Atom Power – Fuel Additive For Cars And Motorbikes

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Atom Power is a fuel additive that is the result of years of research and development by the Korean Institute of Energy Research. It has achieved multiple awards and has been approved by TUV SUD PSB Singapore. Official tests have shown that it is best to pour it into the petrol tank before fuel-in. With just 1-2ml for every litre of petrol, fuel consumption reduction has been proven to be 35%. On top of that, fuel efficiency had also shown improvement by 55%. What this means is lesser petrol will be needed to cover distance usually done without using it.

With the same amount of Atom Power to every litre of petrol, your vehicle can have excellent cold start-off. You can bid goodbye to sludge in fuel tank, build-ups on fuel injectors and minimise carbon deposits. This process will also prolong your vehicle’s servicing schedule and you will experience the actual power from the fresh draw of clean fuel. In addition to that, not only will you have more distance travelled, Atom Power reduces 40% to 70% of smoke emission. Atom Power being a special organic compound which has achieved ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 Standards, is also environment friendly, thus, it has been certified Green Label Product proudly made in Korea.

This fuel additive also improves the engine’s life span. It changes the fuel molecular structure that increases efficiency in combustion. This enables optimum level performance that in turn results to cost savings. What’s more, it has been tested using Aprilia RSV4 and Ducati 916. These two Superbikes were put through a 20 lap track test conducted at Pasir Gudang Johor Circuit (Malaysia). Both motorbikes displayed outstanding results!! Not only will the fuel efficiency improved; there were also increased engine power, smoother acceleration resulting in more power!! Atom Power also kept the bikes’ temperatures down by 15 Degrees Celsius to 20 Degrees Celsius!!

Another test was conducted out at PSB Singapore. This time a car, An Audi (A42.OMU4DR), was put through a test. The performance of the car was carried out before and after adding the additive. The fuel consumption was determined by the amount of fuel used over a measured distance. Driving was kept at a constant speed of between 80 to 90 km/h. There was also improvement in engine noise at idle mode which was measured by a QUEST sound level meter Type 1. Distance travelled by the Audi car was 261.4 km before adding Atom Power. 21.04 litres of petrol was consumed which leads to a fuel efficiency of 12.42 km per litre of petrol. The noise level in idle mode was 73.1 db (A).

After adding Atom Power, the same car covered 263 km with a fuel consumption of 13.61 litres of petrol!! Thus it was calculated to have an improvement in fuel efficiency of 19.32 km per litre of petrol!! Engine noise in idle mode was registered at 69.4 db (A)!!

Many people were sceptical at first upon hearing the effectiveness of Atom Power. Yet many have tried and true enough, most have found out Atom Power indeed is a remarkable fuel saving agent!! The elusive search for a simple yet effective product has helped us to beat the ever rising petrol prices and contribute to the care for our Mother Nature.

Dance Therapy For Spinal Injury

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Dance your heart out to get rid of the terrible spinal injury!

Surprised? Well, if we are to believe the recent medical report published by the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC), dance therapy is used to cure patients who are suffering from spinal injury. If we look at the global figures, estimated 20,000 spinal operations are carried out in the UK each year, than any other type of operations. The same figure probably applies for operations in the USA. However, even the most successful operation could not promise a complete recovery from back pain. In 10-20% of cases the bone graft fails to unite completely leaving a permanent pseudoarthrosis.

Deepti Aggarwal, head of the lifestyle management department of the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre said, “The benefits of dance therapy – both psychologically and physically has been identified since long. But it is for the first time that it has been introduced in a healthcare centre under strict medical supervision. Needless to say the results have been amazing,” The dance not only did strengthen the muscles but also boosts the morale as well as enhances the patient mood. In case of spinal injury, a person lacks in physical and metal balance, asking to dance in such a situation might seems insensitive. Nevertheless, for such patients doctors have planned to promote wheelchair dance. This may act as a physiotherapy session resulting in gaining increased body movement and confidence level of the patient.

Generally there are two kinds of spinal injuries – paraplegia, affecting lower limbs whereas quadriplegia paralyzes the upper as well as lower limbs of a person. As a first step, the patient learns to propel his wheelchair and move their bodies rhythmically. When synchronized with music, one tends to feel less pain. Dance therapy has better healing affect on you for number of good reasons. It has been reported that things with exercising and physiotherapy sessions tends to become irksome after sometime but music with potentially high level of physical activities helps in boosting the confidence level as well as prolonged body movements.

