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The concept
of generally accepted accounting principles for private companies
has generated controversy every time it has surfaced over the past
35 years. Now, with the Financial Accounting Foundation's proposal
to create a Private Company Standards Improvement Council within
the Financial Accounting Standards Board out for comment, the
movement has encountered an unexpected obstacle: the U.S. Senate.
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(Source: CFO.com,
2012-01-13)
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The Obama
administration's gaze has settled on the Small Business
Administration. Yes, it has proposed merging the S.B.A. into a much bigger government agency
dedicated to business and trade, but an arguably more consequential
decision came in December, when the S.B.A.
unveiled a new $1 billion program to invest in young companies by
loaning money to venture capital funds.
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(Source: The New York
Times, 2012-01-23)
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Just days
after Mitt Romney acknowledged that his effective tax rate was
approximately 15 percent, Congressman Sander Levin (D-MI) announced
plans to reintroduce legislation that would close the so-called
"carried interest" loophole. For the uninitiated, carried
interest is the percentage of investment profits that a private
equity fund manager receives (the remainder -- typically 80 percent
-- goes to the private equity fund's actual investors).
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(Source: CNNMoney.com,
2012-01-19)
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In a year
when fund-raising was difficult for most venture firms, investors
poured $32.6 billion into U.S.-based companies in 2011, a 10
percent increase over 2010. The number of financings rose 5.8
percent to 3,209, the most since 2001, according to the latest data
from VentureSource, a research unit of VentureWire publisher Dow Jones & Co.
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(Source: Dow Jones
Newswires, 2012-01-20)
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Private
equity fund managers are more optimistic about deal activity than
they were at this time last year, according to survey results being
released by BDO USA. A majority of
respondents (regardless of fund size) said they expect to close two
or three deals over the next 12 months, compared to 2011 stats in which 47 percent said they didn't
expect to close a single transaction.
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(Source: CNNMoney.com,
2012-01-23)
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The USA's
unique bankruptcy law makes it possible for insolvent companies to
do what's not possible in most other countries: survive by shedding
legal debts and obligations that they can't or don't want to pay.
But the many losers in bankruptcy -- fired workers, retirees,
shareholders, the landlord -- have reason to think the system isn't
fair.
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(Source: USA Today (free
reg. req'd), 2012-01-22)
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As the
Justice Department has stepped up its enforcement of an
anti-foreign bribery law, it has faced the expected stiff
resistance from the business community. Now it faces the unexpected
as courts are pushing back, too.
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(Source: Reuters,
2012-01-20)
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The U.S.
Supreme Court upheld a federal law that gave copyright protection
to millions of foreign-produced books, movies and musical pieces
and may undermine Google's effort to create an online library. The
6-2 ruling takes works by Alfred Hitchcock, Pablo Picasso, Igor
Stravinsky and J.R.R. Tolkien out of the
public domain, barring use without permission of the copyright
owner.
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(Source: Bloomberg Businessweek, 2012-01-23)
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That a
company can conceal who really owns it is a longstanding privilege
in many countries. But it incenses crimefighters
and sleazebusters.
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(Source: CFO.com,
2012-01-23)
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Franchise
consultants say they are seeing more corporations offering
potential investors an array of business models, at different price
points. In an era where credit is tight and investors are cautious,
both franchisers and franchisees say this type of flexibility is
the key to expansion.
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(Source: The Wall Street
Journal, 2012-01-12)
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Congress will return later this month where the House will
discuss the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R.3261) (“SOPA”)
authored by Rep. Lamar Smith (TX). This bill has sparked controversy
throughout the Internet as corporations and individuals alike interpret
the bill, in its current form, and point out potential areas of
concern. Such controversy has sparked GoDaddy,
a major domain name registrar, to remove itself from the U.S.
Congressional list of SOPA supporters after
social-media backlash through Reddit started
a boycott of the company in December 2011.
The bill has the potential to muddle the waters for major
social-media Web sites, like Reddit, that
rely on user-created content to flourish. Under the bill, voluntary
action by Web site owners to remove infringing content creates
immunity. As such, some critics of the bill believe that Web sites will
undergo extensive self-censorship of both infringing and non-infringing
content in order to protect themselves from liable further down the
road. In another example, the bill, in its current form, also creates
potential issues for YouTube and its users by adding in criminal
liability for willful infringers of copyright through streaming for
commercial gain.
Read full article online.
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Ice Miller is pleased to announce that Holiday Banta and
Troy Cole (T.J.) have joined the Firm as partners in the Intellectual
Property Group. Banta and Cole both join the Firm from Woodard, Emhardt, Moriarty, McNett
& Henry LLP where they practiced for over 18 years. Over the course
of their careers in Indianapolis, they have been highly visible members
of the local intellectual property bar.
Read more online.
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According to the Association for Corporate Growth's (ACG) fourth quarter pitch book, the Midwest
continued to be the most active region for private equity investment
with 65 deals during the third quarter, followed by the West Coast with
60. Middle market deals, those valued under 250 million, account for
nearly 75 percent of the private equity deals. Deals involving
commercial products, commercial services and the software sector lead
the deal activity.
Source: Association for Corporate Growth
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Ice Miller has been one of the most active law firms in
the private equity industry over the last decade, representing both
entrepreneurs building great companies and the private equity firms and
individuals that invest in them. We have extensive experience
with all types of funds (formations and operations); mezzanine and
senior secured financing; leveraged buyouts, roll-ups, build-ups, and
consolidations; divestitures and exits; and complex litigation on
behalf of investors and privately financed companies. In
addition, over the past 10 years, Ice Miller has represented hundreds
of emerging growth businesses in various industries on such matters as
entity formation, capitalization, capital raising, alternative
financing, intellectual property rights and protection, growth and exit
strategies, corporate governance, tax matters, and many other legal
issues that are critical to the growth and success of an emerging
company.
Read the complete profile of the Private Equity and Venture Services Group.
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