Category: News

Russian hypermarket chain Lenta, part-owned by U.S. private equity firm TPG and Russia’s VTB Capital, is talking to banks about a possible London listing which could raise at least $1 billion, sources tell Reuters.

(Reuters) – Russian hypermarket chain Lenta, part-owned by U.S. private equity firm TPG and Russia’s VTB Capital, is talking to banks about a possible London listing which could raise at least $1 billion, sources familiar with the matter said.

The move could produce a rare success story for a U.S. buyout firms in Russia, giving TPG the opportunity to exit an investment it made in 2009.
Most U.S. private equity firms have shied away from Russia due to concerns about corruption and a suspicion that the best deals go to favoured oligarchs. TPG has not had an easy time with Lenta – it had a long running dispute with its founder which ended in 2011.

An initial public offering (IPO) of Lenta would be the biggest floatation of a Russian company since mobile operator MegaFon raised $1.7 billion in November.

Planning for an IPO is in the very early stages and could take place in the first quarter of 2014, one source familiar with the situation said. A second source said it could be in the fourth quarter of 2013 or first quarter of 2014.

Two banking sources said the company could command a valuation of over $5 billion, meaning that selling a 20-25 percent stake could see it raise $1-$1.25 billion.

A third source familiar with the situation said a figure of around 1 billion pounds ($1.5 billion) was realistic. A separate banking source, however, said it would more likely raise around $700 million. Meetings with banks were held this week, one of the sources said.

VTB, which owns more than 10 percent of Lenta, has previously said it wants to sell its holding in Lenta by 2015.

TPG owns a majority stake although the precise figure has not been disclosed. Lenta was not immediately available for comment. TPG and VTB declined to comment.

The post TPG-Backed Russian Grocer Lenta Eyes London Listing – Sources appeared first on peHUB.

Why is it that, when we talk about sexual violence and domestic abuse, we talk about the women involved and erase the men from the conversation? In today’s talk, violence-prevention educator Jackson Katz explains why sentences like “Mary is a battered woman” are far more common in the cultural dialogue surrounding these issues than ones like “John beat Mary.”

Jackson Katz: Violence against women—it's a men's issueThe takeaway of Katz’s talk, given at TEDxFiDiWomen: That we have to stop thinking of violence against women as purely a women’s issue, and start thinking of it as a men’s issue too.

“Why is domestic violence still a problem? Why do so many men abuse the women and girls and the men and boys they claim to love?” asks Katz in this talk. “What’s going on with men? What are the roles of the various institutions in our society that are helping to produce abusive men at pandemic rates? Because this isn’t about individual perpetrators — that’s a naïve way to understand what is a much deeper and pervasive social problem.”

To hear Katz’s call for all men to take responsibility, to become leaders in calling out behavior that’s entwined with violence against women and to redefine what it means to be a man, watch this powerful talk. And below, we asked Katz to compile a list of resources for those invigorated by the conversation on how we can shift cultural norms, as well as for those who want more information on organizations that tackle sexual violence and domestic abuse. Here, Katz’s incredibly comprehensive list.

Men’s organizations working to end men’s violence against women, children and other men

International and online groups:

The Anti-Porn Men Project
www.antipornmen.org
The Anti-Porn Men Project is an online space for (mainly) men to read, write and discuss anti-porn arguments and issues. Their position: Pornography is an important issue in tackling both violence against women and wider gender inequality, as well as an important personal issue in the lives and relationships of many people. It is for these reasons — and not out of any political or religious sentiment — that the Anti-Porn Men Project offers resources and a space for discussion.

MenEngage: Boys and Men for Gender Equality
www.menengage.org
MenEngage is a global alliance of NGOs and UN agencies that seeks to engage boys and men to achieve gender equality. Members include Sonke Gender Justice (South Africa), Promundo (Brazil), Salud y Genero (Mexico), WHO, UNDP, UNFPA and UNIFEM. At the national level, members include more than 400 NGOs from Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, Asia and Europe. The Alliance came together in 2004 with the general goal of working in partnership to promote the engagement of men and boys in achieving gender equality, promoting health and reducing violence at the global level, including questioning the structural barriers to achieving gender equality.

Men’s Resources International
http://www.mensresourcesinternational.org/
Men’s Resources International (MRI) helps men around the globe practice and promote a healthy, compassionate and responsible model of masculinity. Their approach is to identify and support men’s networks in all stages of development, and provide training, coaching, materials and technical assistance to help these networks grow in size and effectiveness and to connect with other like-minded men’s and women’s organizations. Much of their work in recent years has been in Africa.

Men’s Story Project
www.mensstoryproject.org
The Men’s Story Project (MSP) is a public performance and community dialogue project that aims to strengthen social norms that support healthy masculinities and gender equality, and to help eliminate gender-based violence, homophobia and other oppressions that are intertwined with masculinities. They do this through men´s public story-sharing events, documentary films and other mass media. The MSP started in San Francisco in 2008, and is intended for local implementation and evaluation around the world.

1 in 6
http://1in6.org/
1 in 6 is an organization that helps men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives. Their mission also includes serving family members, friends, and partners by providing information and support resources. Their site includes information about the 1in6 Online SupportLine, a free, confidential, secure service that provides live help over the 1in6 website.

Voice Male Magazine
www.voicemalemagazine.org
Voice Male is the profeminist men’s movement’s ‘magazine of record,’ playing a role analogous to the one Ms. Magazine plays in the women’s movement. It has been published quarterly in one form or another since 1983, and covers topics ranging from multiracial men’s efforts to challenge men’s violence, to fatherhood, men’s health and men’s ongoing exploration of their interior lives. It counts itself among a growing legion of activist male allies working with both men and women in advocating for new and healthier expressions of manhood.

White Ribbon Campaign
www.whiteribbon.ca
The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) is the world’s largest movement of men and boys working to end violence against women and girls, promote gender equity, healthy relationships and a new vision of masculinity. Starting in 1991, WRC asked men to wear white ribbons as a pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and girls. Since then, the White Ribbon has spread to over 60 countries around the world. It works to examine the root causes of gender-based violence and create a cultural shift that helps bring us to a future without violence.

XY Online
www.xyonline.net
XY is a website and informational resource focused on men, masculinities and gender politics. XY explores issues of gender and sexuality, the daily issues of men’s and women’s lives, and practical aspects of personal and social change. XY is a forum for debate and discussion, including commentary on contemporary and emerging issues in gender and sexual politics; a resource library or clearinghouse for key reports, manuals, and articles; a toolkit for activism, personal transformation and social change.

National and local groups:

A Call to Men
www.acalltomen.org
A Call to Men aims to promote a more healthy and respectful definition of manhood. ACTM provides keynote presentations, consultations, workshops and training sessions, and works with other groups to create national campaigns that raise awareness about ending violence on a larger scale. Watch a TED Talk from Tony Porter of A Call to Men »

Coaching Boys Into Men
www.futureswithoutviolence.org/content/features/detail/811/
The Coaching Boys Into Men (CBIM) program invites men to use their unique position to prevent domestic and sexual violence. Men — as fathers, brothers, coaches, teachers, uncles and mentors — have a role to play in coaching boys into men. CBIM offers a downloadable training kit aimed at athletic coaches.

