay-as-you-go” was an instant success for the mobile phone sector, it seems to work for Omega Schools.

Ken calls it “pay-as-you-learn” and emphasizes that:

“It drives us to be the best we can be. We have to be accountable to the parents on a daily basis. If we don’t do a good job today, don’t expect the children to come the next day. I love the discipline this brings to everybody –teachers and the management on their toes.”

Another novel component of the Omega package seems to be the consistent tracking of how well students are doing. Ken explains:

“We track the progress of each student using 7 different tests annually. There are mid-term formative assessments per year which ensures that we are able establish how well the children are receiving our curriculum – then we do remedial teacher training and teaching to fill in the gaps. Three end-of term tests track ‘progress’ and an annual test compares Omega schools with, government and other private schools.”

I became curious to know more about the button sewn onto students’ shirts. Ken explains that this button acts as a tracking device and once swiped can provide access to the students’ academic records. A teacher confirms that they use the data on the button to text a student’s parents how well his/her child is doing in each class.

Although the Omega’s approach does look promising, the evidence base on low fee private schools is still weak, and there are more questions than answers. Professor Keith Lewin does make a valid point that where there has been growth in low-price private school numbers, it is often because of specific circumstances, such as where a high level of migration into cities has not been matched by an expansion in public services, and it is still impossible to tell whether low fee private schools or public schools are better, because the research produces contradictory results.

This is exactly why DFID is supporting the World Bank’s “Education Markets” study to develop a better understanding of the policy and operating environment in which the private education sector currently work, and obtain more data on the role of private schools for the poor.

Ken is proud of the unique model of Omega schools.

“The lesson plans are already developed – and the lessons are also scripted which allows Omega to hire high school graduates as teachers. These high school graduates are young, passionate and energetic – and they want to make a difference.” Critics have pointed out that the fees are so low because they are deliberately exploiting secondary school leavers without jobs who are willing to work below the minimum wage.

So how did Ken become involved in the Omega Schools?

“Maybe I was just lucky, because out of a class of 80 students in junior high school (morning and afternoon shifts) only 5 of us made it to senior high school. While I was studying for my MBA at GIMPA , I encountered James Tooley’s research since I was searching for solutions to help my elder sister who was running a low fee private school. I came to the conclusion that (given the chicken-and-egg dilemma that private schools face) the most effective way to improve quality and drive down fees was to build a chain. I sent James Tooley my business plan – with a provocative note, “if you really believe in your research, can we turn this into a business?” After a number of failed attempts to secure financial backing, we finally said enough is enough, let’s start on our own”. In 2009 we opened our first 2 schools filled to capacity on the first week of opening. One of the schools had as many as 350 students on a waiting list. In 2 years we grew to 10 schools, broke even and caught the attention of Pearson who invested in us.”

DFID is continuing to research the role of private schools. Our senior education advisor in India, Colin Bangay and Michael Latham have been researching private schools in India and looked in-depth at ‘Gyan Shala’, an innovative low cost education programme operating in the slums of Gujarat and Bihar. They argue for a better understanding of the dynamic between the public and private schools. Further, DFID is supporting Results for Development Institute (R4D) to launch the Center for Education Innovations which will be an online platform identifying, analysing, and connecting non-state education innovations.

I would be interested to hear what you think on the role of private schools and whether DFID should be investing in them. Do let me know what you think and add your comments here!

True Ventures led a $3 million seed-stage funding for Orchestrate.io, a developer of a API that allows companies to add location, search, activity stream, and recommendation features to their apps. Also participating in the round are Frontline Ventures and Resonant Venture. The company was founded earlier this year. As part of the funding, Puneet Agrawal, general partner at True Ventures, has joined the board.

PRESS RELEASE

Orchestrate.io Closes a $3 Million Seed Investment to Eliminate the Need for Databases in Application Development

Frontline Ventures, Resonant Venture Partners and True Ventures Participate in Early Round to Accelerate Time to Market and Global Deployment

PORTLAND, OR – May 21, 2013 – Orchestrate.io, a new data API that will eliminate the need for deploying databases in application development, today announced that it has raised a seed investment round of $3 million. Led by True Ventures and joined by Frontline Ventures and Resonant Venture Partners, the funding will be used to rapidly build and deploy Orchestrate.io’s service for strategic partners, expand its core development team and deploy its offering across multiple cloud providers, on multiple continents, for general availability later this year.

