Last year, the tech industry saw a renewed wave of mergers and acquisitions. Sacramento also saw its share of acquisitions, IPOs and strategic deal making. With all the excitement and the renewed momentum on wall-street, many companies are wondering if it is time to make an exit.
Join a panel of experts from companies that have had successful exit in the last 12-18 months as they share their insight into the process they went through to have their successful exit for the investors and shareholders. Some of the discussion topics include:
- What are the key trends affecting private companies and their investors?
- How has the M&A landscape changed in the last year? How is this affecting company’s strategy today?
- How is this affecting private company M&A activity?
- When should the Board and senior management start planning for an M&A liquidity event?
- When are acquisitions a good growth strategy?
- What steps can the Board and senior management take to increase the likelihood of a successful M&A event? Of maximizing value?
- When should a company and its Board use an advisor to help design and execute an acquisition?
Panelist Bios
Bob Whitson – Senior Vice President and GM , Emulex and Former CEO & Cofounder , Sierra Logic – (Acquired by Emulex – Jun 2006 for $180M)
 Prior to co-founding Sierra Logic, Bob served as World Wide Marketing Manager at Agilent Technologies, Storage Networking Division. There he was responsible for the division's worldwide revenue for the Tachyon Family of Fibre Channel Controller chips and Host Bus Adapter product lines. He served as guest speaker/member of panel discussions at major storage industry events globally. Before Agilent, Bob held numerous management jobs at Hewlett-Packard for 16 years, both in marketing and engineering. Also, he has been involved in multiple acquisitions and divestitures over the years. Bob received his degree from University of Wisconsin
Jim Olsen, former CEO of Meridian Project Systems (Acquired by Trimble – Oct 2006); former EVP of OSI (Acquired by OSI in Jan 2001 for $600M)
 Most recently, Mr. Olsen was the CEO of Meridian Project Systems until its acquisition by Trimble in 4th quarter 2006. Over the last 4 years, Olsen oversaw revenue growth from new product releases, expanded market penetration, substantially improved profitability and led the sale of Meridian to Trimble Navigation. Previously, Jim served as executive vice president at Objective Systems Integrators (formerly NASDAQ: OSII), a leading operations management software vendor for the telecommunications industry based in Folsom, CA and led the company through the acquisition by Agilent Technologies Inc. Olsen’s career experience includes; Vice President of Marketing at DSC Communications Corp., and Director, Product Line Management with Nortel Networks overseeing business and product development activities for broadband switching and service solutions.
Patricia Glovsky, Managing Director, East Peak Advisors
 Ms. Glovsky has more than 20 years of investment banking and 25 years of technology experience. Most recently, Ms. Glovsky founded Polygon Capital, LLC, a boutique investment bank focused on M&A, private placement and strategic relationships for companies in the visual computing technologies including graphics, 3D, video, simulation, displays, video games and digital media. Ms. Glovsky began her career in corporate finance with Kidder, Peabody and worked with Bear, Stearns as an equity analyst covering video games. She also ran the west coast office of MILCOM Technologies, Inc., an incubator that commercialized military technology.
Ms. Glovsky received her MS/MBA from MIT/Sloan School of Management and her BA in Economics and Asian Studies from Wellesley College. Ms. Glovsky participates annually as a judge for the Global Social Venture Competition whose partners include: Haas School of Business, Columbia Business School and London Business School.
Chris Rusell, Of Counsel, Morrison & Foerster, Sacramento, Panel Moderator
 Chris Russell is the Office Counsel at the Sacramento office of Morrison Foerster. His practice focuses on corporate and securities matters, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital and corporate financings, formation of limited liability companies, venture capital funds and other investment partnerships, corporate restructurings, federal and state securities law compliance, and general corporate and securities counseling of public and private companies.
Mr. Russell regularly advises start-up and emerging growth private companies, life science companies, public companies, institutional investors in their investments in venture capital, venture capital funds, general and limited partners, shareholders and boards of directors
Curtis Rocca
 Curtis M. Rocca serves as Managing Partner of DCA Partners, responsible for all aspects of the organization, and also functions as a General Partner to the Firm’s affiliated private equity fund, DCA Capital Partners. Mr. Rocca is a seasoned chief executive with a background in leading high growth organizations from inception to exit. In his career, he has held a number of top executive management positions including CEO of several companies, both public and private.
Curtis M Rocca’s prior experience includes being the Chief Executive Officer of Dental Partners Inc, healthcare services roll–up based in Sacramento, CA ; Chairman and CEO of Bio-Dental Technologies Corp (Nasdaq: BDTC) – a global dental technology products company. He also served as senior executives with several Fortune-500 corporations including Celebrity Inc, Marriott International and Pacific Telesis.
Non-Member Payment
|
