ACG Gears Up for Significant Growth in Europe and Mexico

The 175 ACG members in Europe today represent a small percentage of the total ACG membership of 9,500. Recently ACG introduced plans to dramatically increase the number of members in Europe, knowing that an increased concentration of European members will benefit the majority lead group in North America and become a vital trading point for Asian and Latin American markets. A key dividend of our renewed interest in Europe is ACG’s recent introduction of new chapters in Germany. A comprehensive plan for ACG Germany expansion includes chapters in Hamburg, Dusseldorf/Cologne, Frankfurt, and Munich/Stuttgart. Early in June, a team of ACG officials, including Harald Klien, President of ACG Austria, Carl Wangman, and I met with prospective members of organizing committees in Dusseldorf and Frankfurt. The committees held additional meetings over the summer. ACG member Gernot Hebestreit, Managing Partner of Grant Thornton in Dusseldorf, reported the following on the Dusseldorf organizing committee’s third meeting in August: * The group plans to identify 20 to 30 corporate prospects to invite personally to the first meeting this fall. * A lawyer on the organizing committee is preparing the appropriate German legal document Vereinssatzung. * Grant Thornton Dusseldorf has volunteered to provide administrative assistance to the new chapter. * The committee may invite an M&A publication to sponsor the first event and provide coverage of ACG’s entry into Dusseldorf. We anticipate that Frankfurt’s organizing committee will create a startup plan similar to the one outlined by the Dusseldorf group. ACG Chapters in Holland/France/U.K. Update ACG Holland reports that it is making progress in setting up its website with help from ACG staff. According to organizing president, Hans van Ierland, Managing Partner, Holland Corporate Finance, the chapter will hold its second meeting in September. ACG France, under the leadership of Eric Licoys, one of France’s well-known business leaders, has doubled its membership in the last year. Hazel Mack of Willis and Chairman of ACG UK, continues to boast that the British ACG group retains the highest percentage of corporate members of any European chapter. The European chapter presidents met in London in June to discuss ways to improve communication among the European chapters, to encourage the growth of the German chapters, and to provide a support structure for the ACG Capital Connection in Vienna next spring. Our goal is to build membership in Europe to 500 members by 2007. ACG Capital Connection Comes to Europe Harry Klien, Managing Director of CD Invest Consult GmbH and President of ACG Austria, the largest ACG chapter in Europe, recently announced that ACG Austria will host the first ACG Capital Connection in Vienna on May 11, 2006. ACG chapters in Europe plan to cooperate in this first matching of private equity groups with deal and capital sources. The ACG Capital Connection events have proved to be popular in North America, with nearly 20 chapters hosting them annually. ACG in Mexico Don Feldmann, Vice President of new chapters in North America, and I are coordinating efforts to re-establish ACG’s presence in Mexico City. Ricardo Perez and Alexander von Griesheim of Pablo Rion y Associates met with Feldmann and me and other ACG officials at ACG InterGrowth in 2005 to express interest in re-establishing ACG Mexico City. We have agreed to form an organizing committee with a goal of calling together the initial meeting sometime this fall. William H. Weirich Managing Director Matrix Capital Markets Group Inc. ACG Vice President International Expansion [email protected] (c) 2005 Mergers and Acquisitions Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.majournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com