Orchestrate.io is a cloud-agnostic service that unifies all the queries needed to build interactive applications, such as geospatial, time-series, graph, full-text search, key-value queries and more through a single API.  Historically, developers have been required to run multiple databases to build applications that need these queries. Orchestrate.io eliminates the operational and financial burden on enterprises that run multiple databases, such as monitoring and maintaining them, scaling as usage grows, and distributing them across providers to improve fault tolerance and put data closer to end users. As a result, developers can focus on building richer, more sophisticated applications.

“Database and operating system licensing, servers, storage, power, labor, outsourcing and professional services represents a market that exceeds $100B annually,” said Antony Falco, founder and CEO of Orchestrate.io, who also co-founded Basho Technologies, makers of the open-source distributed database, Riak. “We believe our service will save our customers significant time and money, allowing them to instead focus on what matters most – the end-user.  With Orchestrate.io, our customers can build better apps, faster.”

“Orchestrate.io is disrupting a huge market with an incredibly talented team,” said Puneet Agrawal, General Partner at True Ventures. “It’s exactly the kind of company we love to fund at True Ventures. Tony and team will democratize the ability to build powerful, feature rich applications while pioneering a new ‘NoDB’ movement.”

Founded in March 2013, Orchestrate.io has already made significant hires to the core team, including Dave “Dizzy” Smith,  formerly VP of Engineering at Basho and Singly.  A prominent Erlang and open-source contributor, Dizzy will build and lead Orchestrate.io’s engineering and product team. Puneet Agarwal from True Venture has also joined its board.

The company is currently accepting applications to its private beta for select strategic partners. For more information and to be considered for beta today, visit http://orchestrate.io. You can also follow them on Twitter at https://twitter.com/OrchestrateIO.

About Orchestrate.io
Orchestrate.io provides an API service that eliminates the need to deploy databases when building new applications, or adding new features to existing applications. A cloud-agnostic service, it unifies all the queries needed to build interactive applications in a single API, allowing developers to rapidly add location, search, activity stream, event and recommendation features. Founded in 2013, Orchestrate.io is based in Portland, Oregon, and is backed by Frontline Ventures, Resonant Venture Partners and True Ventures. For more information, please visit http://orchestrate.io.

About True Ventures
Founded in 2005, True Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology startups. With three funds and approximately $600 million in capital under management, True provides seed and Series A funding to the most talented entrepreneurs in today’s fastest growing markets. With a mission to make the world a better place for entrepreneurs, True encourages each founder’s vision and has built resources to empower the employees, families and communities of its portfolio companies. The firm maintains a strong founder community and offers innovative educational opportunities to its portfolio, helping entrepreneurs achieve higher levels of success and impact. With more than 100 companies funded and multiple companies acquired, the True portfolio has created over 1,900 jobs. To learn more about True Ventures, visit www.trueventures.com.

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KPS said Monday it has agreed to buy the specialty paper business of Wausau Paper Corp. The PE firm is also buying the specialty paper business of Packaging Dynamics Corp., which is known as Thilmany. The acquisitions are expected to close in second or third quarter. Goldman Sachs & Co. and GE Capital Markets are acting as lead arrangers for debt financing.

