Options for Corporate Energy Efficiency

There are several rankings and benchmarks for corporate energy efficiency and corporations can perform an energy audit to see where they can improve with their energy usage. Corporations should look into how many kilowatts they use per square foot and how much gas or BTUs are used per square foot. Each country will have average values and recommended values for being efficient.

If you are looking to improve your company’s energy usage you can look into the different products available as each vendor will have information about its products’ energy consumption. For example, glass companies will provide information on their products’ solar heat gain and U-value, and so on.

Many more corporations are creating positions that deal specifically with energy management and many times there is compensation or benefits for those corporations that have good energy performance. There are several different ways in which corporations can make changes to their energy usage and ultimately enjoy big energy savings.

You want to make sure that your building is properly maintained as this keeps it running as efficiently as possible. Small changes can actually cause big changes in energy consumption. One such example is not running the air conditioning at night if no one is in the building. Also you can go through a retro-commissioning process to get your building back to its original state.

Steam systems are frequently an issue with energy usage as they are not maintained well. Steam traps tend to be used to deal with condensation but these can easily become stuck open and transfer the steam back into the boiler. This wastes a lot of heat as the steam goes back into the system and does not heat the building. You need to make sure these are replaced regularly and maintained well.

You also want to optimize your HVAC systems and these can account for 20 percent or more of all energy used in a building. And lastly, you might want to look into thermal energy storage or heat recovery options.

How Does Car Insurance Work When Driving Other People’s Car?

Auto insurance is insurance purchased for cars. Its principal objective is to provide protection against losses incurred due to traffic accidents and liabilities subjected to accidents and car thefts. The majority of jurisdictions across the globe make it imperative to have assurance auto coverage before driving the vehicle on the public road. Insurance for both car and driver is mandatory by most governments of the world. Does that mean in occurrence of an accidental injury, your insurance policy will pay for your loss or someone else’s? How does car insurance actually work when driving other people’s car? This article aims at answering a pertinent question, which many of us seek to find answers to when stuck in a controversial situation.

A Personal Auto Insurance policy will cover the damages and medical liabilities of an uninsured motorist, operating your personal vehicle. In certain cases your personal insurance will cover the property damage as well. However, it will “not” provide cover for the operation of a hired business or commercial use vehicle.

It should be noted, that the car is insured, and not the driver. In case of a “personal” vehicle being driven, which has an adequate active coverage, the policy will be liable for the auto damage and the medical liability of the driver. However, if the “personal” vehicle insurance stands inadequate, then a part of the driver’s own active insurance policy will provide the medical benefits or the damage cover. The degree of coverage depends on factors like rentals, loaners, local or state regulations and reasons driving the other vehicle.

The assurance auto Montreal policy in force will cover the vehicle damage only if the driver had the owner’s “permission” to drive. Hence also covering the liabilities of the other parties involved. The insurance will also follow the driver, if they are mentioned in the policy of the car owner.

Insurance coverage varies with state. While, in some states, the policy will cover both the vehicle and the driver, whether or not the driver is enlisted in the policy of the car owner. Simultaneously, the car owner’s policy will provide coverage for him when he’s in the driver’s seat of another owner’s “personal” vehicle.

Most auto insurance policies will cover any driver of the insured vehicle, unless that driver has been excluded from the policy or unless the driver has stolen the vehicle. This would require the owner to press his situation, by providing a copy of the filed theft report or the filed exclusion report.

Since auto insurance follows the vehicle, if you’re driving a borrowed car and get involved in an accident, the lender’s insurance policy will cover the liabilities, your medical expense and the other vehicle’s damages. But, if the lender has no insurance or his insurance is inadequate, then the borrower’s insurance will step-in and cover all of the losses.

Car insurance companies offer “Drive Other Cars” advantage on the owner’s insurance policy to combat such situations. This policy provides comprehensive coverage on a driver who has the owner’s permission, as well as third party coverage for any injured individual in case of unexpected accidents. Different insurance companies provide different terms and conditions in order to receive “drive other car” benefits, and some may not even provide this advantage. Therefore, it’s advisable that you call your insurance company before lending or borrowing a car.

The Perfect Solution To All Your Business Capital Needs: A Must Read For All Business Owners!

How To Find All The Angel Investors And Venture Capital Financing You’ll Ever Need! The once definitive line that would separate hard money and private/angel financing has merged into a hybrid of sorts in the past few years. As the economy has taken a dive and structured private lending firms have felt the crunch we are finding many of these lending solutions closing its doors and re-opening as privately owned and managed funding options with an interest in both lending and seed investment.

Approval decisions that were once made by a group are not being made by an individual or duo with an eye toward optimal capitalization with both short term and long term agendas. As investors are, now more than ever, trying to get as much bang out of their buck, entrepreneurs are in the precarious position of accepting funding from virtually any and every enterprise that is making an offering. That said, it is more important now than ever to swing open your mind to the possibilities of mass exposure of your opportunity to the investment world.

The best way to do this is to simply put your business in constant and automated ‘introduction’ mode so that you can be found by the moneymen. The best way to do this is to heavily investigate the venture capital industry for executives who have created offshoot programs that have deviated their process from the traditional path of simply approving or declining a transaction.