Men Can Stop Rape
www.mencanstoprape.org
Men Can Stop Rape mobilizes men to use their strength for creating cultures free from violence, especially men’s violence against women. Since 1997, MCSR has advocated for a redefinition of masculinity and male strength as part of preventing men’s violence against women. MCSR conducts trainings, develops social media campaigns and consults with schools and organizations.

Men for Gender Equality
www.mfj.se
Men for Gender Equality Sweden is a Swedish NGO in the field of engaging men and boys in gender equality and violence prevention. The Swedish name of the organization is Män för Jämställdhet. Men for Gender Equality focuses on social norms of masculinities; how they are formed, how they influence society, relations and individuals, and how they can be reformed to contribute to gender equality, freedom from violence and better health for women, girls, boys and men.

Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe
http://www.mijd.org/
The Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe Inc. (MIJD) is a collaboration of men’s outreach projects throughout the state of Massachusetts, organizing support from men in their communities for Jane Doe Inc. MIJD encourages men and boys to speak up in ending sexual assault, domestic abuse and oppression; connects and supports male leaders of all ages and backgrounds with projects to end violence; builds men’s partnerships with women in the work to end violence against women, men and children.

Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP)
Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) is a gender violence, gay-bashing and bully prevention program founded in 1993 at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society in Boston. The multi-racial, mixed gender MVP Program was the first large-scale attempt to enlist the sports culture in a positive, proactive way in the fight against gender-based violence. Although it began in the sports and continues to have a high-profile presence there, MVP has been widely implemented in general populations of students in high schools, colleges and community organizations. MVP introduced the bystander approach to the sexual and domestic violence fields. Currently there are three MVP-related organizations:

MVP Strategies
http://www.mvpstrategies.net/ (web site in development)
The program that Jackson Katz directs, MVP Strategies coordinates trainings in schools, colleges and communities across the U.S., as well as trainings in countries overseas. MVP Strategies also coordinates trainings worldwide in the U.S. Armed Forces.

MVP-National
https://www.facebook.com/mvpnational?ref=ts&fref=ts
MVP-National coordinates trainings in college and professional athletics. It is based at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

MVP-Northeastern
http://www.northeastern.edu/sportinsociety/leadership-education/mvp/
In addition to educational outreach in the Greater-Boston area and beyond, MVP-Northeastern conducts semi-annual institutes where participants are trained in the use of the MVP curriculum.

The National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS)
www.nomas.org
The National Organization for Men Against Sexism is an activist organization of men and women supporting positive changes for men. NOMAS advocates a perspective that is pro-feminist, gay affirmative, anti-racist, dedicated to enhancing men’s lives, and committed to justice on a broad range of social issues including class, age, religion and physical abilities. NOMAS sponsors a yearly national conference on Men and Masculinity in support of local and grassroots initiatives, bringing together activists, academics and workers in mental health, diversity, faith communities, and domestic and sexual violence fields. The Men’s Studies Association Meeting provides academics the opportunity to present scholarly papers on these issues.

Sonke Gender Justice (South Africa)
http://www.genderjustice.org.za/
Sonke Gender Justice Network is a non-partisan, non-profit organization established in 2006. Today, Sonke has established a growing presence on the African continent and plays an active role internationally. Sonke works to create the change necessary for men, women, young people and children to enjoy equitable, healthy and happy relationships that contribute to the development of just and democratic societies. Sonke pursues this goal across Southern Africa by using a human rights framework to build the capacity of government, civil society organizations and citizens to achieve gender equality, prevent gender-based violence and reduce the spread of HIV and the impact of AIDS.

Organizations dedicated to sexual and domestic violence:

Just Detention International
www.justdetention.org
Just Detention International is a health and human rights organization that seeks to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention. The rape of detainees — whether by corrections staff or by other inmates — is a crime and is recognized under international law as a form of torture. In the U.S., sexual assault in detention has reached epidemic levels, with an estimate of more than 200,000 people subjected to this form of violence every year. JDI advocates for the safety and well-being of inmates, and works to hold government officials accountable for prisoner rape; promote public attitudes that value the dignity and safety of inmates; and ensure that survivors of this violence have access to the help they need.

National Sexual Violence Resource Center
www.nsvrc.org
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) is a national information and resource hub relating to all aspects of sexual violence. Founded by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, the oldest and one of the largest state sexual assault coalitions, the NSVRC is funded through a cooperative agreement from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Violence Prevention. The NSVRC staff collects and disseminates resources on sexual violence including statistics, research, position statements, statutes, training curricula, prevention initiatives and program information. With these resources, the NSVRC assists coalitions, advocates and others interested in understanding and eliminating sexual violence. The NSVRC has an active and diverse advisory council that assists and advises staff and ensures a broad national perspective. The NSVRC also enjoys a strong partnership with state, territory and tribal anti-sexual assault coalitions and allied organizations.

National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence
www.ncdsv.org
The National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence helps professionals who work with victims and perpetrators: law enforcement; criminal justice professionals such as prosecutors, judges and probation officers; health care professionals including emergency response teams, nurses and doctors; domestic violence and sexual assault advocates and service providers; and counselors and social workers. In addition to these professionals, the National Center also works with local, state and federal agencies; state and national organizations; educators, researchers, faith community leaders, media, community leaders, elected officials, policymakers, and all branches of the military. Their resource list includes info about male victims of domestic and sexual violence.

RAINN
www.rainn.org
RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. RAINN created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE and online.rainn.org) in partnership with more than 1,100 local rape crisis centers across the country and operates the DoD Safe Helpline for the Department of Defense. RAINN also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help victims and ensure that rapists are brought to justice.

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
www.ncadv.org
NCADV’s work includes coalition building at the local, state, regional and national levels; support for the provision of community-based, non-violent alternatives – such as safe home and shelter programs – for battered women and their children; public education and technical assistance; policy development and innovative legislation; focus on the leadership of NCADV’s caucuses developed to represent the concerns of organizationally under-represented groups; and efforts to eradicate social conditions which contribute to violence against women and children.

National Domestic Violence Hotline
www.thehotline.org
The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides 24-hour support, offering advocacy, safety planning, resources and hope to everyone affected by domestic violence. The Hotline was established in 1996 as a component of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) passed by Congress. The Hotline is a nonprofit organization that provides crisis intervention, information and referral to victims of domestic violence, perpetrators, friends and families. It also is a resource for domestic violence advocates government officials, law enforcement agencies and the general public. Contact the Hotline at: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY). Advocates who are Deaf are available Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (PST) by videophone (855-812-1001), instant messenger (DeafHotline) or email ([email protected]).

Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community
www.idvaac.org
The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community (IDVAAC) is an organization focused on the unique circumstances of African Americans as they face issues related to domestic violence, including intimate partner violence, child abuse, elder maltreatment and community violence. IDVAAC’s mission is to enhance society’s understanding of and ability to end violence in the African-American community. Formed in 1993, when a group of scholars and practitioners met to discuss the plight of the African-American community in the area of domestic violence, the group agreed that the “one-size-fits-all” approach to domestic violence services would not suffice, as African Americans disproportionately experience stressors that can create conditions that lead to violence in the home.

National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities
www.nationallatinonetwork.org
The National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities, a project of Casa de Esperanza, is a national institute on domestic violence focusing on Latin communities. They provide training and consultations to practitioners and activists throughout the US, as well as in Latin America. They organize national and regional events and engage in federal and state public policy advocacy, as well as conduct research on issues that affect Latin@s in the US and abroad.

Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence
www.apiidv.org
Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence (API Institute) is a national resource center on domestic violence, sexual violence, trafficking, and other forms of gender-based violence in Asian and Pacific Islander communities. It serves a national network of advocates, community-based organizations, national and state programs, legal, health, and mental health professionals, researchers, policy advocates and activists from social justice organizations working to eliminate violence against women. It analyzes and addresses critical issues; provides consultation, technical assistance and training; conducts research; and engages in policy advocacy

Mending the Sacred Hoop: Working to End Violence Against Native American Women
www.mshoop.org
Mending The Sacred Hoop works from a social change perspective to end violence against Native women and children while restoring the safety, sovereignty, and sacredness of Native women. They are committed to strengthening the voice and vision of Native peoples through grassroots efforts to restore the leadership of Native women. The Mending the Sacred Hoop Technical Assistance Project (TA-Project) provides training and technical assistance nationally to Office on Violence Against Women Tribal grantees to support them in their efforts to address violence against women in their communities.

Equality Now
www.equalitynow.org
Equality Now works for the protection and promotion of human rights of women and girls around the world. Working with grassroots women’s and human rights organizations and individual activists since 1992, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and mobilizes international action to support efforts to stop these abuses.

Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
www.catwinternational.org
CATW works to end human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children worldwide. CATW is the world’s first organization to fight human trafficking internationally and is the world’s leading abolitionist organization. CATW engages in advocacy, education, victim services and prevention programs for victims of trafficking and prostitution in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and North America, including in the United States.

Stop It Now!
www.stopitnow.org
Stop It Now! is dedicated to preventing the sexual abuse of children by mobilizing adults, families and communities to take actions that protect children before they are harmed. They provide support, information and resources to keep children safe and create healthier communities. Since 1992, they have identified, refined and shared effective ways for individuals, families and communities to act to prevent child sexual abuse before children are harmed — and to get help for everyone involved.

Hollaback
www.ihollaback.org
Hollaback is a movement to end street harassment powered by a network of local activists around the world. They work together to better understand street harassment, to ignite public conversations, and to develop innovative strategies to ensure equal access to public spaces. They advocate the use of smartphones to document, map and share incidents of street harassment – because the real motive of street harassment is intimidation. Their vision is a world where street harassment is not tolerated and where everyone enjoys equal access to public spaces.

Prostitution Research & Education
www.prostitutionresearch.com
Prostitution Research & Education (PRE) conducts research on prostitution, pornography and trafficking and offers education and consultation to researchers, survivors, the public and policymakers. PRE’s goal is to abolish the institution of prostitution while at the same time advocating for alternatives to trafficking and prostitution – including emotional and physical healthcare for women in prostitution. The roots of prostitution are found in the assumption that men are entitled to buy women for sex, in racism and in women’s poverty.

V-Day
www.vday.org
V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sex slavery.

Watch 5 brave TED Talks that delve into stories of abuse »

For $99, the company 23andMe can generate all of your basic DNA testing information: ancestral origins, disease predisposition and even if you are more likely to sneeze under a bright light. But it is the only company in the U.S.  that can tell you if you carry a gene variant that makes you more likely to develop Parkinson’s Disease.

Like many other companies in Silicon Valley’s thriving biotechnology scene, 23andMe holds a patent for a human gene. Anyone who wishes to find if they carry the Parkinson’s-related gene must use 23andMe’s testing kit. In fact, that’s how Google’s Sergey Brin, who also happens to be married to 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, found out he has the gene.

It is a scenario that is common across the industry; companies pour money into research and then rely on patents to protect their discoveries and diagnostic tools, and to generate revenue. More than 40,000 patents cover 41 percent of the human genome, according to a Cornell University study released in March.

That could change this year. A case currently before the Supreme Court asks the justices to consider if a human gene should be patentable. At the center of the case is Myriad, a Utah company that holds two patents for genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. Supporters say intellectual property protection makes it possible for companies to confidently sink millions into research. They also say the patents are issued for the minute segment of DNA that makes up a gene, which researchers must extract from a much larger strand. Once it is removed from the body and chemically altered, it becomes distinct.

“They were never available to the world until Myriad’s scientists applied their inventive faculties to a previously undistinguished mass of genetic matter and created a new chemical entity,” Myriad says in a Supreme Court brief.

Opponents say it is still the same gene, and isolating it does not constitute a patentable invention. They also say being able to patent genes makes genes inaccessible to research and raises testing costs for patients. “I see Myriad’s claim that a gene should be patentable because they isolated and purified it away from its natural context to have no more validity than claiming that if you cut a leaf off a tree you have now created a new ‘thing’ and should be able to patent it,” said Robert Nussbaum, head of genomic medicine at University of California-San Francisco and founder of an open-access gene database. “I see a gene that is isolated or patented as being a discovery of something in nature, not an invention.”

The justices are expected to rule before the end of their term in June.

What’s at stake

For years, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Supreme Court have issued and upheld patents for just about anything produced by man. Dan Burk, a University of California-Irvine professor and intellectual property expert, said the Supreme Court is aware that banning gene-related patents would upset 30 years of expectations.

As a result, many experts believe the justices will try to strike a balance by banning some types of gene patents, but not all. When a company patents a gene, it is patenting a stretch of DNA that has a specific purpose. Burk and other law and bioscience experts I spoke with for this piece believe the court will rule that genetic DNA, which is extracted from a cell, is unpatentable. But complementary DNA, which is made in a lab and has a different structure, will remain patentable, they believe. Both can have the exact same purpose, but gDNA is present in nature and cDNA is not.

Companies tend to patent both gDNA and cDNA versions of genes. Myriad, for example, has gDNA and cDNA versions of its patents. Burk pointed out that one without the other is not very valuable. If gDNA patents are banned, no one is going to license a cDNA patent. Instead, they can develop a similar product or process using gDNA for free.

“I don’t think it’s going to make it such that it’s totally unprofitable and impossible to do work in the future,” said Jacob Sherkow, a fellow at the Stanford Center for Law and Biosciences. “It’s just going to make things harder, and eventually, with enough time, they’ll find a way to get around this legally, if not scientifically.”

Silicon Valley’s role

Silicon Valley is closely tied to the advent of human gene patents. The University of California-San Francisco and South San Francisco biotechnology company Genentech received patents for human growth hormone and insulin genes in the early 1980s, dramatically rewriting industry expectations for intellectual property.

