Complaint Review: ADVANCED EQUITIES FINANCIAL CORP. - Chicago Illinois
- ADVANCED EQUITIES FINANCIAL CORP. 311 South Wacker Drive Chicago, Illinois U.S.A.
- Phone:
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- Category: Cross-Border Scams
ADVANCED EQUITIES FINANCIAL CORP. Falsified Misrepresentation APEX FUND - another Advanced Equities rip-off fund Chicago Illinois
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This is taken directly from the circulating offering of Advanced Equities' new fund: APEX Clean Tech & Energy Fund. The majority of their investor pitch is greatly embellished, if not blatantly riddled with outright false representations to prospective investors. Very specifically, the bio of Robert Troy is fraudulently represented.
Apex Clean Technology and Energy Fund---Growth and Later Stage Growth Investing
While Apex has had a successful investing record in Energy and Clean Technology in prior Funds, we believe that the market is now sufficiently robust to warrant a Fund devoted primarily to this sector. Apex has made investments in water resources and technology (Purecycle; PCYO; Denver, CO) , Fuel Cells (Bloom Energy; Sunnyvale, CA) , Solar Technologies (Solfocus and Suniva), and we expect that in the next 5 years there will be many opportunities in the areas of Grid management and energy management, including storage, solar and wind technologies, water development and water treatment technology, fuel cells, biofuels and other green technologies such that $300-500mm could be deployed in later stage and expansion stage investments in these areas with a second fund coming shortly after the investment period in this venture. We expect the investments in these areas will be spurred on by increased incentives and direct support by Governments and Corporations. Eventually all of these areas must become self supporting (and we expect them to do so), but in the current environment, subsidies make the economics so compelling that these areas are even more attractive. This is important as the bulk of these investments are capital intensive, and the government supports make the capital outlays by investors less onerous.
Example:
Robert Troy (62) is Senior Managing Director of Advanced Equities Inc. an investment bank specializing in late stage financing for high-tech and cleantech companies, Robert most recently represented Advanced Equities Inc. at the board of 10 companies including Altra, Suniva, Cilion, Raza Microelectronic, Turin and Netxen and served as portfolio manager for the firm.
Very misleading as Mr. Troy was NOT a voting Board of Directors memberhowever, did have some observer abilities in a few of them.
Before joining AEI, Mr. Troy was for 10 years the Founder and Managing Director of Geneva Venture Partners a Silicon Valley based early stage venture capital operation which was the initial seed investor in Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), Zantaz (Autonomy), Callixa (SAP), Encirq, Tradec (Agile) and NetXen.
He was certainly not the founder. He was hired at parent company GenevaGroup International as a recruiter for staffing work following his own company's failure and served in this capacity prior to formation of Geneva Venture Partners. Mr. Troy served as co-Managing Director. Mr. Troy did invest and served on the Boards of Paglo, Network Chemistry, SoftCoin, iPIN, Abazab, and VisiblePath, all of which failed, closed operations with a complete loss of investmentnegative return(total loss). NeTXen ceased operations 30 days ago at a substantial loss. Mr. Troy did not initiate, nor was he ever the representative investor in Salesforce.com, nor did he participate in the firm's investment in Callixa, Encirq, Tradec, nor participated in any Board activitiesthese investments were realized and distributed to LPs from the fund while significantly offsetting Mr. Troy's investment losses. As to Zantaz, Mr. Troy did briefly serve on Zantaz's board, however, was voted off the board 3 years prior to a transaction occurring.
Mr. Troy was also an early stage investor in AdForce (CMGI), Netgravity, Brixlogic (Diebold), Force10, Motricity and Extricity (Peregrine).
Very misleading as Mr. Troy was never a bonfide investor in ANY of these companies, but rather was compensated a few common shares in lieu of cash for recruitment and staffing work done at Adforce, Netgravity, Force10, Motricity, Extricity. Though he was given a few shares, he never actually completed his recruitment work at Netgravity nor Extricity. Mr. Troy never received any shares in BrixLogic.
He is a former entrepreneur who created and led the international development of Verilog SA, a software engineering company which has been acquired by Telesoft and IBM.
Mr. Troy created and led Verilog to $2M in international revenues and approximately $8.5M in debt over a span of 10 years prior to its creditor sale through bankruptcy. No investors received ANY returns. Mr. Troy served as a field sales representative for a 12 month severance period in Wash DC following the company's court administered creditor sale.
Mr. Troy was never a part of the sale transaction of assets to Telesoft. That was initiated and concluded 9 years after his dismissal.
Mr. Troy has a doctor degree in computer science from University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France.
No, he does not have a Doctoral degree. He obtained a lesser degree which he has exaggerated greatly.
He completed The Venture Capital Institute's certification program of the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) in 1998.
Yes, this is correct, a 4 1/2 day seminar in Atlanta, GA.
Mr. Troy will become Senior Managing Director of the Fund.
Amazing, when will the SEC start monitoring and applying actual licensing requirements!
May 5, 2009
The Fund will invest primarily in the USA and in Europe. Many of the technologies being considered have salubrious implications for the rest of the world. As examples; Clean Coal is very beneficial to China, which is coal rich and will become the world's largest polluter if there is not developed a way to make bituminous coal cleaner; Solar power is of great benefit to the Middle East, Northern Africa, Australia where sunshine is plentiful year round; Technology that exploits natural gas, such as Bloom Energy (although Bloom is fuel agnostic) is of great benefit to Russia and The Middle East, as well as to countries that do not have mature power grids. In addition software companies that will make the grid smarter will raise marginal efficiency for energy distribution where there is a power grid.
Because of our extensive investment experience and the experience of our Advisory Board, we shall add value as Board members and facilitators of joint ventures and other business arrangements. We also expect to offer co-investment rights, where appropriate, to fund investors. In addition, based on past successful investing experience in this area with Advanced Equities, Inc., Kleiner Perkins, NEA, and others, we expect the vast majority of our investments to show these firms as our partners in transactions.
The Fund is targeting one to two keystone investors of $50 Million and several investors in the $10-50 Million range. As stated above, we expect the transactions done by Apex VII to be with strong co-investors, primarily in companies that need later stage or expansion financing and therefore have little technical risk, and in which we can invest such an amount as to obtain Board seats, observation rights, and/ or control rights in the round invested. We are targeting rates of return above 20% and would ideally like to have a current return as a feature of any expansion stage investments.
The Fund Management will be headed by a team of high experienced Venture Capitalists and will be augmented by additional resources in subject matter areas and in later stage transactions as well as experienced Advisory Board Members.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0901/048b.html
PEinvestor
San Francisco, California
U.S.A.
This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 05/30/2009 02:19 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/advanced-equities-financial-corp/chicago-illinois-60606/advanced-equities-financial-corp-falsified-misrepresentation-apex-fund-another-advanced-456912. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content
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