By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
April 14, 2008 (April 16 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Jerry Tomberlin will take office in July as the new dean of the Sprott School of Business.
Photo by CHRISTIAN FLEURY

Carleton University’s new business school dean and president will be starting their jobs on the same day this summer, and both say they are excited to strengthen what they see as a school with great potential.

The university recently announced that it has selected its first female president, Dr. Roseann Runte, and picked Dr. Jerry Tomberlin as the second dean for the Sprott School of Business since the business school was awarded full faculty status in 2006. Both start on July 1.

The new president will be taking over from interim head Dr. Samy Mahmoud and the incoming business school dean is succeeding acting dean Roland Thomas.

Mr. Tomberlin is the former dean of the John Molson School of Business at Montreal’s Concordia University, while Ms. Runte is currently serving as president of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.

“It’s a very exciting school that’s very strong and one of Canada’s well-kept secrets. I plan on making it stronger,” said Mr. Tomberlin in an interview with the OBJ. Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Feb. 11, 2008 (Feb. 13 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Fidus founder Michael Wakim is enjoying a deserved sabbatical from the company, but he says one of the hardest things was unplugging and getting used to having the time off.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

It’s not often that you see a CEO taking a break from a busy, growing company, but when Fidus chief executive Michael Wakim decided it was time for a sabbatical, he found a reliable stand-in with his interim president, former Tropic Networks CEO Kevin Rankin.

So what do you do when you’re thinking of taking a long break and need an executive replacement, or if you’re looking for someone to fill a hole while you search for a more permanent person to take on the role? The OBJ spoke to Mr. Wakim about how he found Mr. Rankin, and other tips to finding the perfect interim executive.

OBJ: So why did you decide to do this interim hiring?

WAKIM: I’m part of the Mindtrust group of CEOs in Ottawa, we meet for breakfast once a month and it’s a really helpful time … I’ve gotten to know the people that go to Mindtrust quite well, and when I was looking for someone to help me at Fidus, naturally I looked at some of the people I’d made friends with in the Mindtrust group, and Kevin was one of them.

The reason I wanted to do it was because the company was doing so well that it couldn’t have been a better time. We have a record backlog of work that needs to be done, four-months worth of projects and financials are the strongest they’ve ever been, so I thought it was the best time I could possibly think of to take a break.

OBJ: It’s rather an unusual step to take a break from a busy company that you’ve founded and hand over the reins to someone else, isn’t it?

WAKIM: It’s hard to believe but the company is over six years old now and it’s grown by 20 or 30 per cent every year for six years in a row Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Feb. 11, 2008 (Feb. 13 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

ImaSight CEO John Brooks.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

Local life sciences firms Liponex Inc. and ImaSight Inc. are mulling over a $10-million merger, at the same time as Liponex is facing delisting from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The two companies, both of which were among the OBJ‘s 2007 Startups to Watch, have entered into a non-binding letter of intent for a business combination that would see current ImaSight shareholders own about 65 per cent of the combined company.

“We’ve been looking at strategic options for a number of months now,” Liponex CEO Bill Dickie told the OBJ. “We felt we needed to widen the scope of the company so we weren’t entirely dependent on one product line, and what attracted us about ImaSight was that it’s a revenue-stage company which is quite stable going forward.”

The deal would see Liponex acquiring all of the issued and outstanding shares of ImaSight through some kind of share purchase arrangement, with the value of the merger “in the range of $10 million,” according to ImaSight CEO John Brooks.

Both companies have said Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Feb. 4, 2008 (Feb. 7 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Everyone’s been talking about the talent crunch in Ottawa and elsewhere, but fast-growing optical networking company BTI Systems had no problems finding a new executive to oversee its global operations.

BTI’s management team got a little help from its friends to identify former BreconRidge president John Haydon as the ideal candidate for its senior vice-president of global operations role, and he joined the company earlier this month.

Franca Marinelli, BTI’s vice-president of global organizational development, and CEO Lance Laking shared with the OBJ some of the elements to consider for an equally smooth ride in the executive recruitment process.

OBJ: Could you describe John Haydon’s role in the company?

LAKING: Global operations … includes our overall manufacturing strategy, it takes in our customer care, customer service organizations. It also includes our information management systems, our IT strategy as being a critical deliverable for the senior operations executive. In that, we have John Haydon working very closely with our sales organization to help drive the business scaling, and with that there’s an extension to his involvement both with our customers and supporting them from the operations side, and our channel partners. It’s a pretty multi-faceted and involved position that is certainly part of our senior executive team.

OBJ: And why did you decide to hire for this particular role at this particular time?

MARINELLI: The company, having sort of focused in the last couple of years on development, was at the juncture where Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper.
Feb. 4, 2008

The value of venture capital investment in Ottawa fell by 31 per cent year-over-year in 2007, despite a pick-up in activity during the fourth quarter, according to a new report by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation.