The dance therapy is followed by other holistic therapies like aromatherapy, yoga, meditation and reflexology etc. undoubtedly this new discovery of doctors are showing excellent improvement among the people who suffers from spinal problems. Inspired by the success, the authorities are planning to introduce the therapy for people with common ailments such as backache soon. Not only in India but doctors from other countries too showing their interest in the dance therapy, reports show that considerable number of professionals who suffers from spinal or backbone related problem are considering this treatment above any other direct medication. Great news isn’t it!

Selling a Business? Roles Played by M&A Participants

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Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can appear dauntingly complex with the various transaction structures and numerous participants involved in the process. Adding to the confusion, industry players are often coined by multiple, synonymous names. It’s no wonder many outside Wall Street view the M&A industry as a Byzantine Empire of financial wizardry.

Setting aside the various transaction types and associated financial engineering for now, this article provides a structured outline of the roles played by the various M&A participants. In any given transaction, M&A participants may be categorized as the Seller, the Buyer, the Adviser or the Financier. The role of each is outlined below.

THE SELLER

While the number of shareholders in a particular company may vary from a single person to thousands, for the purposes of this article, the number of shareholders is not significant. Collectively, the shareholders are referred to as the Seller.

THE BUYER

Generally speaking, the buyer universe is divided into three camps: Financial Buyers, Strategic Buyers and Public Investors. Financial buyers are those firms whose business model is to buy, to develop, and subsequently to sell businesses. Financial buyers acquire operating companies for their fund’s portfolio by making direct equity investments into these companies in exchange for a percentage ownership. By doing this, the financial buyers expect to profit from both the cash flow that the operating company generates and the capital gains realized upon exit (upon selling the company). Financial buyers therefore acquire and grow businesses in anticipation of implementing a future exit strategy. The exit provides the financial buyer liquidity (converting their equity back to cash) to either re-invest in a new company or to distribute as proceeds to the firm’s limited partners (the entities that contributed capital to the financial buyer’s fund).

Financial buyers’ investment preferences usually fall within a certain investing bandwidth coinciding with the phases of corporate growth – from startup to maturity. Consequently, different financial buyers are more prominent at different stages of a company’s life cycle. As a result, financial buyers are often categorized by the maturity and size of companies in which they typically prefer to invest. Although there is some overlap across each of the categories, the following are recognized industry naming conventions of three distinct types of financial buyers:

* Angel Investors: Angel investors are typically high net worth individuals who back an entrepreneur during a company’s startup phase. Angel investors hope to back a good entrepreneur with a good idea. Together with venture capital firms, angel investors provide the earliest stage of investment to a company as it is newly founded.

* Venture Capital Firms: Venture Capital firms (VCs) generally invest in companies from a pool of money (a fund). Like angel investors, venture capital firms tend to invest in the early phases of a company’s life-cycle. However, because VCs often have sufficient funds to make much larger investments than a high net worth individual, as a group, venture capital firms often invest in growth companies a bit later in stage compared to angel investors.

* Private Equity Firms: Private equity firms (sometimes called financial sponsors, buyout firms or investment companies) almost always operate from an invested pool of money contributed from a variety of sources including wealthy individuals, pension funds, trusts, endowments and fund-of-funds. While there are always exceptions, private equity investors typically invest in companies that have matured beyond the proof-of-concept phase, where the company possesses a definable market position, a solid revenue base, sustainable cash flow, and some competitive advantage, yet retains plenty of opportunity for further growth and expansion.

It should be noted that while the majority of private equity firms closing deals in the market place operate from a pool of committed capital, there are also unfunded sponsors, who essentially operate as opportunity scouts. Once they find a business that they would like to purchase, they then seek to raise the required capital. Relative to a private equity buyer with a fund of committed capital, an unfunded sponsor is disadvantaged in that the seller may perceive him or her to be a higher risk candidate to actually close the transaction, given the lack of committed capital. On the flip side, an unfunded sponsor is under lower pressure to make acquisitions because he or she does not have an idle pool of capital waiting on an investment opportunity.

Strategic buyers (also called industry buyers or corporate acquirers) are companies that are primarily geared toward operating within a given market or industry. Strategic buyers typically acquire companies for the synergies resulting from the combination of the two businesses. Synergies may include revenue growth opportunities, cost reductions, balance sheet enhancements or simply size in the marketplace. As such, strategic buyers look to make acquisitions with an integration strategy in mind rather than an exit strategy (as in the case of a financial buyer).