There are many VC professionals who want to capitalize off of the projects that their firm cannot accept due to underwriting criteria and industrial genre specialization so they are starting these small but well managed financial source databases where members can place their transaction directly in front of thousands upon thousands of angel investors, private investors, hard money lenders, venture capital firms, private equity firms and other alternative finance solutions.

These websites are now the hottest thing in the capital markets and will continue to grow because of the high success rate of individual executives and entrepreneurs who are able to find multiple streams of financing options with the click of a button.

Take Your Company Public and Use Securities For Loan

Many entrepreneurs and executives want to move forward with the process of going public merely for the ability to raise capital through the sale of stock. They usually don’t think of the strategies necessary to keep the momentum going such as how much equity to give up initially, how much equity to sell ongoing, how to capitalize off of the use of the securities as collateral for loans and lines of credit and so on.

One of the most profound strategies companies can use to retain company equity while capitalizing off of their public entity is to put up portions of their securities as temporary collateral for loans and to use securities to grow through acquisition of strategic alliances.

Stock should be looked at as cash and designated for appropriate purchasing strategies. Stock monetized through collateralized lending can work wonders as long as the exit strategy is in place and secure. Your attorney should be well versed in this activity and audit the contract for convertible aspects which could strip the transaction of its advantageous nature.

Debt that converts to equity means giving up a huge bartering chip for future transactions. Don’t give up equity unless you have to. There are scores of companies that will lend against your securities without having to give up long term equity. Use this strategy wisely and you’ll never have a problem getting capital.

Also, using stock to purchase strategic partners is more relevant now than ever. Purchasing a company with stock that can be monetized over time is an incredible way to grow through acquisition. Going public on the OTCBB is a quick and easy way to start using the countless capabilities for capitalization with a public entity. Going public simply to raise capital with your market maker or broker dealer would be selling yourself short. Take advantage of the countless ways your securities can work for you.

Anatomy of an S-1: A Must Read If You’re Going Public

Your company is growing. Now you are ready to start raising serious capital and you here the public fund raising markets. Here are the basics of your S-1 filing. Know the lingo before you hire a consultant. Because companies must adhere strictly to SEC regulations, initial prospectuses are similar in their organization. Each S-1 generally consists of the following sections:

Front Section — An S-1 contains a small amount of information not available in a prospectus. In this first section, you can quickly find the issuing company’s phone number and get a vague sense of the future offering price.

Cover/Inside Cover — The prospectus cover outlines the general terms of the offering, including names of the underwriters, number of shares offered, and pricing information. The actual share price is absent from a prospectus until the day of the offering.

Prospectus Summary — Here you will find a brief synopsis of the company’s business and history, a modest discussion of the change in capitalization to occur as a result of the offering, and a useful summary of financial information covering the last five years, if available. If you are screening prospectuses for investment ideas, start here.

Risk Factors — After you have read a few prospectuses, you will become familiar with the “usual suspects” in this section, including “Possible Volatility of Stock,” “Limited History of operations,” “Dilution,” and “Dependence on Key Personnel.” Nevertheless, this section is a worthwhile read to be sure that you understand the challenges facing the company’s management. The discussion of competition can be sobering, but it can also provide a means to compare the value of the issuer against the financial performance and market valuation of its competitors.

Taking your company public should be an exciting and revitalizing time. Don’t take unnecessary risks, hire a consulting firm who can streamline this process and deliver the results you’ll need for success!

Attention Investors: Pre – IPO Investments Will Transform Your Life!

Everyone has heard about a friend of a friend who knew a guy that had a sister who got involved with a company just before they went public, made a small seed investment and when the company went public she made millions.

Real Pre – Public investments in companies that are built to last with solid executive management and board of directors all wrapped in a industry that can still flourish in a recession are extremely difficult to find and impossible to be part of unless you are ‘in the know’, meaning you are the auditing or contract attorney for the company filing with the SEC, the accounting firm doing the third party audit, the consulting firm who is putting together the corporate strategies for the company or the investor relations industry that is gearing up for the publicity and promotions campaign to run in a post offering environment.

Typically the invitation to invest in a pre-public company comes in the form of a Direct Public Offering after the company is divided into shares with a private placement memorandum and before the third party audit and before and during the comments stage of the S1 filing. If you are fortunate enough to invest in a company with the above description you will most likely being offered deeply discounted stock (cheaper than what will be offered in the public market) which means you will (if the offering goes as planned) increase your initial investment amount by 200+ percent.

This is not at all a rare instance. Getting invited to invest in the pre-public, seed capital stage is actually quite simple if you know who to talk to. The best companies to become aligned with are ‘go public’ facilitation consultants and corporate turnaround consultants. These groups take companies public for a living and can usually plug you right in when the company is qualifying with the SEC and needs to have 40 investors on the book to qualify to go public (on the OTCBB). Simply contact the company and they will typically give you a quick information form to fill out to collect your name, phone, investment history and investment threshold.

It’s a fact, once you started investing in solid pre-IPO stock investments, you will dump your broker and never buy stock the traditional way again. Now get out there and experience the power of seed capital investment!