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The U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission has started an informal inquiry
of private equity firms, asking for a broad range of documents on
how the funds value assets and who invests in them. The agency's Los
Angeles office last year sent letters to several firms asking for
details on fund investments and the valuation of assets, as well as
communication with clients, according to the copy of a letter
obtained by Bloomberg News.
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(Source: Bloomberg Businessweek, 2012-02-12)
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President
Barack Obama's 2013 budget proposal calls for raising hundreds of billions
of dollars from U.S.-based global companies, while ending cherished
deductions and tax breaks for oil companies and other big firms.
Resembling previous proposals from the White House, the latest plan
renews Obama's focus on raising taxes on the wealthy and reining in
corporate tax avoidance.
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(Source: Reuters,
2012-02-13)
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President
Obama's budget for 2013 contains a familiar proposal that will set alarm
bells ringing at venture capital and private equity firms across
the land. Once again the President is looking to boost the tax that
VCs and other private equity professionals pay on their investment
profits, or carried interest.
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(Source: The Wall Street
Journal, 2012-02-13)
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Responding
to an outcry from small-business concerns, the Internal Revenue Service
has taken some of the teeth out of a tax reporting regulation that
the National Federation of Independent Business has called an
"onerous and unnecessary" step for companies filing tax
returns to comply with laws governing credit and debit cards. The
rule, part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008,
requires companies to explain any disparities between their own
records of receipts for payment card transactions with numbers that
their payment card processors must now report to the IRS.
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(Source: CFO.com,
2012-02-14)
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Tepid
economic growth has left many people out of work or underemployed. While
some wait for a better job, or any job at all, to come along,
others will try to create their own jobs from scratch by starting a
business. What budding entrepreneurs may not realize is that there
is a fair chance of creating tax headaches for themselves, too.
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(Source: The New York
Times, 2012-02-11)
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Two closely
watched disputes now playing out in the courts are shining a spotlight
on tensions between franchise owners and management. The growing
rift between franchisees and franchisers -- businesses that
collectively employ roughly eight million people in the U.S. --
follows three consecutive years of declines in the number of U.S.
franchises, and as economic pressures prompt people to limit
discretionary spending.
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(Source: The Wall Street
Journal, 2012-02-09)
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Entrepreneurs
who have seen the companies they founded, built and sold hurt by some
combination of bad management and a bad economy often get the urge
to take back control. There has been an increased interest in
entrepreneurs buying back their companies over the last three years
-- just as there was during past downturns.
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(Source: The New York
Times, 2012-02-08)
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Google and
Yahoo are among companies that are expanding the use of a strategy to
fight patent suits that shuns the courtroom in favor of government
reviews. The battlefield opened last year when the two Internet
giants, hit with a lawsuit demanding royalties by Paul G. Allen's
Interval Licensing, got the case put on hold after asking the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office to scrutinize the patents' validity.
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(Source: The Washington
Post (free reg. req'd), 2012-02-19)
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The global
private equity investors' appetite for emerging markets is likely to
continue in the next 12 months, but they are less bullish about
India than they were a year ago, says a survey. According to a
study by research firm Preqin, just 12
percent of PE investors surveyed named India, specifically, as
presenting attractive opportunities, a much lower proportion than
in our December 2010 study, when India was named by 35 percent of
investors.
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(Source: The Economic
Times, 2012-02-20)
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Venture
firms invested a total of $2.47 billion last year in fields around big
data, including database management and data processing, according
to Thomson Reuters data. That compares to $1.53 billion in 2010 and
$1.1 billion in 2009.
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(Source: Reuters,
2012-02-17)
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In case anyone had any doubts about the prominent role
that social media now occupies in today’s business climate, the
publicity surrounding Facebook’s recent first steps to file an initial
public offering should quiet the skeptics. In fact, when the news of
Facebook’s planned IPO broke, the SEC Web site actually crashed under
the increased traffic from visitors attempting to view Facebook’s
initial SEC filing. While the buzz may have died down a bit since the
initial announcement (at least enough to let Internet users access the
filings, located here), there is no question that Facebook is poised
to make history as the highest-grossing Internet IPO, with an expected
$5 billion in revenue to be raised.
In total, the IPO values the company between $75 and $100
billion. Moreover, the filings revealed that Facebook now boasts
approximately 845 million users, a figure that represents about half of
all internet users worldwide.
Read full article online.
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Angie's List, Inc. enables more than 1,000,000 consumers
to share their ratings and reviews on how well or how poorly local doctors,
dentists and other service professionals perform. Angie's List takes
the "ask-your-neighbor" approach for finding good, reliable
service to a higher level.
Founded in suburban Columbus, Ohio, in 1995 by William S. Oesterle and Angie Hicks Bowman, Angie's List has
grown exponentially in the last 17 years, both in terms of service
offerings and reach. Now headquartered in Indianapolis, the company is
active in 175 local markets in the United States.
Read the entire Angie's
List case study.
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According to a new poll of its members by ExpertCEO, 80.4 percent of chief executives expect
revenue to increase for their companies in 2012, while 13.8 percent
expect it to remain flat and only 5.8 percent think revenue will
decline.
Source: Wall Street Journal
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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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