PRESS RELEASE

New York, NY (May 20, 2013) — KPS Capital Partners, LP (“KPS”) announced today that, through a newly formed company, Expera Specialty Solutions, LLC and its affiliates (“Expera”), it has entered into definitive agreements with Wausau Paper Corp. (NYSE: WPP) (“Wausau”) to acquire Wausau’s specialty paper business (“Wausau Specialty Paper”) and with Packaging Dynamics Corporation (“PKDY”) to acquire PDKY’s specialty paper business (“Thilmany”).
Wausau Specialty Paper and Thilmany are both leading, integrated North American manufacturers of specialty paper products for the food packaging, industrial and pressure-sensitive release liner segments.  Wausau Specialty Paper employs approximately 900 employees at manufacturing facilities located in Rhinelander and Mosinee, Wisconsin.  Thilmany employs approximately 900 employees at manufacturing facilities located in Kaukauna and De Pere, Wisconsin.
Wausau Specialty Paper and Thilmany have been leading suppliers of specialty paper-based products to a diverse set of end-use markets and geographies for more than 100 years.  Wausau Specialty Paper’s and Thilmany’s products offer highly customized solutions that are engineered to serve each customer’s unique technical requirements.  The combined business’s broad range of flexible machines and extensive technical capabilities creates the ideal manufacturing platform to serve the specialty paper sector.
Raquel Palmer, a KPS Partner, said, “We are very excited to create Expera.  Through the acquisitions of Wausau Specialty Paper and Thilmany, Expera immediately becomes North America’s leading manufacturer of specialty paper solutions with an industry leading portfolio of brands.  The new company, with its reputation for exceptional quality, customer focus, technical expertise and product innovation, coupled with KPS’s capital resources, will be perfectly positioned to capitalize on the growth in niche, non-commodity markets, where engineered and applied technological solutions are critical to success.  We believe the combination of these businesses will unlock very meaningful synergies benefitting many constituencies, including Expera’s customers, employees and the communities that depend on the continuing operation of its manufacturing facilities.
“The creation of Expera was the result of two distinct and complex acquisitions that were negotiated and signed in parallel,” Ms. Palmer continued, “We look forward to growing Expera aggressively, both organically and through acquisition on a global scale.  We thank the United Steelworkers Union for its critical support of our vision for the specialty paper industry in North America, the creation of Expera and its first two acquisitions.”
Russ Wanke, the current Vice President and General Manager of Thilmany and future Chief Executive Officer of Expera, said, “This is the beginning of an exciting new era for Expera as a new independent company and a strong, stable platform positioned for expansion and growth in the future.  I am very excited for our customers, employees and communities, as we intend to invest significant capital and resources into research and development to expand our new company’s combined competitive advantages, capitalize on the growth in the specialty paper industry worldwide, and provide innovative products with a superior level of service.”  Wanke continued, “I look forward to leading such a talented and committed organization into the future.  Our entire team is very excited about KPS’ commitment to manufacturing excellence and to supporting our growth.”
Completion of the transactions is expected to occur simultaneously during the second or third quarter of 2013, subject to customary closing conditions.
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison LLP and Spilman Thomas & Battle PLLC served as legal counsel to KPS and Expera.
Financing for the transaction will be provided by a syndicate of banks and institutional investors with Goldman Sachs & Co. and GE Capital Markets, Inc. acting as Lead Arrangers.
About Wausau Specialty Paper
Wausau Specialty Paper is a leading North American manufacturer of specialty paper products for use in the tape, pressure-sensitive release liner, coated products, industrial and food packaging segments.  Wausau Specialty Paper employs approximately 900 employees across two mills located in Rhinelander, WI and Mosinee, WI.  For more information, please visit www.wausaupaper.com/TechnicalSpecialty.
About Thilmany, LLC
Thilmany is a leading North American manufacturer of specialty paper products for use in the pressure-sensitive release liner, industrial and food packaging segments.  Thilmany employs approximately 900 employees at two facilities located in Kaukauna, WI and De Pere, WI.     For more information, please visit www.thilmany.com.
About KPS Capital Partners, LP
KPS is the manager of the KPS Special Situations Funds, a family of investment funds with over $6.0 billion of assets under management. KPS seeks to realize significant capital appreciation by making controlling equity investments in companies across a diverse range of manufacturing industries.  The KPS investment strategy is based primarily upon partnering with top management teams and improving the operations of businesses.  Thereafter, upon achieving stability and profitability, KPS focuses on growing its businesses, both organically and through strategic acquisitions.  KPS portfolio companies have aggregate annual revenues of approximately $6.8 billion, operate 85 manufacturing facilities in 25 countries, and employ over 29,000 associates, directly and through joint ventures worldwide.  The KPS investment strategy and portfolio companies are described in detail at www.kpsfund.com.

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As a co-founder of Basho Technologies, the company behind the Riak database, Antony Falco observed that companies already had lots of databases. It makes sense, given that not every database was created equal. But Falco noticed an inherent structural problems with using multiple databases.

Keeping data isolated inside any one database prevents companies from making discoveries across multiple data sets. Plus, he said, at least one database tends to have trouble at any given time.

Earlier this year, Falco started Orchestrate.io to respond to these issues. The company provides a single API through which customers can send data from multiple databases. This way, customers can join, say, geolocation data, time-series data and tweets, drawing graph relationships and doing full-text searches on top of it all.

To build out the infrastructure to do this with multiple cloud providers and bring on customers, Portland, Ore.-based Orchestrate.io is taking on $3 million in seed funding. True Ventures is leading the round (see disclosure) alongside contributions from Frontline Ventures and Resonant Venture Partners.

