On Tuesday I spent much of the day in an ALM board meeting reviewing our current performance with the board, sharing with them a presentation on our strategic plan, and then giving an overview of our 2010 budget.  All of those are important topics, which I will cover in future posts.  But first, it seems to me that you might want to know who's on our new Board of Directors.

Just to review, ALM has two primary investors--Apax Partners, a private equity firm, which has the controlling interest in the company, and Royal Bank of Scotland, which holds a minority share.  Under the various agreements signed back in August, Apax is entitled to two regular board seats plus can appoint the chair.  RBS is entitled to one regular board seat.  In addition, ALM management has two seats--Eric Lundberg, our Chief Financial Officer, and myself.

At this point, a chair has not been appointed though I anticipate that one will be in the next few months.  That is likely to be what is known as a "non-executive chair", meaning someone who works for neither ALM nor Apax, but has signficant experience with media and/or information businesses. 

Apax's appointed directors are Stephen Grabiner and Marcelo Gigliani.  Stephen is a senior partner of the firm who leads its Media practice and also heads up Apax's London office. He has deep experience in the media sector, including having led The Daily Telegraph prior to joining Apax.  He was the chairman of the Incisive Board, so knows ALM extremely well.  More on Stephen's background can be found here: 

http://www.apax.com/en/team/stephen-grabiner.html

Apax's other director is Marcelo Gigliani, a member of their Media practice based in New York.  He also brings extensive experience in the media sector, having worked on many of Apax's media deals in both Europe and the US.  Because he is based in NY, he will likely be our day-to-day contact as well with Apax.  More on Marcelo's background can be found here:

http://www.apax.com/en/team/marcelo-gigliani.html

RBS has appointed Roger Meltzer, a senior partner with DLA Piper in NY, to fill their director's slot.  Roger is the Global Chair of the firm's Corporate and Finance practice.  And he is an avid and long-time reader of The American Lawyer, with good familiarity with many of our other publications.  More on Roger can be found here:

http://www.dlapiper.com/roger_meltzer/

In addition at any given meeting there will be other observers and participants from Apax, RBS and, of course, ALM.  Plus we will be scheduling presentations for the board on an as needed basis covering specific parts of our business, new products, investments, etc., which will involve still more members of our team.  It is in all of our best interests for our Board to get to know our management team and understand what we are doing and why we are doing it.  We need their support for our business and investment plans so that we can move forward with the on-going transformation of ALM from a traditional B-to-B media company into a full-fledged participant in the information services sector.  I think we are off to a very good start.