Because of the opportunity to benefit from potential synergies, it is generally thought that strategic buyers should be able to justify a higher price for a target company compared to a financial buyer for the same company. However, in certain instances, financial buyers may look and behave like strategic/industry buyers if they hold complementary operating companies in their portfolios. This is why searching the business profiles of the portfolio companies owned by private equity firms is key to finding those targeted financial buyers that may act like a strategic buyer.

Different from the financial buyer and the strategic buyer, the seller may instead elect to sell the company to public investors by floating some or all of the company’s shares on the securities market through an initial public offering (IPO). If the selling company is already publicly-traded, it may also elect to issue new, additional shares to the investing public through a secondary offering (also called a follow-on offering). Publicly-traded companies are usually more mature and established, with sufficient historical operating performance to better gauge the performance of the company. While a public offering may offer attractive valuations for the seller, the process is also quite expensive and comes with the burden of tight regulatory constraints for the company going forward.

THE ADVISERS

The Advisers to an M&A transaction usually consist of the M&A Adviser and the professional service providers. Analogous to a real estate agent in the function they perform, M&A advisers are the link between the Buyer and the Seller and are usually the catalyst that keep a transaction moving forward. M&A advisers are referred to by various names, segregated by the size of the transaction that they typically handle. Although there are no generally accepted thresholds within the industry to clearly delineate where one type of firm ends and the other begins, as a general guidelines for the purposes of our M&A Advisory Firm data module:

* Investment bankers serve clients whose enterprise values are consistently above $50 million (on the low end and often in the billions).

* Middle market investment bankers (also called intermediaries) normally work on deals with enterprise values between $5 million and $75 million.

* Business brokers are those firms that consistently work on transactions with an enterprise value less than $5 million.

Other professional services typically involved in an M&A transaction include transaction attorneys, accountants and valuation service providers. The transaction attorneys’ involvement in a deal varies by firm and by transaction. However, at a minimum, the transaction attorneys have the primary responsibility to draft the contract and may also be involved in the negotiations. The accountants serve to provide financial and tax advice to the principals (the buyer and the seller) in a transaction. Frequently in an M&A deal, an independent valuation of the company is needed or required. This is performed by a valuation service provider, whose goal is to assign a third-party, fair market value to the company. Private Equity Info also provides subscribers with a data module of valuation service providers.

THE FINANCIERS

Senior lenders provide senior debt to companies. In an M&A transaction, the buyer, in addition to the equity investment, looks to lending institutions (typically commercial banks) to provide some senior debt to fund the purchase.

Senior debt within an M&A transaction is analogous to the first mortgage on your house. In the event of a default, the senior lender is the first in line to get paid from any liquidation value from the underlying asset, in this case the purchased company’s assets.

Unlike angel investors, VC’s and private equity groups who normally make pure equity investments in companies, mezzanine lenders provide subordinated debt to a company, often with a potential for equity participation through convertible debt. Mezzanine debt may also be sought to finance a company’s growth or working capital needs. However, in an M&A transaction, mezzanine firms frequently team with strategic and financial buyers to bridge the gap between equity and debt. Mezzanine loans are analogous to the second mortgage on your house.

Because mezzanine lenders are behind senior lenders in the hierarchy of bankruptcy proceedings upon default, mezzanine investors look to invest in companies with solid historical cash flows, which enable the company to service the required interest payments on the debt.

A number of large institutions offer mezzanine lending for M&A transactions of various sizes. However, small business investment companies (SBICs), government-sponsored entities, also provide mezzanine debt strictly to smaller M&A transactions.

Merchant banks are simply investment banks that are willing to invest some of the firm’s capital as an equity investment into a transaction in which they are also the adviser. Some argue that the merchant banking business model has inherent conflicts of interest – in the case where a merchant bank is advising the seller (and hence should be trying to get the highest valuation for its client company) and also acting as a buyer (and hence trying to get the lowest valuation). The counter argument, provided by the merchant banks, is that the firm believes in the deal and the client company’s future prospects to the extent that they are willing to invest their own capital to support the transaction. In most cases, merchant banks make small, minority investments.

Lastly, it is typical in M&A transactions for the seller to also be a financier. If the collective equity and debt provided by the buyer do not equate to the desired purchase price, the seller may be asked to carry a seller note to bridge this funding gap. This is analogous to owner financing when selling your house.