The 2010 IMAP Fall Conference

The 2010 IMAP Fall Conference has been held in Paris, from 22 to 24 October, after the Fall 2010 International Mergers & Acquisitions Symposium on 21 October.

The event has been organized and hosted by the French partner, Societex, and sponsored by Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, by Capgemini, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services and by the international law firm Akerman Senterfitt.

During the Symposium, open to external people, an International M&A panel discussed the “The Global M&A Industry 2010” topic with the following speakers: Gonzague de Blignieres, co-president of Barclays Private Equity Europe; Scott Berman, managing director and senior transaction advisor with Morgan Joseph (IMAP New York); Pierre Bosset, head of research for HSBC Securities; Carlos Méndez-Peñate, partner of Akerman Senterfitt, one of the world’s leading law firms. Julien Ponthus, a journalist with Thomson Reuters, moderated the panel, which focused on evaluating and optimizing cross-border collaboration in today’s global business environment.

After the general introduction, industry briefing panels followed to discuss specific industrial sectors.

On the Energy & Power Industry Briefing Panel, the speaker was Claude Nahon, EDF Group’s executive vice president for sustainable development and the former head of hydro and renewable energies at EDF. EDF Group is one of the leading players in nuclear energy, with 66 billion Euro turnover in 2009.

On the Food & Beverage Industry Briefing Panel the speaker was Jean-Louis Ruatti, president of Agro Invest, a private equity and venture capital firm in the agri-food industry.

On the Information Technology Industry Briefing Panel the speakers were Gregoire Cayatte, head of corporate finance and investor relator of Devoteam, the leading information and communications technologies consulting company in Europe and Antonin Baudry, senior equity analyst at HSBC in charge of the European IT services and software sector.

The industry briefing panels have been joined by other executive-level representatives of major industry corporations that are active in the M&A market, analysts from large banks that cover the respective industries, senior M&A transaction advisors who specialize in these sectors, lawyers and M&A Professionals coming from 30 countries worldwide.

This was the third global Symposium organized by IMAP; the previous were held in 2009 respectively in Los Angeles and Istanbul. The next will be in New York City, in March 2011 and in Madrid, in October 2011.

The Symposium has been followed, as usual, by the Annual IMAP Meeting, where all IMAP members joined several workshops, Industry Groups meetings, one-to-one meetings, in addiction to a full social events program.

Among the relevant events, the appointment of the new IMAP Chairman, Sevket Basev (IMAP Turkey), who replaces Karl Fesenmeyer (IMAP Germany) and of the new Board members: Edoardo Morcillo (IMAP China), Josè Sauma (IMAP Central America), Steven Dresner (IMAP Chicago); the presentation of the “Collaborative Colleague Award” to the IMAP member that mostly worked to encourage members participation and cooperation; the winner was Constantine Biller from Clearwater (IMAP UK). Finally, the presentation of IMAP Spirit Award, which, for the second year, has been assigned to  M&A Consultants (IMAP Germany) as they have closed the higher number of cross border deals with other network members.