DCI:

Here are some interesting stats on IPO´s from Forbes.

“More technology companies went public this year despite a world economy still trying to find its footing, and that is a good sign the pace of tech initial public offerings might accelerate in 2010.

Ten tech companies have gone public so far this year, raising $3.8 billion. In 2008, there were three offerings that raised $749.2 million, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Tech deals account for the biggest number of IPOs so far this year and are second only to finance deals in value.

‘We’ve been expecting an uptick in technology because it has really been underrepresented in the market over the last few years,’ said Paul Bard, a research analyst at Connecticut-based Renaissance Capital.

There could be 40 to 50 tech IPOs next year, raising $4 or $5 billion, Bard said.

Tech IPOs did well in 2007, but nearly shut down when financial markets collapsed last year. Getting more small, high-growth tech companies into the IPO mix would be a major engine for jobs and a boon for investors, analysts said.

‘If they’re done right, tech IPOs historically have had the greatest increase in revenues and profits of all IPOs,’ said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique.

Three technology companies filed for IPOs this week.

Netherlands-based Sensata Technologies Holding B.V. on Wednesday filed an offering worth up to $500 million. The firm, whose customers include BMW, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Samsung, makes sensors and other industrial technology.

Chipmaker Telegent Systems Inc filed for a deal worth as much as $250 million, and software maker RedPrairie Holding Inc said it would try to raise $172.5 million in its IPO.

‘There is an enormous amount of capital on the sidelines right now, in mutual funds and hedge funds, looking to make high-return investments as they would find in technology IPOs,’ said America’s Growth Capital Chief Executive Ben Howe.

Howe warned that investors have become more cautious and companies without strong balance sheets could meet a lukewarm response. A good idea used to be enough for a tech company to go public, he said, but the financial crisis has changed that.

Sensata, which filed for the largest IPO this week, posted revenues of $796.9 million in the nine months ended Sept. 30, down 31 percent from $1.2 billion a year ago. In the same period it narrowed its net loss to $41.6 million from $82.3 million.”

Read the full article here.

Hello Friends here we come up with our another write up on “SMC Gyan Series”.

Topic is ECONOMIC INDICATORS… “Leading the World”.

Here, we would go through the Brief of like what are Economic Events & Indicators and important sources of data provider for calculating & determining economic indicators.

 

ECONOMIC INDICATORS… “Leading the World”

..

Economic Events & Indicators are statistics that precede an economic event.

The goal is to track the economy & derive a forecast for future performance.

Economic indicators have tremendous potential to generate volume and to move prices of commodities futures as well as the financial markets including Forex.

Tools of Construction: This would include separate sections of statistical methods including

- Calculating indices and re-basing them,

- Differences between arithmetic and geometric averages,

- Standard deviations,

- Regression analysis,

- Correlation and causation,

- Margins of error in statistics calculations and

- What this means for interpretation, subsequent revisions and why they happen.

Economic indicators include various indices, earnings reports, and economic summaries.

Examples : unemployment rate,  housing starts,  Consumer Price Index (a measure for inflation),  Consumer Leverage Ratio,  industrial production,  bankruptcies,  Gross Domestic Product,  broadband internet penetration,  retail sales,  stock market prices,  money supply changes etc;

The important sources of data provider for calculating & determining economic indicators are like:

- Bureau of Labor Statistics,

- Census of Construction Industries,

- Bureau of Economic Analysis &

- Reserve Bank.

The value of the indicator data is considered important if it presents new information, or is instrumental to drawing conclusions which couldn’t be drawn under other reports or data.

Each indicator is marked with “H”-”M”-”L” (High-Medium-Low), according to its level of importance, as commonly considered.

Next Blog we would try to know about the classified categories of Economic indicators in details and what is Time Era.

Stay Tuned for more and more on this

However For More latest Industry,Stock Market and Economy News Updates, Click Here

According to the WSJ’s article, “Rusal Listing Delay Won’t Derail IPO,” the various hurdles to Rusal’s IPO are just bumps on the road to the first Russian listing in Hong Kong. Rusal is the world’s largest aluminum producer and is expected to raise about $2.5 billion in the IPO.

But an exchange not known for onerous listing requirements has requested more information from Rusal and Goldman Sachs was dropped as a book runner “after the investment bank expressed reservations about sponsoring the deal.”

The proceeds from the Rusal IPO would go to repay part of its $4.5 billion loan largely held by the Russian state-run VEB bank, also Rusal’s biggest single creditor. It seems like Goldman Sachs and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange are having second thoughts about facilitating a deal that would line the pockets of an oligopolistic petrostate.

Craigslist expands outside San Francisco (2000)
In 2000, the free classifieds site broadened its reach outside of San Francisco into nine additional U.S. cities, sending chills down the spines of newspaper publishers everywhere. Today Craigslist serves free listings in more than 500 cities in 50 countries, serving as a model for no-frills business and community success and the catalyst for countless jobs, apartments, and just about anything else you can think of.

Google AdWords launches (2000)
With the launch of AdWords in October 2000, Google turned advertising on its head. The self-service ad program opened up the marketplace to any business, no matter how big or small, and allowed advertisers to target their customers with laser-sharp precision.

Wikipedia launches (2001)
Containing 20,000 articles in 18 languages by the end of its first year online, Wikipedia today boasts more than 14 million articles in 271 different languages. The free open-source encyclopedia epitomizes the Internet’s power to bring strangers from around the world together to collaborate on projects both big and small.

Napster Shut Down (2001)
Although Napster was shut down in 2001, it opened the file-sharing floodgates. Its demise sparked a wave of innovations that forever changed how we obtain and experience music and video – from Hulu to iTunes to Radiohead famously dropping its label and self-distributing their “In Rainbows” CD online for free.