Today, Genentech is a giant of biotechnology. It holds about 10,500 patents covering areas such as genes and gene applications. Its insulin patent expired in 2005 after bringing in $2 billion in sales.

Patent-holding diagnostic companies like Amgen, Navigenics, Target Discovery, 23andMe and Genomic Health also have stakes in the Myriad case. It’s a lucrative business: A 2012 study by UnitedHealth Group found the U.S. was spending $5 billion a year on genetic tests for 2,500 conditions. By 2021, that number could be $25 billion.

Most of the patent holders say they support scientific research and people’s access to their genome, but say they need to make money to be able to continue to research gene applications.

“We do fundamentally believe that individuals should have access to their own genetic data and that patents should not be used to prevent individuals from knowing what’s in their genome or to obstruct the advancement of scientific discovery,” 23andMe spokesperson Catherine Afarian said. “23andMe’s mission is to make scientific discoveries that have a positive impact on the lives of people everywhere. We believe patent protection is one method that can help us achieve that.”

With Myriad’s patent in place, no other company can test for the breast and ovarian cancer genes. Instead, the consumer–or, more likely, their insurance company–pays around $4,000. Other genes carry upfront fees as high as tens of thousands of dollars for research labs and hundreds of thousands for commercial labs, plus royalties on every test sold. The fees vary depending on whether a patent is licensed exclusively or non-exclusively, says Dietrich Stephan, a geneticist and founder of several biotech companies. If gDNA or cDNA patents are banned, anyone will be able to test for disorders without a license.

Showing how complex the gene patent business is, a restrictive court ruling could both hurt and help a company like 23andMe. On one hand, the startup could lose its exclusivity on the Parkinson’s patent, which would cut into its revenues. But if Myriad’s breast cancer gene patent no longer exists, 23andMe (and anyone else) could screen for the gene in their testing kit without paying the licensing fee.

Priced at $99, 23andMe has one of the cheapest tests available. But that’s been subsidized by tens of millions of dollars of venture capital, which dropped the price from an original $999. San Francisco start-up InVitae, which aims to “aggregate the world’s genetic tests into a single assay,” according to its website, filed a brief with the Supreme Court against Myriad. It currently charges $1,500 to screen for 264 conditions.

Whatever combination of gene patents is banned, the genetic testing industry is about to become much more open. Soon the entire human genome will be routinely sequenced for $1,000; the Archon Genomics XPRIZE offers $10 million to the first institution to do so quickly and accurately. The question is whether analytics tools will become equally affordable.

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A move to Gmail frequently results in temporary disorientation. The labels feature takes getting used to, especially for those arriving from Outlook, which allows for the creation of folders. Now Google aims to clean things up a bit and help customers be better organized with the load of email received daily.

Itamar Gilad, Product Manager at Google, announces that “on the desktop, the new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs. You simply choose which categories you want and voilà! Your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when”.

The new tabs will be completely customizable — users can create them, as well as drag and drop messages between them. Customers can also set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they will appear in the Primary tab as well.

With the new mobile Gmail, which arrives for Android and iOS devices, wireless customers will get the Primary mail tab when the app is opened, but will also be able to easily navigate to the other tabs.

If you like your Google email the way it is, then Classic View will switch off these new features and return you to the old days. The desktop, Android and iOS versions will become available within the next few weeks, but Google tells us that users can try it out sooner by keeping an eye on the gear menu and selecting Configure inbox when it appears in the Settings options.

Are you a celebrity with a large online audience? Soon, Facebook’s verification feature will determine just how famous you are. The company announced Wednesday that it’s rolling out a new verification feature for prominent celebrities and public figures, obviously quite similarly to Twitter’s verified feature.

The company said that verificiation would be available for a “small group of prominent public figures (celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands and businesses) with large audiences,” and that it will begin rolling out slowly.

Twitter has been verifying celebrities and notable people on its platform for years now, and some of those people, particularly celebrities and musicians, have amassed strong followings on Twitter. Facebook has been trying to create more of that relationship between celebrities and fans with its “following” feature for pages and the latest news feed redesign that provides a tab to follow public figures.

The verification will appear next to a user’s profile with a blue check mark (that also looks very much like the Twitter version):

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In recent weeks both J.C. Penney and Procter & Gamble replaced a sitting CEO with his predecessor. This back-to-the-future approach to succession isn’t common — and surely most company boards aren’t seeking to make it so. After all, returning the reins to a former leader smacks of desperation and failed succession planning. But that doesn’t make it the wrong move. In fact, sometimes it works spectacularly well — consider the triumphant returns of Steve Jobs to Apple and Howard Schultz to Starbucks. While both Jobs and Schultz were founders of the companies they came back to save and both A.G. Lafley and Myron Ullman were not, the rationale for their returns are not entirely dissimilar.

One thing we know is that companies prefer insiders — people already at the organization — when they hire CEOs. Splashy outside hires may get more press, but Booz & Company has studied trends in CEO successions at the world’s largest public companies for thirteen years now, and a preference for insiders has been one constant. In the 2012 Chief Executive Study, called “Time for New CEOs,” we found that 71% of incoming CEOs that year were insiders, and a full 25% had worked at the same company for their whole career. This makes sense. Insiders know their company, including its capabilities and potential weaknesses, and thus should be better prepared to lead effectively. It’s no surprise that we have typically found insiders to have generated higher total shareholder returns over their tenures.

We also know that you can’t understand the challenges of being a CEO until you’ve actually been one. You can never be fully prepared for the intensity, scope, and ultimate accountability of the job — you have to experience it for yourself. And only 16% of the incoming class of new CEOs in 2012 had previous experience being one. In fact, neither Ron Johnson nor Bob McDonald had been a CEO before taking that role at J.C. Penney and P&G, respectively.

At a minimum, then, returning CEOs have two features that boards should like a lot: insider status at the companies they are rejoining and, presumably, a track record of having run those companies well. Even if they’ve been officially out of work, they’re often close to their former organization. As long as market conditions aren’t radically different than during their earlier tenure, they are likelier than anyone else to understand the company’s true challenges and how it should respond. They are familiar with many of the players and can make personnel decisions swiftly. In other words, returning CEOs know the markets, the talent, and the available options well enough to act quickly — and can be effective captains during disruption. They also have sufficient separation so they won’t be directly associated with the current state of affairs.

In the case of P&G and J.C. Penney, their boards had the additional benefit of bringing back leaders who both have experience leading through crisis. The beginning of A.G. Lafley’s first turn as CEO wasn’t exactly a smooth ride — P&G was in serious decline when he stepped into the role in 2000 — but with strong leadership and a focus on innovation, he doubled the company’s sales over the course of his tenure. Myron Ullman led French luxury goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to double its luxury brand holdings in the 1990s; at J.C. Penney, he still managed to turn a profit even when the recession hit Penney customers hardest in 2010.

Both corporate boards probably had little time to find the right new person — inside or outside — once the sitting CEO’s position became untenable. It makes sense for directors in such a situation to give themselves some breathing room by bringing back a leader with insider status and CEO-level experience. They can feel assured that their companies are in good hands while they take the proper amount of time to figure out the company’s longer-term leadership needs. After all, the CEO decision is the most important one a board ever has to make.