Disclosed venture capital investments in Ottawa-based businesses totalled $184.5 million for all of last year, down from the $266.1 million seen in 2006. The number of deals also fell to 14 from 19.

However, the fourth quarter of 2007 saw somewhat of a revival of VC investment compared to more sluggish activity earlier in the year, with five local deals worth a total of $84.4 million. Although the dollar figure was 2.3 per cent lower than the same quarter a year earlier, the fourth quarter of 2007 was the largest of the year and more than triple the $23.2-million investment seen in the third quarter.

“There was nothing new in 2007; it’s been Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Jan. 28, 2008 (Jan. 30 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

When wireless, satellite and defence solutions maker EMS Technologies Inc. said it was going to buy satellite communications company DSpace and merge it with its Ottawa-based SATCOM operations, it seemed like the perfect fit.

Both make satellite technology to provide mobile broadband Internet to people on the move in remote areas, both used U.K.-based Inmarsat’s satellites, and the acquisition wouldn’t require SATCOM to shed any product lines or lay off staff.

But DSpace is based in Adelaide, Australia, which is more than a day away by plane and 12-and-a-half hours ahead of Ottawa. So, how did SATCOM deal with the distance and the differences, both temporal and cultural?

The OBJ spoke with SATCOM general manager Gary Hebb about some of the ways the companies managed to bridge this divide.

OBJ: Why did you pick DSpace to acquire?

HEBB: Our satellite communications technology, which are particular terminals that give you high-speed data communications while you’re moving in a vehicle anyplace around the world, is pretty complicated tech, with only about five companies in the world that provide that kind of technology. DSpace was one of them and EMS was one of them.

With DSpace in Australia, they have customers like the Australian defence forces and they have access to markets in that side of the world that we normally wouldn’t even think of. It gives us access to those customers, those markets and more of an understanding of what’s going on in different areas of the world.

It also gives us access to Australian government funding. Satellite communications is a very high-tech kind of business and it’s the sort of thing that qualifies for research and development initiatives that different governments have, and Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Jan. 7, 2008

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Robert Ford says low VC levels and international consolidation will continue to drive M&As in 2008; however, the U.S. economic slowdown may push this activity down.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

It doesn’t look like 2008 will be a breakthrough year for Ottawa’s high-tech companies, but the good news is that a downturn isn’t expected either, despite the U.S. economic slowdown, low funding levels and last year’s historic merger and acquisition activity.

With some of the biggest deals in Ottawa history seen in 2007, the forecast is that the momentum from those mergers and acquisitions is going to help activity levels in this area stay healthy, with only a slight dip expected this year.

Robert Ford, a technology lawyer with Gowlings Kanata, says there were several factors driving M&A activity in 2007: low-cost debt funding and private equity; strong equity prices, meaning that it was a good time to buy because company shares were worth a lot; international pressure and consolidation, and lack of venture capital.

“Three of those factors will drop this year – the low-cost funding, equity prices will fall a little bit with the U.S. slowdown, and private equity will fall off somewhat in response to exposure to asset-backed commercial paper,” Mr. Ford says. “However, there is still a lot of international sales pressure, which will drive some M&A and strategic buys, and the lack of venture capital means some companies will have to sell before their time in Ottawa, but it won’t be as furious.”

Mr. Ford says the pressure to consolidate in order to compete internationally is going to mean a lot
more mergers and purchases of smaller Ottawa companies, as in the IBM-Watchfire and Allen-Vanguard/Med-Eng deals.

However, there will be fewer mega-deals than in 2007 as the industry is still “digesting the large deals” of last year, says Cliff Taylor of PricewaterhouseCoopers, agreeing with Mr. Ford that there will be many strategic buys of Ottawa companies.

“There will be an increase in foreign deals in North America (in general), with foreign companies snapping up strategic technology to round out their own technology portfolios and to get their products to market faster than they can on their own,” Mr. Taylor says.

“As well, a lot of companies funded over the past five years now need an exit … a few go public, but usually they eventually get purchased because it’s the path of least resistance.”  Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Dec. 31, 2007 (Jan. 2, 2008 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

PlascoEnergy CEO Rod Bryden.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

While there’s an oft-stated fear that venture capital is dwindling in Ottawa and across the province, it seemed this year that local companies were able to find plenty of financing alternatives if they looked hard enough.

Ottawa companies have raised more than $1 billion through investment other than venture capital deals (see sidebar) this year alone, whether through private placements, venture debt deals, public offerings or grants, and it looks like this could become a bigger trend with lower levels of venture capital and as the startups that survived the tech crash mature.

One financing method that popped up in several local transactions this year was the venture debt deal, along with other types of loans. These venture debt financing rounds are much easier and cheaper to work with than equity financing rounds and help young companies avoid equity dilution, while giving them more time to raise other kinds of capital.

“As companies are getting a bit Continue reading →