Google IPO (2004)
Google’s IPO, one of the largest in history, put the six year old search engine on the path to becoming the most dominant and influential company of the decade. From gmail and YouTube to Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Android, the Internet giant and constant innovator is the engine that powers countless aspects of our everyday lives.

Online video revolution (2006)
In 2006, a perfect storm of faster bandwidth, cheaper camcorders, and the groundbreaking use of Adobe’s Flash 9 video player by YouTube combined to launch the online video revolution. The trifecta led to a boom in homemade and professional content – the Diet Coke and Mentos guys, lonelygirl15, SNL’s Lazy Sunday, and Senator George Allen’s “macacagate” – that has reshaped everything from pop culture to politics.

Facebook opens to non-college students and Twitter takes off (2006)
In September 2006, a social networking site for college students changed its user qualifications to include anyone 13 and older with a valid e-mail address. Facebook struck an immediate chord — and almost overnight, social media went mainstream. Less than a month later, the creators of Twitter acquired the company and its assets from its investors, paving the way for the service to take off in 2007. Both companies took social media mainstream, radically changing the way we connect, collaborate, and communicate with everyone from friends to colleagues to customers.

The iPhone debuts (2007)
The iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. By the end of the weekend, half a million had been sold, and smartphones had gone from a luxury item to a necessity. The iPhone inspired the development of operating systems like Google Android, as well as an app for just about every aspect of modern life. Over the next decade, it’s estimated that a billion new users will come to the Internet for the first time through mobile devices.

U.S. Presidential Campaign (2008)
The Internet altered presidential politicking in 2008 much as television had forty years earlier during the Kennedy/Nixon race. From videos like “Obama Girl” and the Reverend Wright clip shaping the debate, to social media mobilizing voters, to record-breaking online fundraising from small donors, every facet of the way campaigns are run was permanently transformed.

Iranian election protests (2009)
When Iran’s 2009 presidential election produced fishy results, the opposition took to the tweets — and the “Twitter Revolution” was born. In fact, it was so vital to organizing demonstrations that the U.S. State Department asked the company to delay planned maintenance.. The protests also highlighted Twitter’s key asset as a protest tool: Since most users don’t access it through a central website, it’s nearly impossible to censor.

Source:

http://www.webbyawards.com/press/topwebmomentsdecade.php

InfoMoney:

As principais bolsas do planeta seguem sem apresentar uma tendência definida nesta segunda-feira (30). Enquanto os mercados europeus registram desvalorização, o Ibovespa alterna entre perdas e ganhos nesta tarde. Em Wall Street, os índices acionários reportam sinais opostos.

Contribuindo para esta disparidade, o fator Dubai voltou a ganhar forças, após o diretor do Departamento de Finanças do emirado afirmar que o governo não garantirá a dívida de US$ 59 milhões do fundo de investimentos Dubai World. Em virtude desta declaração, os investidores têm adotado uma postura mais conservadora na primeira sessão desta semana.

Contudo, eventos da pauta econômica norte-americana ajudam a amenizar esse clima de apreensão. A produção industrial em Chicago atingiu 56,1 pontos em novembro, ficando bem acima do que foi registrado no mês anterior e superando as projeções dos analistas.

Ainda na principal economia do mundo, o resultado das vendas no varejo na Black Friday – sexta-feira que sucede o feriado de Ação de Graças e que marca o início das vendas natalinas – mostrou uma variação positiva de 0,5% em relação à mesma data de 2008.

Empresas de Eike disparam no pregão
No último pregão deste mês, as ações da MMX (MMXM3) ignoram a cautela dos investidores e opera com valorização de 4,3%, liderando os ganhos do Ibovespa. A mineradora controlada por Eike Batista anunciou um acordo com a Wisco (Wuhan Iron and Steel), através do qual receberá injeção de US$ 400 milhões em troca da concessão de aproximadamente um quarto da participação de seu capital social.

Segundo comunicado emitido pela EBX – controladora das empresas de Batista, o acordo firmado com a Wisco também possibilita a provável construção e operação de uma planta siderúrgica no distrito industrial do porto de Açu, da LLX (LLXL3). Com isso, as ações da empresa avançam 2,97%.

Outra companhia controlada pelo empresário que reporta um desempenho positivo no pregão é a OGX Petróleo (OGXP3). A empresa anunciou uma nova descoberta de hidrocarbonetos na Bacia de Campos. Desta forma, seus papéis disparam 5,1% na bolsa brasileira.

Hypermarcas
A Hypermarcas (HYPE3) veio a público informar a celebração do contrato de venda e compra de quotas para a aquisição da Pompom. Segundo comunicado, o preço das quotas adquiridas pela Hypermarcas é de R$ 300 milhões, sendo a primeira parcela – R$ 120 milhões – paga à vista nesta segunda-feira. Suas ações avançam 2,63% no pregão.

Bancos pretendem aumentar capital
No setor financeiro, o destaque fica por conta do interesse em expandir o capital. O Bradesco (BBDC4) informou que levará para votação em Assembleia Geral Extraordinária a proposta de aumentar o capital social de R$ 24,5 bilhões para R$ 26,5 bilhões, através da capitalização de R$ 2 bilhões de reservas. As ações do banco operam próximo à estabilidade, com variação positiva de 0,06%.

Enquanto isso, o Banco do Brasil (BBAS3) afirmou estudar “a viabilidade e conveniência de realização de uma oferta pública de ações, em condições a serem detalhadas em época própria”. As ações da instituição registram queda de 0,94%.