Cisco is acquiring JouleX, a provider of enterprise IT energy management for data center assets, for approximately $107 million. The acquisition enhances Cisco’s software-as-a-service offerings with energy management, fitting particularly well with Cisco EnergyWise. The acquisition is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of this year.

Joulex developed an agentless system that detects devices on IP networks and tracks their power use. The combined solution will provide customers with a way to measure, monitor and manage energy usage for network and IT systems without the need for device side agents, hardware meters or network configurations.  It uses capabilities of the network to gain visibility into and control of energy usage across global IT environments. JouleX previously raised $17 million back in 2011.

“JouleX’s technology will strengthen Cisco Services’ Smart Offerings and complements our evolving services strategy,” said Faiyaz Shahpurwala, senior vice president, Industry Solutions at Cisco. “It extends our ‘Internet of Things’ capabilities and is a good alignment to Cisco EnergyWise. With network-enabled devices increasing exponentially, our partners and customers are asking for this solution today to operationalize their energy management capabilities in the network and reduce cost. JouleX’s cloud-enabled, agent-less architecture will allow our partners and customers to quickly deploy this solution at scale in addressing their IT energy management needs.”

JouleX employees will be integrated into the Connected Energy Solutions team within Cisco’s Industry Solutions Group, reporting to David Goddard, vp and general manager. Cisco will pay approximately $107 million in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of JouleX

JouleX is headquartered in Atlanta with offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, Munich and Kassel, Germany, and throughout the United States..

There is a big focus on network and IT energy efficiency, with enterprises seeking solutions to control energy consumption across infrastructure. JouleX gives Cisco some deeper intelligence around energy consumption, in a SaaS-based, agentless way, boosting its capabilities. The company is privately held with capital investments from Target Partners, TechOperators, Sigma Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners and Intel Capital.

Wisegate said it raised $3M in new funding from investors including Atlanta Technology Angels, Cowtown Angel Network, Central Texas Angel Network and Golden Seeds. It also added former Burton Group CEO, Jamie Burton, to its board.

PRESS RELEASE

IT Research Innovator Wisegate Extends Market Leadership with $3M in Funding, New Board of Director Appointment and Major Customer Growth

Austin Innovator on the Move with New Cash Infusion, Appointment of former Burton Group CEO Jamie Lewis to Board of Directors and Marquis Member Acquisition

AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Austin-based start-up Wisegate, a private, practitioner-based IT research service for senior technology professionals, today announced key company updates including $3M in new funding, the addition of marquis companies to its growing list of world class customers, and the appointment of former Burton Group CEO, Jamie Burton, to its Board of Directors. Wisegate continues to extend its leadership position in IT research innovation by offering the first Information Technology (IT) research service for senior technology professionals that lets them tap directly into the most valuable source of information: the collective intelligence and experiences of their peers.

“We are seeing tremendous momentum on all fronts of the company,” said Sara Gates, Founder and CEO of Wisegate. “Wisegate is extending its leadership position in IT research innovation because we offer something unique in the market. This was strongly validated by a group of investors who see that Wisegate is addressing critical issues that are of great concern to today’s technology leaders.”

Wisegate brought in $3 million of funding from a syndicate of investors including Atlanta Technology Angels, Cowtown Angel Network, Central Texas Angel Network and Golden Seeds. The funding will be used to further expand Wisegate’s member base of senior IT professionals, and to build out new member services.

Wisegate has also added new members from Financial Services, Healthcare, Government, Higher Education, Consumer Goods and other industries. Wisegate Members are senior technology leaders from organizations like, AGCO, Alliance Laundry Systems, Ally Bank, Bank of America, Brown University, CalPERS, Carillion Clinic, CIGNA Corporation, City of Tampa, City of Toronto, Government of Alberta, Houston Healthcare, Longterm Healthcare Partners, Philips Electronics, Samsung and

The Nature Conservancy.

“Often senior technology leaders struggle to get straight answers about IT,” said David Sherry, Chief Information Security Officer at Brown University. “We need to connect to peers, who are the best source of pragmatic information on what works, what doesn’t, and key lessons learned. Wisegate provides that in an innovative, useful way.”

“There’s nothing out there like Wisegate today,” said Jeff Bardin, former CISO, Hanover Insurance and CSO, State Street Bank and well known cyber security expert. “It’s the members that define and make it valuable. Wisegate is definitely filled with experts, people that have suffered through the same things you have, the failures as well as the successes. I’m finding a lot more value in Wisegate than any other service out there.”

In addition, the Company added to its Board of Directors former Burton Group CEO and renowned IT research innovator Jamie Lewis, who brings over 25 years of experience in the IT research industry to the Wisegate Board.

“I am very excited to be joining the Board of Directors of Wisegate,” said Lewis. “Wisegate is revolutionizing the IT industry by putting the collection, curation and communication of valuable information directly into the hands of IT practitioners.”

Wisegate officially launched in December, 2011. Senior technology professionals who are interested in joining this elite group of peers can request an invitation athttp://www.wisegateit.com/request-invite/.

About Wisegate

Wisegate is a practitioner-based IT research service that lets qualified senior technology professionals share information without the bias of analysts, vendors, media or advertisers. Using a crowdsourcing model and advanced algorithms, Wisegate gives these technology professionals trusted, timely, relevant and affordable access to the most authentic intelligence about IT: the collective knowledge and experience of their peers.

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Humanoid robots. Useful in theory, not so much in practice. They’re kind of creepy, too. But if you’re desperate to have a silicon-powered helper pour your beer, have no fear — that day might be closer than you think.

Scientists are hard at work creating robots that are able to sense and predict human actions, which should make them better performing tasks and look more natural while doing it. Researchers at Cornell University have trained a robot that to recognize objects in its line of sight, as well as certain human actions, and then assign probabilities to the next set of possible actions. The video below (ignore the campiness of it) shows the robot in action trying to refill a cup of coffee — it must recognize the book and coffee cup on a person’s desk, predict which one he’s going to pick up, predict him taking a drink, then predict him setting the cup down for long enough for a pour to occur.

It’s kind of like IBM’s Watson system, only it’s predicting human actions instead of the correct answers to questions. In fact, both rely on databases full of relevant information — human movements and objects in the case of the robot — in order to make their predictions. And instead of accepting natural-language queries like Watson does, the Cornell robot uses a Microsoft Kinect camera to visually detect what’s going on. (Interesting side note: Microsoft researchers used a Kinect and machine learning to train an elevator in the company’s research building to detect the difference between someone who intends to get on and someone who’s stopping to chat in front of it.)

Teaching robots to predict human gestures isn’t just about saving us a trip to the coffee pot, refrigerator or elevator control panel, though. As Stacey Higginbotham explained last week when covering a similar experiment by Disney Research, the more human-like the robot, the more comfortable people will be interacting with it. Important if you’re in the theme-park business, yes, but also if you’re trying to automate some of the caregiving functions that aging baby boomers will require in the next couple decades.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Ociacia.