Some companies were already testing out the Orchestrate.io service, although Falco declined to identify them. He said the price of using the service is tied to the number of queries per second customer make.

When it comes to competition, Falco said, “Certainly there’s Amazon.” On Amazon Web Services, customers can get a slew of tools, from RDS for relational databases to DynamoDB for nonrelational work to Elastic MapReduce for Hadoop. And, of course, if companies don’t buy into the Orchestrate.io logic, existing databases constitute challengers. But Falso has an answer for that. “Databases can do most of these queries,” he said. “The problem is, they can’t do them efficiently and at scale at the same time.”

After the company comes out of private beta, Falco thinks Orchestrate.io has the potential to be a go-to provider for lots of different kinds of data-analysis services, Falco said, just as companies look to Twilio for voice services and SendGrid for email. “(There’s a) shift of operational burden from a corporation or the end user to a service provider,” he said. “I think we’re just part of the trend. You’re going to continue to see that over the next several years.”

Disclosure: Orchestrate.io is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of GigaOM. Om Malik, founder of GigaOM, is also a venture partner at True.

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The Novo Group has acquired Xellia Pharmaceuticals for about $700 million. The sellers are 3i and other Xellia shareholders. Xellia, of Oslo, Norway, is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on anti-infective products.

PRESS RELEASE

OSLO & COPENHAGEN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Xellia Pharmaceuticals (“Xellia”), a pharmaceutical group focusing on the development, manufacturing and global commercialization of anti-infective therapies, announced today that Novo A/S (“Novo”), the holding company of the Novo Group, has purchased all shares of the group for approximately US$ 700 million from 3i and other current shareholders. As a consequence of the transaction, Xellia will revert to Danish ownership with headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Since its spin-out from Alpharma Inc. in 2008, Xellia’s management and international investor 3i have successfully transformed the business from an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturer to a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on anti-infective products. Xellia’s life-saving anti-infective products for multi-drug resistant infections address a growing global medical challenge, and the Company is a world leading supplier of Vancomycin and Colistimethate Sodium (CMS). Xellia’s products are all manufactured using fermentation-based biological processes at facilities located in Denmark, Norway, Hungary and China.
Xellia’s strategy for future growth is rooted in its leading product development competences, extensive manufacturing expertise and strong commercial partnerships. Over the past years, Xellia has built a substantial pipeline of generic anti-infective treatments, which will be advanced towards commercialization in the coming years. Novo’s investment will allow Xellia to enhance its focus on R&D and expand its global manufacturing footprint to further scale its finished-dosage-form (FDF) business.
Novo is a significant international life science investor, and the major shareholder of Novo Nordisk A/S, Novozymes A/S and Chr. Hansen Holding A/S. These companies, which have similar technology and manufacturing approaches to Xellia, are global leaders in many of the business segments in which they operate, and have experienced significant growth in recent years. As such, Novo is well positioned to support the continued growth of Xellia through its experience and long-term investment focus.
Carl-Åke Carlsson, CEO, Xellia said: “When the management team bought out Xellia in 2008, we had ambitious plans, which we were able to implement with 3i’s support, expertise and commitment. We have successfully transitioned the business in order to become a world leader in the supply of certain anti-infective products. Now, as we focus on the future and the further development of the business, including the launch of our novel antibiotics pipeline, we look forward to working with Novo and benefitting from their expertise in the life science sector.” He added, “Together with Novo we can strengthen the positive development that Xellia has achieved over the past few years, and at the same time the investment by Novo will help accelerate our developments further.”
Henrik Gürtler, CEO, Novo A/S said: “Xellia strongly complements our portfolio of significant life science companies in which we have major investments. This acquisition is well aligned with our strategy, and is one of the largest investments made by Novo A/S to date. The products that Xellia supplies are critical life-saving treatments for many patients around the globe, and are manufactured by use of fermentation technologies, which is a manufacturing approach similar to that of Novo Nordisk, Novozymes and Chr. Hansen. Xellia is a leader in its business area, and a company with a long Scandinavian heritage, which we are proud to bring back into long-term Danish ownership. We look forward to establishing a strong relationship with Xellia’s experienced management team and invest together in the future success of the Company.”
Closing of the transaction will be subject to relevant competition law approvals, and is expected to take place during the third quarter of 2013. Kromann Reumert, Latham & Watkins, PwC, NNE Pharmaplan, NNIT and Moelis & Company, acted as advisors to Novo A/S.
– Ends –
About Xellia
Xellia Pharmaceuticals is a fully integrated specialty pharmaceutical company focusing on the global anti-infective market, with over 100 years of experience and expertise in the supply of fermented and semi-synthetic finished dose products and active pharmaceutical ingredients for life-saving therapies against serious infections. The Company has growing sales in more than 70 countries to over 700 customers across the healthcare industry and for the financial year ending December 31 2012 generated revenues of US$220 million. Currently headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Xellia has global facilities including operational and manufacturing capabilities in Denmark, Hungary and China, and currently employs 900 people, of which 400 are working in Denmark.
Xellia is a leading supplier of Vancomycin and Colistimethate Sodium (CMS) which together combat life-threatening, multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacterial infections across Gram-positive and Gram-negative species. Xellia is also developing novel antibiotics effective against MDR Gram-negative bacteria in a development project with SINTEF Materials and Chemistry (Trondheim) and the Statens Serum Institut (Copenhagen), supported by a grant from the Research Council of Norway. Further information can be obtained at: www.xellia.com.
About Novo A/S
Novo A/S, the holding company in the Novo Group, is responsible for the management of the assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which are currently valued at more than USD 30 billion. Novo A/S is a private limited liability company fully owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Besides being the major shareholder in Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S, Novo A/S provides seed and venture capital to development stage companies and takes significant ownership positions in well-established companies, within life science and biotechnology, as well as manages a broad portfolio of financial assets.

