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owners also like to consider the future interests of their management team, whose members will have made a significant contribution to the successful development of the business. Private equity firms |
typically incentivise existing management teams when they acquire a business, enabling them to participate in its continued success. Does Advent typically take a minority or majority ownership position in companies? |
Advent most commonly takes a majority shareholding in a company but will also consider minority shareholdings where we are working with like-minded shareholders. Does the seller typically retain any ownership |
in the company after Advent invests? In most cases, private sellers retain a shareholding in the business. Corporate sellers typically don’t. What happens to the management teams of companies in |
which Advent invests? Our philosophy is one of backing management teams. In most cases, the original management team, or core members of the team, will stay with the business. However, |
given that our portfolio companies are often striving to meet ambitious growth targets, we do sometimes have the requirement for additional, complementary management expertise. This can be introduced in a |
variety of ways, including executive and non-executive appointments and through the involvement of specialist industry advisers from our Operating Partner programme. Can the management team invest in the company alongside |
Advent or, if they already own an equity interest, retain partial ownership? Yes. It is Advent’s philosophy to align management team interests with ours, hence we like to be able |
to offer equity participation to management teams. Does Advent use external debt as well as equity to finance its investments? Yes, we do use third party debt financing as well |
as equity to finance our investments. This is typical industry practice. However, we take a very prudent approach to the use of debt. How does the investment decision making process |
work at Advent? All stages of the investment decision-making process are conducted in the strictest confidence and with appropriate sensitivity and discretion. The process begins with the initial screening of |
an opportunity. In the business plan, we like to see a description of the market opportunity, what differentiates the product or service being offered, the historical and projected financial statements |
for the business (including capital structure), management qualifications, marketing and sales strategy, and the expected use of financing proceeds. It is very helpful when all this information is in a |
business plan but it may well be that the business plan is developed in parallel to our discussions. After the initial review, the next step involves meetings with your company's |
management, enabling us to get to know each other and discuss the business in greater depth. The decision to invest is made by a regional investment committee. Having made over |
500 investments, we are very experienced at executing transactions quickly and efficiently, and this is always our aim. What’s it like to work with Advent? How much involvement will you |
have with the business? We are an involved investor who likes to establish a collaborative partnership with management teams. We will sit on the board of the business and have |
a close involvement with overseeing strategy. We also play close attention to financial reporting. We do not, however, get involved in the day-to-day operations of the business, which is the |
core expertise of the management team. How does Advent help to develop companies? Advent helps develop companies in multiple ways. Firstly, we commit capital. Secondly, we bring to bear our |
in-depth sector knowledge and often first-hand experience of working with companies in similar situations. Through our extensive international industry networks we are also able to offer our companies access to |
market intelligence, industry experts and general contacts that might otherwise be difficult to access. We also offer direct support and advice on activities such as mergers and acquisitions. What advantages |
does Advent have over other private equity firms? Partnership with Advent gives companies not only access with to capital, but the collective experience, resources and netoworks of one of the |
world's longest established, respected and most international private equity firms. Depth of sector expertise: Many private equity firms adopt a specialist sector focus, but few have been involved in their |
sectors for as long as we have (nearly two decades in most cases), nor have such an international perspective on their chosen sectors. Our investments within any particular sector often |
span four continents. Local market knowledge: Local market knowledge is imperative to helping companies achieve their full growth potential, whether at a domestic, regional or international level. Having an established |
local presence is at the heart of Advent’s philosophy and our office network (each of which has an established team of local nationals) is unrivalled both regionally and globally. International |
networks: Today, all business is impacted to one degree or another by globalisation. The result is enhanced opportunity, but also increased threats. International best practice is now a necessity for |
all companies. With our unrivalled combination of international reach and local on-the-ground resources, Advent’s global networks provide an invaluable source of support to portfolio companies. Track record: Spanning multiple sectors |
and geographies, and established over two decades, Advent’s track record is the most powerful evidence of how successful we are in helping our portfolio companies to develop. More broadly, we |
