25 sustainable energy business startups to watch

probe

http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/sustainable_tech_2009/?chan=magazine+channel_special+report

(table of companies with descriptions, who has invested in them, location, company profile links )


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/09_30/B4140clean_energy.htm

(Special BusinessWeek report "The next energy innovators")

enviro

Any of them planning to go public?

probe

enviro wrote: »

Any of them planning to go public?

Unlikely. The IPO market in the US is dead, mainly thanks to Bush’s Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) (Law 745 of 2002). Nobody in their right mind would go public in the US in the current legal environment. The IPO market was dead long before the current recession. SOX = yet another reason to thank George W Bush for his great contribution to the planet. Bureaucracy gone bonkers as a dumb political “must do something” reaction to the Enron criminals. One crime event should not be allowed to drive the regulatory/legislative agenda.

The global economic recovery will take much longer because of SOX’s impact on financing and motivating business start-ups.

The only option for many companies now is the eircom style route (if they aren’t taken over by a listed company) – where the company is bought and sold by private equity funds, leveraged to the hilt, and dumped to another racketeer who will suck the company dry a bit more and sell it on to someone else who can leverage it even more still. Until it ends up in receivership, administration or liquidation (or bankruptcy under US law, probably chapter 7 rather than 11).

cerebus

probe wrote: »

Unlikely. The IPO market in the US is dead, mainly thanks to Bush’s Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) (Law 745 of 2002). Nobody in their right mind would go public in the US in the current legal environment.

Not entirely true, the IPO market in the US has made a bit of a rebound in the last few months. There have been 11 on the NYSE and 3 on the NASDAQ in 1H 2009.

http://www.nyse.com/press/1246875732166.html

Still a long ways from the heady days of a few years ago, but I know that some PE investors (lumping both VC and traditional PE money in here) are looking at these developments with a bit more optimism about exit opportunities.

Interesting list from BW - some very cool companies on there.

probe

cerebus wrote: »

Not entirely true, the IPO market in the US has made a bit of a rebound in the last few months. There have been 11 on the NYSE and 3 on the NASDAQ in 1H 2009.

http://www.nyse.com/press/1246875732166.html

Wow! There used to be about 3 IPOs a week before Sarbanes Oxley. NYSE is trying to put a positive spin on the dead market.....

Sarbanes Free Hong Kong (pop 7 million) has 50 to 100 IPOs per annum.

http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/article/0,1002,sid%253D120377%2526cid%253D142808,00.html

Ireland lived off a pipeline of American business start-ups, that grew, had their IPO, expanded internationally and typically used Ireland as a European base. Sarbanes has cut that innovation pipeline, and its impact is coming home to roost now.

Yet another reason why Ireland needs to become entrepreneurially self-reliant, a la Switzerland, on a global basis. And far less reliant on the US and EU.

The US has become a bureaucratic quagmire during the dumb Bush presidential era. No sign that Obama will reverse the trend - in fact the contrary, given his apparent leanings. The EU has always been a platform to spread bureaucratic "innovations" of individual member states EU-wide, and a backdoor to bypass local/national democratic accountability.