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Roku has raised an additional $60 million in funding, and the company is now looking to take the jump from its companion boxes straight into the heart of the TV by providing consumer electronics makers with yet another choice for a smart TV platform. The funding round, which was first reported by AllThingsD, is led by new investor Fidelity. Hearst Corp. joins as a new investor, and existing investors BSkyB and News Corp. are back for more as well.

Developing story, check back for more.

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Man-O-man, it seems like all the big guns are jumping on the “looks what’s next” bandwagon. First we got the trailer for Gran Turismo 6, then Forza Motorsport 5 and now, the new Need for Speed Rivals trailer is out. There is no question that all of these bad boys are gunning for the top spot. Which one will get the title however is anyone’s guess.

Source: Youtube.com

Numecent, a provider of cloudpaging solutions, said on Wednesday that it has closed $13.6 million in a major funding round. The lead investor was T-Venture, the venture capital division of Deutsche Telekom. According to Numecent, the funding will be used to support the rapidly growing business of the company and to make cloudpaging available on a slew of mobile platforms. A portfolio company of Endeavour Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm, Numecent is based in both Irvine, Calif. and the U.K.

PRESS RELEASE
May 29, 2013 – Irvine, CA – Numecent™, the cloudpaging innovator, today announced it has closed $13.6M in a major funding round led by T-Venture™ – the VC arm of Deutsche Telekom®. Earlier this month, Numecent was named a Gartner “Cool Vendor 2013” in recognition of its groundbreaking technology.

Numecent’s patented cloudpaging offerings can rapidly Cloudify and optionally SaaSify any Microsoft® Windows®-based application and deliver it from the Cloud almost instantly, with zero installation on the client devices. With cloudpaging, customers can optionally deploy subscription-based models such as SaaS for their applications with no changes to the underlying software.

This allows native applications to behave like Web-apps while still maintaining the full feature set, inter-application compatibility and performance of locally-installed software – the apps can even run offline. Cloudpaging is a Web-scale technology which can scale to millions of users with minimal server and network footprint.

Numecent came out of stealth in 2012 to widespread industry acclaim and cloudpaging has been hailed as a broad and disruptive technology, which is changing the way native applications are deployed and utilized from the Cloud. The company’s primary customers are Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Telcos and Enterprises.

“Numecent has a potentially game-changing new technology with a huge “wow” factor. We are delighted to support them with this investment through our T-Venture subsidiary,” said Dr. Aleksandar Mitrovic, Senior Vice President for Technology and Platforms at Deutsche Telekom’s Product & Innovation division. “As Telcos around the world evolve to become Cloud services providers for consumers, SMBs and enterprises alike, disruptive technologies such as Numecent’s cloudpaging will offer unique differentiation opportunities and compelling benefits for our users.”

“With this fresh injection of capital into the company, we plan to make cloudpaging pervasive and woven into the fabric of ISV, Telco and MSP clouds,” said Osman Kent, co-founder and CEO of Numecent. “The way users interact with and use native applications has hardly changed since downloads and software installations were inflicted on users decades ago. We believe cloudpaging is poised to change that for the better as the industry embraces friction-free and on-demand delivery models.”

This new financing will be used to support the rapidly growing business of the company and will fund organizational growth in sales, marketing and engineering. Part of the funding will also be used to make cloudpaging available on Linux®, Google® Android® and other mobile platforms.

Numecent will be conducting a press tour during June to launch an exciting new addition to its cloudpaging offerings – please contact Numecent PR Counsel Jonathan Hirshon at [email protected] for details of the tour and for pre-briefings.

About Numecent

Numecent www.numecent.com is a pioneer and technology leader in rapid, secure and friction-free provisioning of native applications from the cloud through virtualization. Its groundbreaking and patented cloudpaging technology can deliver a native application from the Cloud between 20x to 100x faster compared to a linear digital download and execute on the client platform without installation.

Unlike expensive remoting solutions which cannot scale, cloudpaging does not push pixels from the Cloud – the technology actually transmits pre-virtualized native software instructions (a page at a time and on demand) which are then executed on the user’s machine in a transient manner and at full performance. As a result, cloudpaged native applications can reduce network usage by up to 95% and can become Web-scale with minimal server footprint.

Follow us on Twitter (@numecent) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/numecent)

We are always looking for exceptional people. For career opportunities at Numecent see http://www.numecent.com/contact/careers.html

About T-Venture

T-Venture Holding GmBH www.t-venture.com was founded in 1997 as a 100% subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom Ag. Since then, T-Venture has invested in young growth companies that demonstrate economic and technological synergy with the business objectives of Deutsche Telekom. The company is headquartered in Bonn and with offices in Silicon Valley and Seattle. The company primarily invests in Europe, USA and Asia and is one of the largest corporate VCs in the world.

About Endeavour Ventures

Endeavour Ventures www.endven.com is a London (UK)-based boutique venture firm, specializing in raising seed and growth financing for technology companies through their extensive network of angels and high-net-worth individuals. The company has been associated with Numecent since its inception and helped Numecent raise $11M through angels.

 

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GlaxoSmithKline, the global healthcare company, said on Wednesday that it has acquired Okairos AG, a Swiss-based developer of vaccine platform technologies for €250 million (approximately $325 million) in cash. The transaction will also include some early stage assets. Prior to the acquisition, Okairos was backed by the following life science VC firms: BioMedInvest, the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, LSP, Novartis Venture Funds and Versant Ventures.

PRESS RELEASE

Issued: Wednesday 29 May 2013, London UK
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) today announced that it has acquired Okairos AG (Okairos), a specialist developer of vaccine platform technologies for €250 million (approximately £215 million/$325 million) in cash.
Swiss-based Okairos, a private company, has developed a novel vaccine platform technology which is expected to play an important role in GSK’s development of new prophylactic vaccines (designed to prevent infection) as well as new classes of therapeutic vaccines (designed to treat infection or disease). Okairos’ technology complements GSK’s existing vaccine technology and expertise, and will enable GSK to continue its work developing the next generation of vaccines. The deal also includes a small number of early stage assets.
The acquisition reinforces GSK’s commitment to investment in innovative science. GSK’s vaccines business sits alongside pharmaceuticals and consumer healthcare as part of a balanced business and product portfolio capable of delivering sustainable sales growth.
Christophe Weber, President, GSK Vaccines said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for patients and our research organisation as it is expected to contribute to the development efforts for an exciting new generation of vaccines, building on the excellent science and expertise of both companies.”
Riccardo Cortese, Chief Executive Officer and founder, Okairos, said: “I am extremely pleased with this agreement, which will enable GSK to build on the hard work we have put into developing our vaccines and platforms to the stage that they are at today. With its considerable resources and know-how, I am confident that GSK is best-placed to maximise this opportunity to potentially transform the vaccines landscape.”
Under the terms of the transaction, GSK will take full ownership of the company and thus assume ownership of early stage assets for diseases such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), malaria, tuberculosis, ebola and HIV, supplementing the company’s existing vaccines pipeline. GSK and the Okairos management team are committed to an innovative collaboration and will work together over the next few months to develop ways of working that will maintain the autonomy, spirit and agility of this unique small biotech firm which will be strengthened by the support and advantages that GSK can provide.
Okairos was supported by investments from the following life science venture capital firms: BioMedInvest, the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, LSP, Novartis Venture Funds and Versant Ventures.
GlaxoSmithKline – one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies – is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer. For further information please visit www.gsk.comPage 2
Okairos – is a non-listed clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, developing genetic vaccines for major infectious diseases – including malaria, hepatitis C, HIV, respiratory syncytial virus and cancer – using a novel proprietary technology. The company is also pursuing therapeutic vaccines to treat cancer. For more information, visit www.okairos.com
Platform technology: Okairos’ platform technology is based on novel viral vectors (mechanisms which deliver genetic material into cells) that are designed to help stimulate immune responses, (in particular T-cells) and aim to protect against and treat infectious diseases and cancer.. The potential of this technology has been tested in clinical studies in which over 700 subjects have been vaccinated, including Phase II programmes in hepatitis C and malaria.