Acordos
Ainda no setor financeiro, o Itaú Unibanco (ITUB4) anunciou a extensão do prazo de exclusividade concedido pela rede varejista Magazine Luiza e a Luiza Cred – financeira detida em iguais proporções pelas duas empresas -, acordo pelo qual terá de desembolsar R$ 250 milhões. Os papéis do banco apresentam perdas de 0,26% nesta tarde.

Por sua vez, a Cemig (CMIG4) concluiu negociações salariais com entidades sindicais. A companhia concordou em reajustar os salários de seus funcionários em 4,88% e em conceder uma participação nos lucros no resultado de 2009 no valor aproximado de R$ 210 milhões. Suas ações avançam 0,96% neste pregão.

Ofertas
Enquanto isto, o calendário de novas ofertas na bolsa segue movimentado. O prazo para investidores de varejo reservarem os papéis da Anhanguera Educacional (AEDU11) começa nesta segunda-feira e vai até o dia 7 de dezembro. Os ativos da empresa sobem 1,62%.

Já o Fleury anunciou os termos de seu IPO (Initial Public Offering), visando a distribuição primária inicial de 34,3 milhões de papéis ordinários. De acordo com os coordenadores da oferta, o preço por ação deverá ficar entre R$ 15,00 e R$ 17,00.

A  long time ago, before I wrote two textbooks on behavioral investing, taught a workshop, started the V-BIC club, had a website, and another website, or got rich, my broker GMB at Morgan Stanley laughed and said,

“Eli, you can’t be serious about Google. First, I couldn’t get you the IPO price because you are not on the list of VIP investors, and second, you want to gamble a $100 per share on two college kids?’

“I know, Ben and Jerry ice cream make more sense than Page and Brim Google.”

“Ben and Jerry make money, isn’t that the name of the game?”

“No, Barry, BLASH is the name of the game.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

That was the day I stopped listening to conventional thinkers. I couldn’t get GOOG for $90 so I got it for $130. You know the rest of the G story. Guess what Barry would say today if I told him that I am watching the Twitter bird like a hawk? He’d probably say, “what’s wrong with getting a nice field mouse like Pinnacle Micro?”

Jesus said, “They not know what they do?” Did he mean the Romans or the New Yorkers on Wall Street?

See you on Gore’s superhighway.

In Borsa ci si annoia. E così Antonella Olivieri, sul Sole 24 Ore di venerdì 27 novembre, nel commentare la quotazione della matricola di Borsa Yoox spa, afferma che “una IPO non fa primavera”, dal momento che si tratta dell’unico collocamento di una società destinata al listino principale di Milano. I contenuti dell’articolo sono interessanti, così come lo è la spiegazione della formula competitiva adottata dalla Yoox -lo so, si dice business model, ma a me piace l’italiano- ed il fatto che, dopo la quotazione diventerà una public company. Ancor più interessante, proprio alla luce della larga diffusione che avrà il titolo, sarebbe stato conoscere, oltre che i dati economici, anche quelli patrimoniali e finanziari del Gruppo. Nel quotidiano confindustriale, invece, si riporta solo il Conto Economico, oltre che alcune spiegazioni sulle modalità di calcolo del prezzo. Che fanno venire in mente periodi dimenticabili della Borsa Italiana, ovvero quelli in cui le valutazioni erano fatte con i multipli. Multipli a parte, visto che Il Sole 24 Ore è il più importante quotidiano economico italiano, perché riportare solo il conto economico? Dal 1974 la legislazione italiana prevede che i bilanci siano composti da Conto Economico e Stato Patrimoniale. E di questi tempi chi fa informazione e comunicazione finanziaria dovrebbe sapere che i dati relativi a debiti e capitale investito sono, se possibile, ancora più importanti.

Just a year after the global downturn  derailed  Dubai’s explosive growth, the  city is now  so  swamped  in  debt that  it’s  asking  for a  six-month  reprieve  on  paying  its bills.

Dubai Debt Fears Grip World Markets

This has cast a shadow on a world only just emerging from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s,  knocking markets  from Sydney to Sao Paulo and raising questions about Dubai’s reputation  as a magnet for international investment.

For India, which has tens of thousands of its citizens living  and working in the emirate,  the concerns are more direct:  thousands of its expats staring at job losses and  the economy, sharply reduced trade.

India, which gets nearly a quarter of the remittances from the United Arab Emirates and  has lakhs of laborers working in the region, could be worse off than most other nations  if the crisis escalates into a full-blown one  like the Russian or Argentinean crises of the past.

India’s exports to the UAE stood at $23.92 billion in FY09.

It is very likely that we may see one more leg of job losses in Dubai.

The only consolation for the region is that Abu Dhabi is booming.

Indian shares and the rupee fell in sync with other global markets where investors are fleeing for safety after Dubai debt trap concerns.

The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex on Friday tumbled over 451.63 points to 16,403.30 points in the first ten minutes of trading on hectic selling by funds in line with weak global cues and concerns over Dubai’s debt.

Similarly, the wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty dropped by 140.50 points to 4865.05 points.

Brokers said the selling focus was more on banking and realty stocks after Dubai’s debt problems revived concerns about the global financial system and rattled markets across Europe and Asia.

Indian rupee fell 24 paisa to 46.55 against the dollar.  The MSCI Emerging Markets Index lost 1.4%.

Most European indices were about 2% lower after Asia tumbled.

The Shanghai Composite Index slumped 3.6%, its biggest drop since August, and Brazil’s Bovespa Index slipped 1.1%. U.S. markets were closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Credit-default swaps tied to debt sold by Dubai rose as much as 131 basis points to 571.

“Dubai isn’t doing risk appetite any favours at all and the markets remain in a vulnerable state of mind,” said Market analysts.

