Investment bankers are another key group helping to give birth to the Super Grid, or the more efficient electrical grid the nation desperately needs in order to lower carbon emissions.
The ibankers are the ones who facilitate the massive financing -- including initial public offerings and mergers -- which in turn produce profits to investors who back the disruptive startups pushing the Smart Grid.
With investment in bouncing back from the recession and more deals being done, ibankers are likely to return to the limelight in a big way.
Anticipating this, our conference GreenBeat 2009 has added two of the most respected Super Grid-focused bankers to its lineup of speakers: Brian Bolster from Goldman Sachs and Bryce Lee from Credit Suisse. Both direct the clean energy practices at firms that caught the green waves early -- financing promising companies and brokering their deals -- and it has paid off.
Snagging the biggest green spotlight this year, Goldman Sachs and Bolster (left) played a lead role underwriting the $378 million IPO of battery maker A123Systems in September. A123Systems offers energy storage solutions that could eventually be adapted to turn intermittent energy sources like wind and solar into major power contributors, and also help integrate them into mainstream grids. The company's share price rose 50 percent from $13.50 to $20.29 on its opening day on the Nasdaq, and got everyone talking about cleantech as a lucrative opportunity again.
This galvanized venture capitalists and private equity firms to fund other promising startups, and inspired several other big companies (think Solyndra and Smart Grid contender Silver Spring Networks) to more strongly consider their own IPOs.
Using the A123Systems sale as a bellweather, the Cleantech Group predicted several major green IPOs for 2010, going as far as to say that the nation's biggest IPOs next year will come out of the green sector. The federal stimulus dollars into the sector are only helping.
Meanwhile, Credit Suisse, on Lee's watch, has raised more money for clean technology companies through equity offerings (IPOs and other stock offerings) than any other investment bank -- and perhaps by double.
Lee also has led transactions with some of the biggest companies of the cleantech sector, including First Solar, Suntech Power, ReneSola, Yingli Solar and EnerNOC, which all went public.
Credit Suisse partnered with Goldman partnered in the latest equity offering this year of Trina Solar. Credit Suisse raised private financings like Fisker and Heliovolts.
Separately, Credit Suisse's private equity group has backed or managed money for significant smart grid companies. They include SmartSynch, maker of a box that transmits energy use data wirelessly, Masdar, the fund raising $250 million to build a cleantech research city in Abu Dhabi, energy storage company Isentropic, and the Cleantech Group.
Goldman, meanwhile, invested $33.5 million two years ago into GridPoint, a Smart Grid company that provides software for utilities to closely manage and deliver electrical data.
Goldman has also backed Smart Grid software maker Current Group and Arcadian Networks -- a company stringing broadband service to rural communities that could eventually be tapped to transmit electric grid data between utilities and their hardest to reach customers.
We're eager to hear where Lee and Bolster think are the biggest opportunities for the grid. Make sure you don't miss them -- buy your ticket for GreenBeat today at http://www.greenbeat2009.com.
We're also delighted to have the support of our strategic partners: Vantage Communications, DEMO, Matter Network, and Fora.TV; and our sponsors: Accenture, Southern California Edison, Accel Partners, Mayfield Fund, Oracle Utilities, Schwartz Communications, Cisco Systems, CPower, CSC and KPMG.
VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at GreenBeat2009.com.