 

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Software vendor Moogsoft said on Wednesday that it has received $7 million in Series A funding. The lead investor of the round was Redpoint Ventures. Also, John Walecka, general partner at Redpoint Ventures, has joined Moogsoft’s board of directors.

PRESS RELEASE
London, England / San Francisco, CA / New York, NY – May 29, 2013 – Moogsoft, the leading Agile Service Management software company, announced today a $7 million Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures. John Walecka, General Partner at Redpoint Ventures, has joined Moogsoft’s Board of Directors.
Moogsoft, which began customer deliveries of MOOG® in February 2012, helps enterprises significantly reduce IT Incident Management costs, increase the frequency of IT change and increase the efficiency of their staff.
Moogsoft’s MOOG® automatically identifies the existence of IT Incidents, goal orchestrates the stakeholder responses and captures the resolution knowledge. MOOG® requires no rules, no business logic or models and no learned patterns to administer and maintain. MOOG® reduces the mean time to identify and diagnose incidents, reduces the actionable responder activities and, reduces the mean time to resolve the incident. MOOG® reduces adverse impact on end-users and the business bottom line.
“I knew from our first meeting that Redpoint Ventures and John Walecka were the right partners for Moogsoft. I love their enthusiasm, energy and of course, their insight and experience. I am really looking forward to achieving our vision for this business with a venture partner who is focused on the intelligent exploitation of big data to create sustainable companies playing in commercially scalable markets,” said Phil Tee, Co-Founder and CEO of Moogsoft.
Moogsoft will use the investment from Redpoint Ventures to exploit its proven technology innovations at a time when businesses are struggling to cost effectively manage their IT infrastructures as they move to joint vendor supply arrangements underpinned by hybrid cloud and SDN.
“The team at Moogsoft has taken a blue sky approach to the IT Operations and Service Management problem, built an unbelievable technology and has achieved impressive results in a short period of time,” said John Walecka, General Partner at Redpoint Ventures. “With its innovation leadership, deep industry experience and rapid implementation time, we see huge growth potential in Moogsoft.”
Moogsoft has found that Incident Management processes underpinned by brittle rules and models adversely impact business agility. In a survey of major businesses, greater than 50 percent of IT incidents were reported by end users, not the operations and service management tools already in place. With the Series A investment from Redpoint Ventures Moogsoft is focused on closing this gap and ensuring customers become pre-emptive rather than reactive to all incidents.
The Moogsoft innovation is the industrialization of an Agile Service Management platform. The application of machine learning with recent inventions in Big Data and natural language processing (NLP) to real-time infrastructure events (from devices, databases, applications and, human generated instant messages and trouble tickets) enables Moogsoft’s customers to pre-emptively identify the existence of service impacting Incidents and apply goal oriented social orchestration to the resolution and impact management processes.
About Moogsoft
Moogsoft is the leader in Agile Service Management software, exploiting modern concepts, including Big Data and Social Networking, to aid our customers in leveraging greater value from their existing service management resources, reducing their operations costs and, increasing the quality of the services they deliver.
MOOG® transforms Alert driven Incident Management into Goal Oriented Situation Management. MOOG® is a registered trademark of Moogsoft Incorporated.
The Moogsoft team are the original team behind IBM Tivoli Netcool.
www.moogsoft.com
Connect with Moogsoft
Read the blog: moogsoft.wordpress.com
Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Moogsoft
About Redpoint Ventures
Founded in 1999, Redpoint Ventures is a leading technology focused venture capital and growth equity investment firm with over $3B in capital under management. Redpoint focuses on investing globally in technology ventures across the Internet, digital media, mobile, and enterprise sectors to accelerate growth and build industry defining companies. Its partners have been involved in 41 IPOs and 66 upside acquisitions. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, CA with offices in Los Angeles and Shanghai, China. For more information visit http://www.redpoint.com/.
Moogsoft was advised by Orrick, Herrington & Suttcliffe LLP

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Dresner Partners said on Wednesday that it has named Brian Graves as the company’s managing director. Graves experience includes leadership and advisory roles with Ernst & Young’s Strategic Advisory Services, Credit Suisse’s HOLT Value Group, Mesirow Financial and Motorola. Dresner Partners is a middle-market investment bank based in Chicago.

PRESS RELEASE

CHICAGO – May 29, 2013 – Dresner Partners announced today that it has hired Brian Graves as Managing Director. Mr. Graves has more than 20 years of experience working with senior executives, board members, business owners and private equity groups.
He has advised senior executives and institutional investors across most economic sectors, including business and financial services, consumer products, e-learning, energy, healthcare, industrials and technology. Mr. Graves’ expertise covers a wide range of strategic growth, divestiture, turnaround, merger and capital raising initiatives, and he has advised clients on M&A, investment and capital structure opportunities ranging from $15 million to over $800 million.
“We are very pleased to have Brian join our firm,” said Steven M. Dresner, President of Dresner Partners. “His experience as an M&A advisor, strategy consultant, investment executive and operating leader has provided him with a strong background that will benefit the growth and success of our firm.”
“Dresner Partners is perfectly aligned with my focus of working with middle market and private equity firms,” said Mr. Graves. “I am excited about the opportunity to leverage my strategic advisory approach for M&A, capital restructuring and institutional investing with our investment bank’s global market access.”
Mr. Graves’ experience includes leadership and advisory roles with Ernst & Young’s Strategic Advisory Services, Credit Suisse’s HOLT Value Group, Mesirow Financial and Motorola. He has advised such leading institutional investment groups as Citibank Asset Management and Morgan Stanley Investment Management in addition to leading Fortune 1000 companies, middle-market companies and privately held high-growth early- to mid-stage companies. He has also been a guest speaker on a wide range of growth strategy, management practices and turnaround topics.
Mr. Graves holds an M.B.A. with a Specialization in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and is a Certified Merger and Acquisition Advisor.
About Dresner Partners
Dresner Partners is a FINRA-registered, middle-market investment bank headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Founded more than twenty years ago, Dresner Partners provides financial advisory services to business owners and managers throughout the world, including institutional private placements of debt and equity, merger and acquisitions, valuations and strategic consulting services. Dresner Partners is also a member of IMAP, an exclusive global organization of leading merger and acquisition advisory firms. Its affiliate company, Dresner Corporate Services, is a strategic communications firm specializing in public and investor relations. More information is available at www.dresnerpartners.com.