“We’re still in an environment where we’re vulnerable to financial shocks of any sort and this is one of those.”

Global Slowdown Caused Slump in Growth Rate of the Demat Accounts

Despite the blistering pace kept by the equities market in the past 10 months, the rise in the number of new retail investors has slowed down.

According to the data from National Securities and Depositories Limited, the growth rate of demat accounts has declined to 6 per cent, compared with 13 per cent last year.

Experts attribute this to the overall slowdown in the economy.

As per experts a prolonged, dull phase in 2008 made investors jittery about investing in the equities market.

Also, as many individuals were scared of losing their jobs, so they did not intend to invest more.

There has been an average growth of 14.75 per cent in investors opening demat accounts till 2008.

Financial intermediaries such as broking companies, whose fortunes are directly linked to the markets, have witnessed subdued sentiments in the equity space from retail investors.

Experts cited 2008 market crash and the global financial meltdown as the reason for this negative development.

Moreover recession of last year had demotivated and scared the retail investors good enough to drive them away from the further investing.

This caused enormous loss for Financial intermediaries and most of the brokerage houses had to shut shop and retrench many staff too.

“The confidence of the retail investors is yet to be restored. Even in the case of new initial public offerings, only the institutional part is getting oversubscribed,” said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, head of research at SMC Capitals.

The Asian markets are in full swing with recent recent and upcoming IPOs. Here is a list..

Source: read more Asian IPOs

(GiaVang.com.vn – Giá vàng Việt Nam và Thế Giới) – Số lượng công ty tiến hành niêm yết trên thị trường Trung Quốc và Hồng Kông đã tăng gấp 4 lần so với tổng số lượng các công ty Mỹ và châu Âu niêm yết trong năm nay.

Hai đợt IPO lớn nhất thế giới năm nay chính là đợt IPO của tập đoàn xây dựng thuộc Nhà nước Trung Quốc (China State Construction Engineering) và tập đoàn Metallurgical Corp of China (MCC).

Các đợt IPO của công ty Trung Quốc trên sàn chứng khoán Thâm Quyến, Quảng Châu và Hông Kông đã hút được lượng vốn 21,9 tỷ USD trong khi đó con số này đối với công ty Mỹ và châu Âu chỉ là 5,4 tỷ USD. Những đợt IPO tại châu Á từ tháng 1/2009 cho đến nay hút được lượng vốn 28,4 tỷ USD.

Vụ IPO của MCC hút được 2,8 tỷ USD trong đợt IPO có quy mô lớn thứ hai tại thị trường chứng khoán Thượng Hải trong năm nay. Tại Hồng Kông, đợt IPO của chính công ty này hút được 2,7 tỷ USD. giao dịch cổ phiếu MCC sẽ bắt đầu vào hôm nay.

Đợt IPO của tập đoàn MCC là đợt gần nhất tính từ khi chính phủ bỏ lệnh cấm IPO trong khoảng thời gian suốt 9 tháng. Từ đầu năm đến nay tại thị trường Thượng Hải và Thâm Quyến, số lượng các vụ IPO tăng 68%.

Tháng 7/2009, cổ phiếu Sichuan Expressway đóng cửa tăng 202% trong phiên giao dịch đầu tiên tại thị trường Thượng Hải.

Dù có mức tăng yếu nhất trong nhóm cổ phiếu mới chào sàn Thượng Hải, cổ phiếu công ty giày dép Foshan Saturday Shoes tăng 23,2% trong phiên giao dịch đầu tiền.

Tuần này, tại thị trường Mỹ dự kiến có 8 đợt IPO dự kiến hút 5,3 tỷ USD, đây sẽ là tuần sôi động nhất của hoạt động IPO trên thị trường Mỹ tính từ tháng 12/2007. Tính từ đầu năm 2009 cho đến nay, tại thị trường Mỹ đã có 22 vụ IPO.

Trong nhóm các công ty tiến hành IPO lần này, có 3 công ty trong lĩnh vực bất động sản.

Source: Hoạt động IPO tại Trung Quốc sôi động nhất thế giới

(GiaVang.com.vn – Giá vàng Việt Nam và Thế Giới) – Số lượng công ty tiến hành niêm yết trên thị trường Trung Quốc và Hồng Kông đã tăng gấp 4 lần so với tổng số lượng các công ty Mỹ và châu Âu niêm yết trong năm nay.

Hai đợt IPO lớn nhất thế giới năm nay chính là đợt IPO của tập đoàn xây dựng thuộc Nhà nước Trung Quốc (China State Construction Engineering) và tập đoàn Metallurgical Corp of China (MCC).

Các đợt IPO của công ty Trung Quốc trên sàn chứng khoán Thâm Quyến, Quảng Châu và Hông Kông đã hút được lượng vốn 21,9 tỷ USD trong khi đó con số này đối với công ty Mỹ và châu Âu chỉ là 5,4 tỷ USD. Những đợt IPO tại châu Á từ tháng 1/2009 cho đến nay hút được lượng vốn 28,4 tỷ USD.

Vụ IPO của MCC hút được 2,8 tỷ USD trong đợt IPO có quy mô lớn thứ hai tại thị trường chứng khoán Thượng Hải trong năm nay. Tại Hồng Kông, đợt IPO của chính công ty này hút được 2,7 tỷ USD. giao dịch cổ phiếu MCC sẽ bắt đầu vào hôm nay.

Đợt IPO của tập đoàn MCC là đợt gần nhất tính từ khi chính phủ bỏ lệnh cấm IPO trong khoảng thời gian suốt 9 tháng. Từ đầu năm đến nay tại thị trường Thượng Hải và Thâm Quyến, số lượng các vụ IPO tăng 68%.

