ACG Los Angeles Shows That There’s No Business Like the M&A Business

Next month the Golden Globe awards will be telecast from the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel, but in late September the ballroom was filled with stars of the M&A world at the 2006 ACG Los Angeles Business Conference. This year’s ACG LA Business Conference attracted more than 1,300 participants from across the country and abroad, along with the more than 150 private equity firms, hedge funds, lenders, investment bankers, and buyout funds that were part of the Capital Connection. Building on years of success, the ACG LA Business Conference has emerged as the West Coast’s leading M&A event, and one of the most important conferences of its type in the nation. Keynote speakers this year included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl, economist and former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo, environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr., Hilton CEO Stephen Bollenbach, publisher Steve Forbes, and Senator John Edwards. Speakers in prior years have included political figures such as Senator Mario Cuomo, General Colin Powell, Former Prime Minister John Major, and General Barry McCaffrey; business leaders including Steve Wynn, Michael Milken, and Gerald Levin; and sports figures like legendary basketball coaches John Wooden and Phil Jackson, boxer and entrepreneur George Foreman, Tommy Lasorda, and others. “As with all of our events, the success of the annual Business Conference is a credit to the hard work of a team of talented and dedicated committee members,” said Doug Schreier, ACG LA Chapter President and a Principal at Deloitte. “The popularity of the Conference has helped fuel both a steady increase in the chapter’s membership, which is now approaching 450, and our other chapter projects,” he added. ACG LA’s latest initiative is the ACG LA Cup, an investment banking case contest for business students. Introduced earlier this year, the Cup offers cash awards to the three winning teams, as well as the opportunity to present ideas before leaders of the business community. Competing in the 2006 Cup contest were students from the Los Angeles area’s leading business schools: Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and USC’s Marshall School of Business. In 2007, the Cup program will expand to include more business schools from a broader region of Southern California, including Orange County and San Diego. “The ACG LA Cup was created to connect the bright young men and women who will very soon be part of our business with ACG,” said Schreier. “We were impressed by the talent, knowledge, and enthusiasm these students brought to the competition. We are also delighted that many of them expressed interest in becoming involved in ACG as they launch their careers.” ACG LA is hoping that other chapters will adopt similar case competitions — leading to a national competition — and several other leading chapters are well on the way toward launching their first competition. Scott Kolbrenner, chair of the Cup competition and a Senior Vice President at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin, added that he and the other ACG Cup committee members are available to any chapter that’s interested in developing a similar competition. The business conference and the Cup competition are highlights of a program schedule that also includes ACG LA’s monthly breakfast meetings at The Regency Club in West Los Angeles, featuring presentations by winning Cup teams and judges, senior executives of leading companies, and other business leaders. In the past year these have included Brian Farrell, Chairman and CEO THQ; Dan Sanker, CEO of CaseStack; Jonathan Ornstein, Chairman and CEO of Mesa Air Group; Donald Tang, Chairman and President of Bear Stearns International Holdings; and Tim O’Brien, President of The Personal Branding Group. Each year, ACG LA also holds several afternoon presentations that feature panel discussions by experts in private equity, investment banking, real estate, and other areas. An at various times during the year, smaller and more specialized “roundtable” events help the chapter reach out to private equity and corporate professionals. All of these initiatives contributed to ACG LA being named “Chapter of the Year” at the 2006 ACG InterGrowth conference. “We’re very proud to receive this recognition,” said Schreier, “because it honors the hard work and dedication of our board members, committee chairs, committee members, and other volunteers who make these innovations and programs happen. They’re all busy professionals and yet they devote countless hours throughout the year to make ACG LA a leading business organization in our city, our region, and beyond. Douglas B. Schreier President, ACG Los Angeles Principal, Deloitte (c) 2006 Mergers and Acquisitions Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.majournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com