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Cisco on Wednesday said it plans to buy JouleX, a company that has developed software for tracking data center energy use, for $107 million in cash and incentives. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year.

JouleX software lets customers monitor energy use of all devices attached to a network. Reports on usage can stream in from a data center, rack, slot or business-unit level, among others. Customers can keep an eye on carbon emissions, set alerts based on energy use and enforce policies in order to lower costs.

Cisco already has EnergyWise energy-management protocol for tracking energy use inside networks. The JouleX software will be able to integrate with EnergyWise.

The combination of the two “will provide customers with a simple way to measure, monitor and manage energy usage for network and IT systems across the enterprise, without the use of device-side agents, hardware meters or network configurations,” according to a statement.

Webscale data center operators have been keen on highlighting their energy efficiency, with disclosures coming from Facebook, eBay and Google. Greater adoption of the JouleX software as a result of the acquisition could lead enterprise data center operators to boast of their own improvements on power-usage effectiveness (PUE).

At the same time, lower energy costs on premise could also reduce the likelihood that an enterprise customer would feel pressure to look to a public or hybrid cloud model. And that’s good for Cisco, which wants to ensure that companies keep buying switches and other network gear.

Meanwhile, the deal is a boon to Atlanta-based JouleX’s investors. Most recently the company raised $17 million from Flybridge Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Sigma Partners, Target Partners and TechOperators.

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The Lumia 520 is Nokia’s most important smartphone in 2013 — it’s the budget Windows Phone that is supposed to recapture low-end smartphone share in emerging markets. A bit of digging has revealed that India-based retailer ​Flipkart just hiked prices on the Lumia 520, which has been in and out of stock since launching in early April. The 520’s price had been 9,999 rupees since it first debuted, but has since moved to 10,299 rupees in late May. It is extremely rare for smartphone prices to bounce up two months after launching. Nokia’s Lumia 520 keeps selling out at Flipkart, India’s leading e-tailer site, even though its production should have ramped up strongly by now. Is this a sign of remarkably strong demand for the low-end Lumia, or a symptom of Nokia’s production bottlenecks?

Continue reading…

Over the weekend we showed you leaked screenshots of a new Gmail interface. Today the new tabbed interface, which Google says “puts you back in control,” has been announced. The new design features five tabs – primary, social, promotions, updates, and forums – in which Gmail will automatically sort your incoming mail. This is just another step in decluttering and simplifying your email experience.

The tabs are pretty self explanatory, social is for emails from social networks, promotions is for coupons, updates is for confirmations and receipts, and forums is for messages from discussion boards and mailing lists. Primary is of course for everyday email that you don’t want sorted. You can tell Gmail to remember sort your emails differently by dragging messages to different tabs, and tabs can be removed, but for some reason they can’t be reordered.

If you look closely at the screenshot above, you can see that enhanced swiping support and a new navigation menu have been added to the Android app. The menu looks very “Holo,” and goes along with all of the other Google apps that have been updated in recent weeks.

This new inbox view is of course optional, just like the “Priority inbox” view has been for the last three years. Android and iOS versions will arrive in the next few weeks, but you can get a sneak peek at the desktop version by watching a “Configure inbox” option pop up in the settings menu in the top right of the interface.

Source: Google Blog

Come comment on this article: Gmail gets new tabbed inbox, Android update “available within the next few weeks”

A client recently asked me to comment crisply on the future. I came up with these observations.

See if you can spot my error.

1. The world is speeding up. In 1989, Alan Kay said it takes at least 10 years for an innovation to get from the lab into everyday life. Twitter did it in 4.
2. Faster change means more turbulence. Assumptions are now less reliable. Best guesses are often shots in the dark. Planning sounds like an act of courage, strategy like a flight of imagination. When Alvin Toffler warned us of this in 1970, we scoffed. Now we’re living it.
3. Every individual and organization lives in a state of surprise, as Peter Schwartz puts it. Just a couple of years ago, professional planners at a big ad agency informed me that Twitter was a passing fancy. So I was interested to note that the first thing LL Cool J did as host of the Emmy’s this year was announce the hashtags for the show. Boy, was that agency surprised.
4. There is a considerable advantage to seeing the world in motion, picking up “noise” well before it becomes an intelligible “signal.” We have to extract more intelligence from less data. We will need “big data” and good ethnography to spot and track the world in the works. For instance, this would have meant grasping the fact (and some of the implications) of Twitter in, say, 1998.
5. And what we really need is a more responsive organization, one that can reinvent itself in real time, on the fly. This will take potent, new powers of adaptation, but it’s our only hope.

Spot the error?

I carried my assumptions into the future. I continued to think about the corporation as I normally do… and resolved merely to retrofit it with new parts in order to make it more sensing and more responsive in the future.

Boo! No, really, I mean it. Boo! Bad anthropologist. Bad!

What I should have done is examine my idea of a corporation, dig out the assumptions, and re-craft the idea. That’s one of the ways we make ourselves ready for the future.

Here is my present idea of the corporation, give or take. The corporation is a thing of people, processes, places, and products (give or take). And these 4 Ps are relatively well-defined, organized, boundaried, and anchored (more or less).

But that’s a problem. This corporation is deeply at odds with the future. Because the future is never defined, organized, boundaried, or anchored. Really, it’s all just hints and whispers. Fragile melody, no refrain.

Hence, the great antagonism between corporations and time. A creature that defines itself out of definition, organization, boundary, and anchoring, must hate a future that is shapeless and unmoored. To the corporations, the future looks like the enemy, a risk that can’t be managed, an idea that can’t be thought.

The corporation puts a particular boundary between now and the future. And it guards this border ferociously. New ideas are scrutinized with tough mindedness and high indignation. If we can’t see the business model, we’re not interested. If we can’t see how to “monitize this sucker,” we’re not interested. When the future manifests itself merely as a murmur of possibility, we are not interested.

Too bad. There is really only one way to live in a world of speed, surprise, noise, and responsiveness, and that’s to visit the future frequently. And, if we have the intellectual capital, maybe get a pied-à-terre. Well, and if we’re really committed, we need someone to take up residence full time.

Most of all, we want a corporation that is porous in ways it was not before. We want it to cantilever out into the future. We want to make pieces of the future to happen inside the corporation. We want pieces of the corporation to happen out there in the future. In sum, we want the corporation and the future, once so completely separated from one another, to have a new reciprocity and transparency.

It’s a weird idea, counter-intuitive in exactly the ways that provoke suspicion and dismissal. And it is an idea that will make a hash of the model of the corporation we mostly keep in our heads. But honestly, we have no real choice.