Tháng 7/2009, cổ phiếu Sichuan Expressway đóng cửa tăng 202% trong phiên giao dịch đầu tiên tại thị trường Thượng Hải.

Dù có mức tăng yếu nhất trong nhóm cổ phiếu mới chào sàn Thượng Hải, cổ phiếu công ty giày dép Foshan Saturday Shoes tăng 23,2% trong phiên giao dịch đầu tiền.

Tuần này, tại thị trường Mỹ dự kiến có 8 đợt IPO dự kiến hút 5,3 tỷ USD, đây sẽ là tuần sôi động nhất của hoạt động IPO trên thị trường Mỹ tính từ tháng 12/2007. Tính từ đầu năm 2009 cho đến nay, tại thị trường Mỹ đã có 22 vụ IPO.

Trong nhóm các công ty tiến hành IPO lần này, có 3 công ty trong lĩnh vực bất động sản.

Source: Hoạt động IPO tại Trung Quốc sôi động nhất thế giới

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook has created a dual-class stock structure designed to give founder Mark Zuckerberg and other existing shareholders control over the company.

The move could be seen as laying the groundwork for an initial public offering, though the social network said Tuesday it had no plans to go public “at this time.”

The dual-class structure is what Google Inc.’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, created to keep voting control over that company before it went public in 2004. Google’s Class B shares, owned by Page, Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt and some directors, hold 10 times the voting power as its regular, Class A stock.

In a statement, Facebook Inc. said the company introduced the stock structure because its existing shareholders wanted to keep control when voting on issues it faces.

The company didn’t say which executives and employees would get the shares with the higher voting power. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, said Facebook was converting the shares of all its current stockholders into Class B shares that, like Google’s, hold 10 times the voting power of Class A stock.

That would be a departure from Google’s decision to keep such shares in the hands of a few top executives — something for which the search company has been criticized.

Dual-class structures aren’t limited to high-tech companies. The New York Times Co., among others, has one to give control to the Ochs-Sulzberger family even though its members own only one-fifth of the newspaper company.

Creating a class of shares with more voting power and keeping those shares in the hands of founders and employees can potentially allow a company to take more risks even at the expense of short-term investors, said Standard & Poor’s equity analyst Scott Kessler, who has followed Google since its IPO.

Both Google and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., another company with a dual-class stock structure, take a long-term view of their business and isn’t always seen as friendly to investors, he added.

For example, neither company has ever split its stock: Google’s shares closed Tuesday at $583.09, while Berkshire’s was at $102,700. A stock split makes a company’s shares cheaper, opening them to more investors, even those who could simply looking to make a quick buck.

“They want to promote and preserve true long-term holders of the stock,” Kessler said.

Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, worked at Google when that company went public. Facebook, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., has lured other employees from Google as well.

Facebook, which has more than 300 million users, has raised more than $600 million from investors since it was founded more than five years ago. Its most recent infusion came this spring from Russian Internet investor Digital Sky Technologies, which invested $200 million in exchange for a 2 percent stake in the company, valuing Facebook at $10 billion.

It was not clear which class of stock Facebook would use if it uses stock to buy other companies in the future.

The company said recently that it was “cash-flow positive” in the second quarter, which means it brought in more money than it spent. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that Facebook is profitable by the measures most companies use — taxes, debt payments and accounting charges can use up the remaining cash — it was an important milestone.

Last Friday, buzz about an imminent IPO for electric car startup Tesla Motors hit the Interwebs, courtesy of two anonymous sources familiar with the plans who spoke with Reuters. As it did with several previous stories about its possible plans for a public offering, however, the company has declined to comment.

But if and when Tesla goes through with its long-discussed goal of going public, it could be the biggest and possibly the first public offering for a U.S. car company since Ford Motor’s IPO more than 50 years ago. The event will also offer a glimpse at the role IPOs will play in the nascent green car market, as the question remains: Is the classic venture capital model (invest early and find a big exit in the form of an acquisition or an IPO) viable for this sector, or will a green-car IPO be more about feeding big capital needs and branding?

While hard answers won’t come until after Tesla’s debut, the outcome of a Tesla IPO will influence the financing strategies of competing green car startups, shape potential investors’ thinking about possible exits (ways to cash in on their investment) for these companies and also — like the A123Systems (s AONE) IPO a couple months ago — serve as a gauge of public confidence in electric cars.

Hopes for a Google-like moneymaker in cleantech (Google took only $25 million in venture capital to make millionaires of 1,000 employees and billionaires of its two co-founders in a wildly successful IPO) have already started to fade for some in the sector. Stephan Dolezalek, managing director of VantagePoint Venture Partners, which has invested in Tesla, told Reuters in September that public offerings now serve more as “financing events” for alternative energy and other cleantech startups rather than a way for investors and founders to cash in on equity.

That seemed to be the case for battery maker A123Systems, which (like Tesla) is trying to capitalize on an electric car boom. A123’s September market debut bore more resemblance to the model described by Dolezalek than the heady days of Google: It’s served to increase the battery maker’s cachet and will likely help the company move forward on its ambitious manufacturing plans. But as Thomson Reuters and the Cleantech Group pointed out, A123’s venture capital investors made an average return of a little over four times their investment, while those of individual investors ranged anywhere from four to eights times. As Katie noted at the time, those returns aren’t bad, but when compared to some dot-com-era exits, they’re not amazing, either.

Greg Brogger, CEO of the private equity marketplace SharesPost, this summer put it to us this way: Cleantech companies building capital-intensive products like cars and solar panels need to raise more funds, more quickly than their Web 2.0 counterparts. You can stretch a dollar a lot further building apps than you can trying to develop, safety test, manufacture, market and distribute vehicles for the mass market.