are widely recognised as one of the industry’s most influential global private equity investors. This is reinforced by over 20 industry firsts and multiple awards across all the regions in |
which we invest. How long does Advent remain an investor in a company? This is dependent on the development of the company concerned, but our typical investment period is between |
3-5 years. How does Advent exit its investment? The exit decision is taken in conjunction with the company’s management team, board and other shareholders. Which route is chosen is determined |
by the individual and market circumstance of the company involved. The most common exit routes are through a trade sale or IPO. In some circumstances, the business might be acquired |
Extratropical cyclones (ETCs) are significantly more complex than tropical cyclone systems. Their primary energy source is not the warmth of ocean waters as in the case of tropical cyclones, but |
rather the contrast in temperatures between the poles and the equator. ETCs exist in a dynamic set of atmospheric conditions and typically comprise several meteorological features that constantly interact with |
one another. Because they tend to be most frequent during winter months, ETCs are often referred to simply as winter storms or, in extreme cases where frozen precipitation is involved, |
blizzards. Dr. Robert Fovell, Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a globally recognized expert in numerical modeling techniques, undertook a year-long peer |
review of AIR's approach to modeling extratropical cyclone hazard. According to Dr. Fovell, AIR "…combines NWP and stochastic techniques in a new way...a unique approach that results in a highly |
realistic view of the risk from extratropical cyclones." Winterstorms in Europe: Numerical Weather Prediction Because a purely statistical approach is insufficient to capture the meteorological complexity of extratropical cyclones, AIR |
pioneered the use of physical modeling in the insurance industry’s first probabilistic catastrophe model to use numerical weather predication (NWP)— the AIR Extratropical Cyclone for Europe. NWP is an advanced |
technology used by all major meteorological agencies around the world. It allows the complex three-dimensional structure of the damaging winds associated with these storms to be accurately represented in time |
and space—including the fine-scale features that contribute to the strongest surface winds. Expanding on Innovation: Winter Storms in the U.S. Based on the success of the European ETC model, AIR |
expanded its capabilities in numerical modeling to the United States. The AIR Winter Storm Model for the United States—the first U.S. model to use NWP technology— simulates separate and distinct |
footprints for damaging winds, precipitation, and freeze. Because wind, precipitation and temperature damage property differently, AIR's winter storm model features damage functions that capture the specific mechanisms by which each |
of these storm components inflicts damage. AIR currently offers extratropical cyclone models for: United States (contiguous) - Czech Republic - United Kingdom* * Includes coastal storm surge flooding Listed below |
Iraq National Museum, Baghdad The Iraq Museum was founded in 1923 when Gertrude Bell, the British woman who helped establish the nation of Iraq, stopped the archaeologist Leonard Woolley from taking out of the country all of his extraordinary third-millennium B.C.E. finds from the ancient Sumerian city of Ur (esp. the jewelry of the royal cemetery)1 for division between the |
British Museum in London and the University of Pennsylvania's Museum in Philadelphia. She believed that the Iraqi people should have a share of this archaeological discovery made in their homeland and, thereby, started a museum in central Baghdad, pressing into service two rooms in an Ottoman barracks as its very first galleries. Material from ongoing excavations continued coming into this |
young museum, and in 1936, it moved to another building likewise on the eastern side of the Tigris River. The museum continued enlarging its collection. Finally, the Iraqi government decided to construct a modern building for this national museum. Completed in 1960, the new museum was built on the Tigris River's west bank. Moving the collection from the old building |
and installing it in the new museum's galleries took four years. The present Iraq Museum opened in 1964, and in 1982, six large galleries were added to the building, for a total of 22 galleries, plus an ample lobby and reception area at the main entrance. The Iraq National Museum is one of the best archaeological museums in the world, |
containing the material evidence for the development of civilized human society from the very beginning of its history. This entirely documented collection of finds from the cradle of civilization encapsulates the most essential cornerstones of our modern life, including agriculture, writing, laws, mathematics, astronomy, the arts, and warfare. The protection of a museum's holdings in times of warfare or civil |
unrest is a multifaceted and complicated issue. Because museums present themselves as—and are routinely portrayed by the media as—storehouses and display venues of treasure, they become targets of looting by organized gangs and by people from the street. Because invading armies see all armed personnel as potential enemies, guards at museums and other cultural institutions tend to be attacked or |
to slip away as fighting nears. If the invading army does not take responsibility for securing cultural institutions that have lost their guards, looters quickly take advantage of the vacuum in civil order. This scenario resulted in the looting at the Iraq National Museum on 10–12 April 2003 and also at dozens of other Iraqi cultural institutions, including the National |
