I never met Bob LaRose. I only got to know him when I worked on
a story about his legacy after his death in January of 2010.
But from those interviews I feel positive that he would have been proud Tuesday night with the results of the
Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards. The awards are produced by the Fairfax County, Va., Chamber of Commerce, the Professional Services Council and Washington Technology.
First, of course, LaRose would have been thrilled by winning a second GovCon award as Agilex, the company he founded with Jay Nussbaum in 2007, captured the contractor of the year prize in the midsized company category.
In 2004, Integic Corp., which LaRose also founded, won in the same category. He later sold the company to Northrop Grumman Corp.
LaRose’s legacy obviously is still felt at Agilex as Nussbaum spoke about his business partner and the kind of company they were trying to build and how that work continues today. On the stage with him was LaRose’s son, Scott, who serves as chairman of the board for the company. His generosity also showed through when
Agilex made a $15,000 donation to Homes for Our Troops, which was holding a fundraising raffle as part of the GovCon event.
LaRose’s legacy also was present when Vangent, now part of General Dynamics Corp., won the company of the year award in the large business category. Vangent’s CEO Mac Curtis is among many executives across the industry who can trace their management roots back to LaRose.
Curtis worked for LaRose at another of his companies, Advanced Technology Inc., in the 1980s.
At the time of LaRose’s death, Curtis said that while he didn’t have as much direct contact with LaRose as others at the company did, “everyone in the company felt his presence. He was sort of what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
I tell this story because I believe that each of us is a Bob LaRose. We each leave something behind with others in what we do.
I don’t think LaRose thought about his legacy. He just did what he did because that’s who he was. It served him well.
Posted by Nick Wakeman on Nov 03, 2011 at 1:10 PM0 comments
It started as a simple challenge: Top the $13,000 that was raised at the 2010 Washington Government Contractor Awards for the Homes for Our Troops organization.
Homes for Our Troops builds and renovates homes for wounded veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Nemacolin Woodland Resort in Pennsylvania was the sponsor at the GovCon awards who brought the organization in as the beneficiary of a raffle for a weekend at the resort.
But then something extraordinary happened at Tuesday night's dinner. First, Agilex made a corporate donation of $15,000 and the crowd of 970, who were packed into the Ritz Carlton ballroom in Tysons Corner, Va., let out a roar.
Then it was announced that Caroline Pisano of KEYW Corp. was making a personal pledge of $5,000. More cheers.
CACI International Inc. made its own $15,000 donation. Ideal Innovations also stepped up with $5,000. The crowd was energized.
I know others were making donations beyond the $20 raffle tickets being sold for a stay at Nemacolin.
So as I said, the challenge was to top last year’s $13,000 collection. Some of the counting is still going on but it looks like the event this year raised $60,000 for the organization. That’s a lot of nails and plywood and shingles for Homes for Our Troops.
The annual GovCon Awards are given by the Fairfax County, Va., Chamber of Commerce, the Professional Services Council and Washington Technology. For our coverage of the winners, click here.
Posted by Nick Wakeman on Nov 02, 2011 at 11:45 AM0 comments
One of the challenges of trying to summarize a market outlook event is deciding which theme to pick. And when you are talking mergers and acquisitions trends there are plenty to pick up from.
In the case of Morrison-Foerster’s 7th annual federal M&A Outlook event, I’m identifying three themes as:
• Back to the future.
• The need for focus.
• Weathering the storm.
These are my descriptions, not anything any of the speakers at the Oct. 25 event used. In the interest of full disclosure, Washington Technology was one of the co-sponsors of the event along with Ernst and Young.
The consensus among the speakers is that companies are focused on surviving today's tough economic conditions and market uncertainty, but they also are active as they position themselves for growth when the market improves.
Several of the panelist described today’s M&A activity is similar to the mid to late 1990s.
Now, like then, “a lot of companies are focused on getting smaller in order to grow,” said Jean Stack, a managing director with Houlihan Lokey and a Washington Technology columnist. (She also went to Duke University, my wife’s alma mater. Go Devils!)
Stack’s point is that companies are shedding non-core and slow-growing businesses. This frees resources and management’s attention to focus on faster growing parts of the business and make acquisitions in faster growing segments of the market, she said.
Portfolio shaping is a much more important driver for divestitures today than organizational conflicts of interest, which two years ago was the critical factor, Stack said.
However, there is an important difference between the 90s and today, said Greg Van Beuren, managing director at Bluestone Capital Partners. There is no talk of a peace dividend today, he said. “The threat environment is much more complex.”
Ed Caso, managing director and senior analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, began the morning session with an assessment of Wall Street’s view of the government market.
There is good, bad and ugly news, according to Caso. The good: growth in areas such as cybersecurity, mobile technologies and cloud computing, but there is also bad and ugly. The bad includes the need for companies to reposition themselves for new spending priorities and slow organic growth.
The ugly includes the deficit negotiations, the recurring continuing resolutions and the “value-add” from Congress. “They can mess up more things,” Caso said. “It’s the danger of unintended consequences,” he added.
Whether it is pursuing contracts or the next acquisition, focus is critical, said Walt Havenstein, CEO of Science Applications International Corp.
“We turned down probably 140 acquisitions in the past year and looked at a couple hundred more to get the deals we made,” he said.
The first step in picking an acquisition to pursue is whether it is a strategic fit for the company.
Companies make mistakes when they do deals that aren’t a strategic fit. “When you buy something that is outside what you do, you better buckle your chin strap,” Havenstein said.
The big question for companies is where do they need to be to survive these hard times and be well-positioned when the market improves.
Bob Kipps, founder and managing director of the investment bank KippsDeSanto, likened it to the real estate market.
“It’s all about location, location, location,” he said. “The companies in the good parts of the market will continue to do well.”
The good neighborhoods, by consensus of the speakers, are:
• Cybersecurity
• Data Analytics
• C4ISR
• Health IT
• Cloud computing
• Mobile and social media
• Energy
• Cost savings and efficiency efforts
If you are looking to sell your company and you are in one of those areas, you should have plenty of buyers. If you’re not, your deal might not get done.
Posted by Nick Wakeman on Oct 26, 2011 at 10:13 AM0 comments