Tesla has already tapped private investors and the federal government for hundreds of millions of dollars in financing (including more than $200 million in six rounds of equity financing and $465 million in low-interest loans from the Department of Energy). A public offering could give it an important — if not the only — new financing channel.

Of course, using an IPO to simply raise money isn’t exactly a new strategy. As the New York Times put it in an editorial following Google’s (s GOOG) 2004 IPO, “some of the dot-com-bubble darlings…famously turned to Wall Street to raise cash merely to burn it.” Tesla, A123 and other ventures trying to break into large-scale manufacturing need money to (among other things) set up factories and crank out physical goods for sale. It’s worth remembering, however, that they haven’t yet proven themselves as profitable enterprises (Google had done that by the time it went public).

At the end of the day, public offerings are not just about financing — they’re also branding events, as panelists at the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford noted this summer. A successful IPO for Tesla could serve to boost the credibility of its brand, and could also have a halo effect across other green car startups. On the flip side, if the stock performs poorly, it could detract from Tesla and other electric car makers’ efforts to establish themselves with the mainstream. Over on The Truth About Cars blog, Edward Niedermeyer writes that Tesla’s existing brand — that of a Silicon Valley native — could be a boon on the public market:

“In fact the best argument for a successful Tesla IPO is the popularity of its electric roadster among the Silicon Valley elite. IPOs are rarely rational phenomena, and local homerism could just provide Tesla with sufficient capital to take its Model S to market.”

A successful Tesla IPO could also provide a branding boost for government bets on venture-backed car startups as creators of green jobs — from the federal backing for Fisker Automotive on down to local incentives for V-Vehicle in Louisiana. As Pascal Levensohn, founder of Levensohn Venture Partners and a National Venture Capitalist Association board member, told us in September, typically when companies are acquired instead of going public, jobs are lost, while IPOs help create jobs.

In June, analysts for the research firm NeXt Up put together a report on Tesla for SharesPost subscribers, valuing Tesla at $1.05 billion, and last month the firm upped that valuation to $1.24 billion — or an estimated $4.21 to $4.93 a share. Six months ago, however, Daimler (s DAI) took a stake in Tesla at a $550 million valuation, so the actual valuation may be significantly lower.

Whether Reuters’ sources are right that Tesla will register with the SEC within a matter of days for an IPO or not, we may have quite a while to wait before the company actually goes through with a public offering and we can see first-hand how the event reverberates throughout the industry. Investor Dolezalek said back in September that the startup wouldn’t be going public until late 2010 at the very earliest “if the market stays the way it is today.”

Roadster photo courtesy of Tesla Motors

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

WIPO’s PATENTSCOPE® now includes the patent data collections of eight patent offices: African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), Cuba, Israel, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa and Vietnam.

WIPO has been working closely with these patent offices to ensure the data collections are fully searchable and has provided partial funding for Israel’s computerization process.

The availability of Korean patents is important as there is a lot of technology developed there and these are otherwise rather difficult to access. They have not yet been carried by Delphion, for example.

PNC Infratech files DRHP, to raise Rs 175 cr via IPO

Delhi based engineering and infrastructure company, PNC Infratech is planning to raise Rs 175 crore (excluding issue related expenses) via initial public offering (IPO).The company refiled a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with SEBI after its initial filing on January 17, 2008 .The company intends to utilize the issue proceeds for investment in capital equipment; working capital requirements and prepayment/repayment of loans & advances.

Kumar Urban Development to raise Rs 450cr via IPO

Pune-based real estate firm Kumar Urban Development Ltd plans to raise Rs 450 Cr through an initial public offering (IPO) to retire high cost debts and for new projects. According to the Chairman and Managing Director Lalit Kumar Jain about Rs 200 Cr. would be used to retire high cost debt, while the rest would be for new development and existing projects.

Den Networks to list on Nov 24, issue price at Rs 195/sh

Den Networks, a cable distribution entity with a pan-Indian footprint, will list its equity shares on the exchanges on November 24, 2009 (Tuesday). It has fixed its issue price at Rs 195 per share. The company had entered the capital market on October 28, 2009, with an initial public offering (IPO) of up to 2 crore equity shares and the price band was at Rs 195-205/share. The IPO Proceeds will partly fund the company’s plans to invest in the development of cable television infrastructure and services; the development of cable broadband infrastructure and services; and acquisition of content and broadcasting rights amongst others.

Companies may have to list within 7 days of IPO’s

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) plans to reduce the time taken to process initial public offers (IPO) applications to seven days from the existing 20 days. Further, the capital market regulator intends to extend the Application Supported by Blocked Amount (ASBA) system to non-retail investor categories, to reduce the overall time for the IPO process. In ASBA, an IPO applicant’s money does not leave his bank account till shares are allotted to him. At present, this facility is available only to retail investors.

Ashoka Buildcon plans IPO to raise Rs 225-cr

Ashoka Buildcon Ltd, the flagship company of the Ashoka Group, which operates many roads and bridges in India on build, operate and transfer basis (BOT), plans to raise Rs 225 crore through an Initial Public Offer (IPO). The amount raised from the IPO will be used to repay debt and to meet working capital requirements. The company has so far built a road network totaling approximately 2,523 kilometers of lanes in the country. The company also has 13 ready-mix concrete plants which have a capacity of 590 cubic meters per hour.

Silicon Valley is a visionary place. This is the place where a garage becomes a creative space for the next big idea and art reflects both geek-chic and the quest for knowledge. Being part of a start-up, aiming to hit the motherload with a brilliant IPO, is the hope for today’s dreamers.