Library, the National Academy of Arts, institutes of music, dance, and art, and universities in Baghdad and elsewhere. Likewise, organized looting of archaeological sites, which had begun during the mid 1990s in the south of Iraq, resumed at a greatly increased rate while the invasion was taking place, and it continues unabated.2 Since the Iraq National Museum was a prominent |
potential target of looting, before the start of the operation in March 2003, several attempts were made in meetings with U.S. Pentagon and State Department officials to call attention to its importance and the threat to its holdings. In particular, it was pointed out that in the uprisings that occurred in the aftermath of the 1991 war, nine of the |
13 regional museums in the south and north of the country had been damaged and looted, resulting in the loss of about 5,000 artifacts, fewer than 10% of which have been recovered. As a result of those losses, the Antiquities Service no longer put any genuine objects on display in regional museums (except for the Mosul Museum), but instead installed |
casts and photographs. Some museums at prominent archaeological sites, such as Babylon and Hatra, did still display some real objects, but these sites were well guarded and were thought not to be as vulnerable as small museums in the centers of provincial towns. In the months leading to the 2003 war, media attention was drawn to the Iraq Museum in |
interviews with American and European academics and with Iraqi officials. The author of this review, then Iraqi director general for research but not yet responsible for the museum, was quoted in one news report as saying that the objects from Hatra and the Mosul Museum were being transferred to the Iraq National Museum, where it was thought that they would |
be safer. He was aware that, as in the first Gulf War, the museum itself would be put on a no-target list. William K. Polk, a Middle East expert, visited Baghdad before the invasion and tried to convince the Iraqi authorities to send the museum's collections out of the country for safekeeping. Given that dismantling the museum's public galleries and |
depositing most of the displayed items in a secret storeroom alone required more than two weeks of work, it is highly unlikely that the museum's staff could have emptied the galleries and the storerooms in time to send the collections abroad. How anyone could have kept these hundreds of thousands of items intact and accounted for during such a move |
was not addressed. It is unlikely that any museum anywhere is capable of dismantling its collections and shipping them off with any hope of maintaining the integrity of the artifacts and their corresponding identifications. Given the reduced staff size and the loss of trained museum professionals as a result of 13 years of sanctions on Iraq because of the Iraqi |
invasion of Kuwait in 1990, it would have been impossible to undertake such a course of action in Baghdad. One of the major problems with the Iraq National Museum, as with many museums, was the lack of a complete inventory, including photographs of each item. Yet a very fine master catalogue in large ledgers, recorded in English and Arabic, has |
existed since the museum was founded in the early 1920s; this master could be correlated with excavation find catalogues, and thus the present location of an item could be discovered from notations on the ledgers and also in museum display case and shelf logs. However, the maintenance of such records was seriously compromised because of the abovementioned layoffs of personnel |
during the sanctions regime in the 1990s. A massive influx of newly excavated objects derived from salvage digs carried out from the late 1990s until 2003 by the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), the parent body of the museum, only added to the difficulty. These salvage operations had themselves been mounted to stop the looting of major sites |
in the south. Prior to 1991, for more than 40 years, antiquities looting had been almost nonexistent in Iraq, but the lack of government control of the southern countryside under the sanctions allowed industrial-scale pillaging of many sites. The salvage operations, carried out by the already overworked personnel of the SBAH and the Iraq Museum, including the director general of |
museums, did impede the looting somewhat. They also resulted in the exposure of important buildings and the recovery of thousands of artifacts, but these finds presented a major problem to the museum's staff, which had to try to process them. Some of the more significant objects were recorded fully, but others were set aside to be dealt with later. Steel |
trunks holding these salvaged finds were pilfered during the looting of the aboveground storerooms in April 2003. The necessity of dismantling the public galleries several times since 1980 exacerbated the problems. At the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, when rockets often came down on Baghdad (including a particularly deadly one that fell within 200 m of the museum in 1984), |
the public galleries were dismantled, except for very large, permanently fixed objects, such as Assyrian reliefs, Islamic building facades, and massive wooden doors. The movable objects were put into storage, both above- and belowground, resulting in some subsequent damage from humidity. At the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, the galleries were reinstalled; but now three of them were |
devoted to the astonishing finds from the Neo-Assyrian Queens' Tombs of the eighth century B.C.E., which the Iraqis had found at Nimrud during 1988–1989.3 In late 1990, with the Gulf War about to begin, the displays were once again dismantled and put into storage, with many of the iconic and valuable objects, such as the Ur Cemetery gold and most |
