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Breakfast seminar: Will your IPO or M&A be everything it could be?

RoseRyan is presenting a free breakfast seminar, “Optimizing Your Liquidity Event: Practical Advice From the Trenches,” on June 12 in Palo Alto.

It will show you how to maximize the profitability—and minimize the pain—of your future IPO or M&A, setting the stage for success by methodically dealing with legal, finance and accounting issues and policies. Topics include:

  • Managing processes and policies
  • Avoiding the primary deal killers
  • Preparing financial accounting and reporting

You’ll also get an unvarnished account of the NeoPhotonics IPO from the company’s vice president and CFO, James D. Fay. He’ll share what worked, what didn’t and what the company learned from the experience.

Our panel also includes these IPO and M&A experts:

Pat Voll, Vice President, RoseRyan: Pat leads RoseRyan’s compliance and ERM practice and has worked on numerous IPOs and M&As.

Yoomin Hong, Vice President, Goldman, Sachs & Co.: Yoomin focuses on origination and execution of strategic and financing transactions for clients in the cleantech sector.

E. Thom (Todd) Rumberger Jr., Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP: Todd focuses on private equity, M&As and venture capital, and guiding Internet, software, telecommunications, digital media and financial services companies through all stages of their growth.

The seminar takes place 8–10 a.m. at Foley & Lardner in Palo Alto. Get details and register here. 

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Real-time data driving businesses—and changing the CFO role

It wasn’t long ago that real-time financial information was available only to those who worked in companies with expensive data collection and analysis systems. CFOs of less-wealthy companies had to make decisions on the basis of historical information (or hunches, never a good idea). Lacking timely information, they had to forgo decisions that could have increased revenues, improved inventory management or otherwise helped their companies, because in the absence of good information, certain decisions were just too risky. The default was to make no decision, and that’s what most CFOs rightly did—but at a cost to their business.

Today, real-time information is inexpensive to obtain, and the role of CFOs has changed as a result. Having access to real-time information allows CFOs to make appropriate business decisions without the risk that used to exist. Many CFOs are taking advantage of that fact—and nowhere more than in Silicon Valley, where many businesses are driven by real-time data.

I’ve become part of that trend as a consulting CFO for some of the Valley’s up-and-comers. One of them is a social media company with data gathering systems that detail sales volumes and revenues every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The company’s accounting systems allow the executive team to see the financial status of the company in real time, at all times. As CFO, I can access this information from anywhere around the world and help the company make appropriate decisions that will immediately affect its business. For example, if we see revenues dropping, we can instantaneously initiate a promotion, sale or other activity that will drive revenues back to the target, at which time we can instantaneously cease the activity. We can see the drop and recovery all in real time and keep sales on track with the overall business plan.

What I am doing with this company is now the norm in Silicon Valley. We can expect to see more and more CFOs of businesses outside the Valley follow the same path.

The growing availability of real-time data is forcing a shift in the role of the financial executive. Today’s CFOs need to understand where to get the data, how to interpret it and how to use such real-time information to drive a business forward. If they don’t, they risk becoming a statistic themselves.

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