Everyone is talking about how to fix the biggest challenge we’ve ever face – everyone is talking green.

Ideas are dreams made reality in Silicon Valley and setting the stage for a sustainable future is the dream flying through the Valley today. We’ll cover them here with you, from crazy to practical we’ll search out the Green/ the New IPO.

The credit crisis sucks, especially because it minimized the probability that you can get away with getting investment banks and venture capital to underwrite essential purchases like the new Guitar Hero and kegs from Gordon Biersch. Luckily that might all be ending soon. Recently, movements in private equity and venture capital have started to show some indications that the most glamorous of Silicon Valley capital fountains has started to thaw. The cracks in the ice are undoubtedly motivated by the increasing demand for cleantech, technology designed to provide equal parts personal utility and environmental utility. But even if the opening shots are in the name of the environment, any sort of momentum to turn on the funding-hose will undoubtedly lead to watering the gardens of Silicon Valley with much-needed capital to thirsty startups and major enterprises looking to buy slick and undervalued intellectual property through M&A.

So yeah, there probably is another boom coming. But things feel a little different this time around. I moved to California in 1999, right as the major dot-com boom went from a quaint idea to a startling reality. My dad and stepmom ran a dot-com called Timesharevalues.com, a surprisingly resilient vacation real estate company that teamed up with eBay in their early years to sell vacation properties over the internet. Right before the boom took off (when both of them were transitioning from their jobs at other tech companies) it felt, well, crazy. Money for firms that had a relatively good idea was in such abundance after Excite and Yahoo! took off that it was literally impossible not to get funding if your idea wasn’t completely absurd and you knew how to use Powerpoint. Even then, the VC’s would sometimes come after you. My parents smartly decided not to take VC funding, but that didn’t stop the phone calls. Eventually we had to get another line and a secretary to deal with them and all of the other communication stuff (which was weird as hell by the way – coming out of my room half-dressed for breakfast during winter break and pretending to ignore some lady who’s working in your living room is always a surreal experience).  It was downright simple to start a startup, and clearly nothing could go wrong.

Nowadays, VC money is still hard as hell to get. Getting an appointment to pitch at Kleiner-Perkins probably requires a blood sacrifice. The credit crunch hasn’t just strained the budgets of the Sand Hill investors, it’s also taught them temperance. Recent history is filled with good ideas that go bad because of poor planning. And there’s cultural changes in the Valley too. The Millennials are starting to flood into technology, changing not just how we party but also how we compete and do business. The next boom, while a familiar thing to Silicon Valley, feels very, very different.

Here’s three of the big differences I see:

• It’s not about IPO: When you were a startup back in the day the IPO was the glorious “fuck-yeah” moment for everyone that got in before the cut. The glamorous millionaire lifestyle of Silicon Valley startups was predicated on the cash you’d get with your Initial Public Offering, and the young Gen-Xers that ruled the smallest and most disruptive startups were looking to IPO. That’s a lot different now.

  It’s unlikely that the posterchilds of the new boom will IPO anytime soon. Neither Facebook or Twitter seem jazzed to IPO anytime soon, and I don’t think it’s just because the stock market sucks. Call me crazy, but I think a lot of it is based around generational psychology and sociology. To IPO is to yield control of your company to investors. We Millennials are a surprisingly difficult bunch to manage because we’re fiercely down with doing it our way. Having to listen to VC’s is bad enough; having a board of directors who “don’t get it” about tech and order you around seems extremely non-ideal. To sell out in an IPO has the potential to ruin all of the hard work you’ve done by leaving it all to someone else.

• You need a college degree: Being a sysadmin (system administrator) was a pretty glamorous job back in the day. Being on near-constant beeper-duty and having the potential of working like an investment banker if stuff broke sucked, but so long as you knew what you were doing you could be paid a lot of money without having to spend four years of your life whining about how your GE courses are taking time away from your major classes. With a bunch of certifications in your hand and some skill in technical interviewing you could talk your way into Yahoo! pretty well.

  This is not the case anymore. While the bachelors-less savants are still around, it’s a hell of a lot harder to sneak into these high paying administration jobs (when they even exist). Globalization and gains from specialization are partly to blame here. Paying a sysadmin in the United States, much less in California, is an extremely expensive endeavor. Outsourcing such duties to other states or other countries with less employment competition (which will raise wages ceteris paribus) and more lenient employment laws is more ideal. Coincidentally, in the US many of these states are also places where it’s cheap to build the data centers where admins are needed. Being in IT in the Valley now is becoming less about being a Reel Big Fish-loving data center junkie and more about being an extremely flexible strategic consultant. With the heavy lifting being outsourced, these new positions require all of the expertise and rigorous training that a Bachelors+ degree signifies.

  A college degree is important in another way too: prestige.  Silicon Valley is well-known for being a meritocracy, and where you’re from has largely not been an issue until the rise of Google. Google’s is very Ivy-minded, and there are more than a few urban legends out there about Sergei writing off capable employees because they studied at less prestigious state schools rather than the Ivies or Public Ivies. With the large amount of HR poaching,  many ex-Google HR staffers trained in this sort of prestige-minded filtering have spread throughout the ‘Valley and taken their prestige-minded ways of thinking and hiring with them.

• It’s not just about technology: Excite is a great case study on how being overly focused on “legit tech” may not be a good idea. When the internet portal first came out they were flooded with Venture funding. As one of the big incumbents in the Internet Portal business, Excite wielded stupid amounts of market power and could pretty much do what they wanted. But as the boom faaded and the bubble burst, it was clear that Excite was not making great business decisions. They invested heavily into something called Excite@Home, an early broadband ISP that they got in acquiring a cable modem company called @Home. This decision seemed to make sense at first: vertically integrate internet activity to ensure that you don’t stray far from the Excite brand when you’re online. It was also an opportunity to rapidly invest in new broadband opportunities – a factor that seemed more salient given the background of Excite’s board of directors.