of the finds from the Neo-Assyrian Queens' Tombs, transferred to a deep vault of the Central Bank. During the 1990s, because of the sanctions and the possible renewal of warfare, the museum remained closed except for some small, short-lived exhibitions. The objects stayed in the Central Bank, and even when the museum was reopened in 2000, and most of the |
exhibits were arranged as they had been, the finds from the Queens' Tombs were no longer on display, except for photographs of some objects. Some of the most famous items from the Ur tombs were likewise shown by means of photographs in the cases that used to hold the objects. In anticipation of the 2003 war, the SBAH made several |
decisions intended to safeguard objects. First, all portable objects from Mosul, Babylon, and Hatra, including some life-sized statues from Hatra, and some objects from the other provincial museums, were transferred to the Iraq National Museum. Second, a group of five persons was given the responsibility of dismantling and hiding the portable objects from the museum's public galleries in a secret |
storage location known only to the five; they swore on the Qur'an not to reveal the secret. Third, sandbags and foam were placed in front of or upon some of the large, immovable objects, such as the Assyrian reliefs. Fourth, the basic object records and many of the most important reference books from the Antiquities Library were hidden off-site in |
a bomb shelter, along with almost 40,000 manuscripts from the Manuscript House (most of them dating to the Islamic period, some more than 1,000 years old). Fifth, the movable shelving of the Antiquities Library was put in the closed position and welded in order to make the remaining books and journals less accessible to looters. Sixth, windows and doors were |
barricaded with concrete blocks, and the steel doors of storerooms and doors meant to segregate specific areas were closed and locked. This reviewer wanted to seal all the outer doors to the museum and the administrative offices of the SBAH but was not allowed to do so, except for a partial barrier placed behind the museum's front entrance. The ultimate |
protection for any museum is its guards; therefore, a special police unit was placed in a small building in the back of the museum complex, but as the war came close to the museum, its more than 40 guards disappeared. Had they stayed in position, especially in their uniforms, they would most probably have been fired upon. Wisely, as they |
left, they discarded their uniforms and weapons; this allowed some observers to claim that Republican Guard troops had been on the museum's grounds but had fled. On 8 April, the day the U.S. military arrived at the museum, there were only five persons left. The president of SBAH, Jabbar Khalil, decided that they should leave when he saw a few |
fedayeen fighters leap over the museum's fence into the front garden. The group left by the back gate, except for a man and his son, who lived at the rear of the museum's grounds. There was no one of authority and no one with fluent English left to surrender the Iraq Museum and SBAH complex, even if the American troops |
had been willing to take responsibility for it. After a brief fight between the fedayeen and the U.S. troops, which left one shell hole in the symbolic gateway (fig. 1)—a replica of an Assyrian city gate from ancient Khorsabad, of the late eighth century B.C.E., that was converted into the Children's Museum in 1982—and one or two small-caliber bullet holes |
in the facade of the museum, nothing happened to the complex for more than 24 hours. When the looting began on 10 April (fig. 2), the man who had stayed in his house on the museum's grounds went out to the nearby intersection and asked U.S. troops in a tank to drive off the looters. The tank crew, after conferring |
with commanders, said they could not do so. Late on 12 April, as the press finally arrived at the museum, staff members who lived in the neighborhood came in and began to secure the building, mainly by patching the broken doors (fig. 3). The events leading to the looting of the Iraq Museum and SBAH complex clearly revealed the necessity |
of having more comprehensive plans for attempting to secure museums and sites. After being named director general of the Iraq Museum, and later as president of SBAH, the author of this review began to develop a schema in which the museum would defend itself. Actions taken before the war had preserved almost all the items on public display, and those |
artifacts in the vault of the Central Bank survived, although some were damaged by water. Some important items that had been left, in the display areas or in workrooms, were stolen or damaged (fig. 4). Major losses occurred on account of inside knowledge of the location and contents of underground storerooms (fig. 5). But the use of a secret storage |
area and the transfer of records and manuscripts to a nuclear shelter away from the museum had preserved thousands of other artifacts. The schema of the museum's defending itself arose, however, not simply because of what had already happened to the Iraq Museum and the administrative offices of SBAH but also because the situation has remained insecure. The museum is |
located in one of the most unstable areas of Baghdad, only two blocks west of Haifa Street, a major street on the west bank of the Tigris River. Even when not subjected to direct attack, the museum's collections are still vulnerable to the vibrations from exchanges of fire and the rumbling of tanks. A major bus terminal—less than 200 m |