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ConsultingMD, a startup that connects patients with leading medical specialists, has raised a $10 million round of funding from Venrock Capital. The company, which launched earlier this year and previously raised $1 million from Harrison Metal, enables patients to seek second opinions from a network of top doctors, and to get referrals to  specialists in their own area. With the funding, the startup said it plans to further develop its technology and build out its network of elite doctors.

In contrast to startups like ZocDoc or HealthTap, which help patients find any doctor available in their area or online, ConsultingMD bills itself as service that offers access to only the doctors in the top echelon of the medical world. These physicians – who encompass the one percent of their profession – tend to be the chiefs or chairmen of the department, with publications in the top medical journals, the company says.

“The core problem is that in the highly elite world of academic specialists… access to these people is difficult [and] patients don’t know how to find them in the first place,” said CEO and co-founder Owen Tripp, who was previously COO and co-founder of Reputation.com. The company’s other co-founder is Dr. Lawrence Hofman, chief of interventional radiology at Stanford Hospital.

Through the site, patients in need of second opinion spend a few minutes describing their case, disclosing where they’ve already received care and authorizing ConsultingMD to access their medical history. Then the startup digitizes and indexes the relevant medical records (an often frustrating and dragged-out process for patients) and delivers it to the appropriate specialist on ConsultingMD.

While it can take the company an average of seven or eight days to aggregate all the records, once the doctor receives the information, Tripp said, they the doctor  can turn around a second opinion in an average of 48 hours.

For individuals coming to the site, the pricing is steep, emphasizing ConsultingMD’s positioning as an elite service – the company’s website says a second opinion costs $3,750. But the company believes its bigger opportunity is by offering the service to employers looking for a way to help their employees get better outcomes (and therefore boost productivity and lower costs).

For an additional $200, the company will also locate and schedule a priority appointment with a top specialist in a patient’s area, as well as deliver all of the necessary medical records.

For doctors, the site offers a chance to interact with other top-tier medical professionals (doctors are only admitted to the site by peer recommendation), see more cases that match their research interests and, of course, earn a little more cash. For patients, the opportunity to reach the one or two leading experts in a given field may be attractive — especially in very specific or rare medical situations. But even though the company says that outcomes for elite doctors differ substantially from outcomes for less pedigreed professionals, it’s unclear that the research backs that up.

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Blackrock, the $4 trillion U.S. fund manager, has bought private equity real estate fund MGPA in a deal that boosts its presence in Asia and continental Europe, Reuters is reporting.

(Reuters) – Blackrock, the $4 trillion U.S. fund manager, has bought private equity real estate fund MGPA in a deal that boosts its presence in Asia and continental Europe.

The combined business will have $25 billion of property under management and the transaction is due to complete later this year. No price was announced.

The real estate fund management industry has been under pressure since the financial crash and larger funds find it easier to raise money, attract high-quality staff and benefit from the efficiencies of scale to deliver the high returns demanded by investors.

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