  This turned out to be a very bad idea. First, Excite@Home posted a $61.6 million loss in its first quarter. Then the company, which existed as a subordinate entity of Excite proper, re-neged on a deal for auditing and ditched their accounting deal for a new relationship with PriceWaterhouseCooper. As a result, they incurred serious breech of contract legal wrath and were forced to hemmorage more money. All of these struggles hit home at Excite, and the company later joined some other great names in taking the long walk towards chapter 11 and obscurity.

  The valley seems to be learning its lesson with  this one. The death of the Wi-Max market is a great recent example of how cool technology can suffer without good business planning. Lots of big firms such as Time Warner and eBay have recently divested major purchases predicated on cool technology that didn’t fit well into their business plans, AOL and Skype respectively.  This also fits into a lot of the temperance you see with VC’s and gun-shy investment banking firms, both who seem to demand a higher amount of business planning and strategy from their prospects before investment. Basically, nobody wants to be like Excite or a Wi-Max firm.

“…Cổ phần hóa yêu cầu minh bạch mọi thông tin về doanh nghiệp. Nhưng nhiều công ty sắp niêm yết lại né tránh…”. Ngoài việc quản lý hiệu quả hoạt động sản xuất kinh doanh, nhà quản trị doanh nghiệp cần phải đo lường và quản trị được giá trị doanh nghiệp. Làm tốt điều này sẽ giúp công ty giữ vững được thương hiệu, đem lại nguồn lợi lớn cho các cổ đông, đôi khi lớn hơn nhiều so với lợi nhuận kinh doanh trực tiếp mang lại.

Giải pháp nào? Một trong những giải pháp của quản trị giá trị doanh nghiệp là xác định thời điểm huy động vốn cổ phần và phương thức huy động vốn. Huy động vốn thành công là bán hết lượng cổ phiếu chào bán với giá mong muốn. Doanh nghiệp thu được nguồn tài chính cần thiết, đảm bảo quyền lợi cho cổ đông hiện hữu và cổ đông mới.Làm được điều này cũng giúp tạo hình ảnh tốt cho doanh nghiệp. Vì thế, đây là yếu tố hết sức quan trọng, hiệu quả không thua gì đầu tư tiền bạc và công sức cho marketing. Thời gian qua, các công ty thực hiện huy động vốn cổ phần qua nhiều hình thức. Quan trọng nhất là IPO và đợt huy động vốn niêm yết. Tuy nhiên, nếu thực hiện huy động và IPO chỉ vì mục đích “bán được giá càng cao càng tốt” sẽ là sai lầm lớn. Khi giá đấu IPO được đẩy lên quá cao, sẽ xảy ra nguy cơ nhà đầu tư bỏ cọc hoặc giá cổ phiếu sẽ giảm mạnh do phải điều chỉnh lại. Khi đó, uy tín và thương hiệu doanh nghiệp không chỉ giảm, gây thiệt hại cho cổ đông mà còn ảnh hưởng xấu đến kết quả kinh doanh của doanh nghiệp.Nếu ban lãnh đạo có một chiến lược đúng đắn, biết kết hợp giữa huy động vốn và PR không ngoan cho thương hiệu, cổ phiếu của công ty sẽ có giá tốt, đồng thời tạo ra tiếng thơm để phát triển sau này.

Thấy gì từ IPO của Hoàng Anh Gia Lai? Đầu tháng 11 vừa qua, Công ty Hoàng Anh Gia Lai tổ chức buổi giới thiệu các dự án đầu tư và IPO. Dưới góc độ một nhà đầu tư, đây là hướng đi khôn ngoan mà các công ty nên theo. Bài viết này không có ý định phân tích giá cổ phiếu của công ty qua đợt chào bán vừa qua là cao hay thấp. Người viết chủ yếu nhận định về phương thức thực hiện IPO của Hoàng Anh Gia Lai để đạt những kết quả tích cực cho chính họ, cho cổ đông cũng như cho những nhà đầu tư tiềm năng. Tại buổi giới thiệu này, ban lãnh đạo công ty cung cấp tình hình kinh doanh, các chiến lược và kế hoạch đầu tư đầy đủ, rõ ràng cũng như lợi nhuận dự kiến theo những cột mốc thời gian cụ thể.

Nội dungvà ước tính lợi nhuận kỳ vọng mà công ty đưa ra cần được phân tích thêm. Tuy nhiên, những số liệu, thông tin cụ thể, rõ ràng của họ đã tạo được lòng tin rất lớn cho cổ đông và các nhà đầu tư tiềm năng.

Công bố thông tin – cách thức PR hiệu quả thông điệp minh bạch này không phải công ty cổ phần nào cũng thể hiện được trong thời gian vừa qua. Cổ phần hóa yêu cầu minh bạch mọi thông tin về doanh nghiệp. Nhưng nhiều công ty sắp niêm yết lại né tránh đưa ra những số liệu cụ thể về doanh số, lợi nhuận hàng năm cho các nhà đầu tư. Có lẽ sự công khia đã giúp Hoàng Anh Gia Lai bán hết số cổ phiếu huy động với giá 150.000 đồng/ cổ phiếu. Giá trước đó vào khoảng 145.000 đồng. Các doanh nghiệp Việt Nam thu được gì từ bài học này?

SỰ KHÁC BIỆT IPO CỦA HAGL