from the museum—has been subjected to a number of car bombs. Guards, hired since May 2003, have been attacked several times by men firing bursts from automatic weapons while riding in cars passing at high speed through the street in front of the museum. Several guards have been wounded. On one occasion, a Katyusha rocket struck the museum's garden. Under |
these conditions, special steps have been taken to protect the museum at times when there may be no guards and the newly installed electronic devices that control the entrances to the museum may not function. Although the Iraq Museum and SBAH complex has been furnished with emergency generators, under certain circumstances it is likely there will still be no electricity |
and no fuel for the generators. To guard against further losses in periods of chaos, the museum has constructed additional secure storage. It has sealed all metal doors by welding and has built more walls across doorways leading to its collections. Even the administrative areas of the museum that are attached to exhibition galleries have been emptied, and all staff |
members have been distributed to other departments of the SBAH. This makes it difficult for the museum's staff to carry out routine tasks, much less to continue the inventory of the storerooms in order to gain a more definitive count of the looted objects; but, for now, security takes precedence over all other matters. Since the basic records of the |
Iraq Museum had been put in an off-site shelter before the war, it was possible for the museum's staff to retrieve them and begin making an inventory of the storerooms soon after the U.S. troops arrived on 17 April 2003. Had there been a sizable computerized database, the inventory could have been much more efficiently carried out, but the museum |
had just begun creating a database in the year before the war. Already in the 1980s, the museum had begun using computers for its work, and when 5,000 objects were looted from the regional museums, it was prepared to assemble a database to send to Interpol and other agencies. But the museum had difficulties keeping the computers from crashing because |
of multiple viruses. And during that earlier effort, it became obvious that photographs or detailed drawings of objects were essential in trying to track down stolen items and secure their return. Without a photograph, it is almost impossible to identify an object. But even when the museum had negatives of objects on file, under the sanctions regime, it could not |
obtain photographic supplies to make prints. In a few cases, the records kept by foreign excavators could be used to supply photographs or drawings of stolen artifacts. But asking the excavators for photographs, receiving them, and incorporating them into a list meant the passage of weeks, during which time the trail of the thieves had grown cold. The importance of |
a photographic record was recognized by the staff initiating the computerized database in the years before the 2003 war, but afterward, the museum's diminished staff and the fact that many of the objects were in storage for safekeeping meant that scanning for the database was limited. The restitution of the Iraq Museum and the SBAH offices in the aftermath of |
the 2003 looting included the installation of a computer network, which enabled the staff to operate at a higher level of efficiency. The SBAH arranged with UNESCO to create a comprehensive digital data program for the items in the museum, and, with funding by grants from the international community, UNESCO contracted a Canadian company specializing in database management. Senior administrators |
of the SBAH and the museum's staff discussed the program several times with the company in order to adapt the program to the Iraq Museum's needs. Between 2004 and 2006, 70 operating staff and information technology specialists from the museum were sent to Jordan for training in database management. The equipment arrived at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, but the |
work could not be started because of the deterioration of the security situation, which not only forced the sealing of the museum but also caused a significant decrease in the number of museum staff able to come to work. There are general lessons to be learned from the experiences of the Iraq Museum in wartime—not just the conflicts in 1991 |
and 2003 but also going back to the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988. It is essential that all museum administrators everywhere be prepared for worst-case scenarios. Any museum could be the victim of looting in a time of social unrest, especially given the current elevated prices for antiquities and works of art. Administrators should have contingency plans for removing artifacts to |
safekeeping, perhaps outside their countries, if practical, but at least to better-constructed storerooms than are currently the standard in the Near East. They should also be aware that, in any movement of artifacts from display, labels will be lost or confused, and they should try to develop a method of keeping the information with the object. Some museums in the |
United States and Europe are beginning to use a barcode system on artifacts, but it is not clear as yet how well that technology will work. No Iraqi museum I know of has an entirely up-to-date, complete, and easily accessed record of its holdings. This is probably true of most museums that act as repositories of artifacts from excavations, such |
as national and provincial museums. It would be ideal to have all excavation records, which document part of some museums' holdings, scanned and stored off-site as a backup, whether on the Internet or on special servers in remote locations, or even on several external hard drives. Most museums are understaffed, especially in their records departments, and either digitization of their |
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