May 01, 2024

Seattle Green Earth Cleaning

McDowell

Heather McDowell, founder and managing member of Seattle Green Earth Cleaning, has been named Washington Small Business Person of the Year, and National Small Business Person of the Year Runner-Up by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Founded in 2010, Seattle Green Earth Cleaning is an environmentally friendly residential cleaning company offering customized services to clients throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. The SBA Small Business Person of the Year award recognizes small business owners who demonstrate staying power and substantiated history as an established business with at least three years of business operation. Winners must also show growth in net worth and business expansion, increase in jobs and sales, innovativeness of products or services, response to adversity, and contributions to community-oriented projects. McDowell initially launched her own business from a home office, with a flip phone and a rented storage unit, and cleaned client homes herself as the only employee. Now in 2024, the company has its own headquarters with offices, warehouse, and staff kitchen, has created jobs for 46 team members, and is on track to exceed $3 million in annual revenue. The Seattle District serves Washington state and northern Idaho with office locations in Seattle and Spokane.

T-Mobile

Bellevue-based T-Mobile and EQT, a purpose-driven global investment organization, have entered into a joint venture with EQT's Infrastructure VI fund that will acquire fiber-to-the-home platform Lumos from EQT's predecessor fund EQT Infrastructure III. The joint venture will bring T-Mobile's retail, marketing, brand and customer experience strengths together with EQT's fiber infrastructure investment expertise. Together they will acquire Lumos' scalable fiber network build capabilities to deliver high-speed fiber internet connectivity to customers across the U.S. without current access to fiber. After the transaction closes, Lumos, which currently reaches 320,000 households with fiber optic internet and home wi-fi service in the Mid-Atlantic, will transition to a wholesale model with T-Mobile as the anchor tenant. The agreement will focus on market identification and selection, network engineering and design, network deployment, and customer installation. The transaction is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025, subject to regulatory approvals. At closing, T-Mobile is expected to invest approximately $950 million in the joint venture to acquire a 50% equity stake and all existing fiber customers, with the funds invested by T-Mobile being used by Lumos for future fiber builds. The next capital contribution by T-Mobile out of an additional commitment of approximately $500 million is anticipated between 2027 and 2028.

Apr 30, 2024

The Standard

Orr

Portland-based Standard Insurance Co. (The Standard) named Porter Orr second vice president of artificial intelligence strategy and development. In his new role, Orr is responsible for leading and administering the company's AI strategy. Orr will partner with employees in IT as well as business and service divisions across The Standard to harness AI capabilities. Prior to joining The Standard, Orr was head of Applied AI Products and Platforms at Unum. He also held various roles in data analytics, machine learning and AI at Mobi Systems, the U.S. Department of Defense and Walt Disney. Orr earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science and business from Pepperdine University and a MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. In business since 1906, The Standard is a family of companies providing financial protection products and services for employers and individuals.

Itron

Itron is collaborating with Cairns Regional Council, located in Queensland, Australia, to modernize its water distribution system. The Itron solution will be deployed over the next three years as part of the council's comprehensive water security plan to take advantage of technology to better identify water leaks and improve customer experience. This project builds on phase one of the council's smart water network project, which included an initial deployment of Itron's Intelis ultrasonic water meters and integrated IoT network solution. Now, in this second phase, Itron and the council are working together to deploy additional Intelis smart water meters, which will be managed by Itron's Temetra NB-IoT digital platform to improve collection, tracking and management of water data from all endpoints within its network. Itron, a global provider of energy, water, smart city, IIoT and intelligent infrastructure services, is headquartered in Libery Lake, Washington.

Apr 25, 2024

Salmon Recovery Board

Bizyayeva

Gov. Jay Inslee has appointed Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians councilmember, fisheries director and Northwest Indian Fisheries commissioner Kadi Bizyayeva to the Salmon Recovery Funding Board. Bizyayeva is the fisheries director for the Tribe's Natural Resources Department, where she has worked since 2013. She co-manages treaty resources with state, federal and tribal governments, working with them to recover species of concern in the Stillaguamish River watershed, which includes two of Puget Sound's 22 threatened populations of Chinook salmon. “We are excited for Ms. Bizyayeva to join the Salmon Recovery Funding Board,” said Megan Duffy, director of the Recreation and Conservation Office, which administers the funding board's grants. “She has more than a decade of experience working on salmon recovery and understands the issues, the people and the fish.” The Salmon Recovery Funding Board awards more than $206 million biennially in grants to cities, counties, tribes, nonprofits, private landowners and regional salmon enhancement groups to do on-the-ground projects to restore salmon habitat. Bizyayeva's term ends July 15, 2027.

Novelty Hill Capital

Seattle-based Novelty Hill Capital announced the recent sale of Firehook Bakery, a baking business specializing in artisanal baked goods, to Forward Consumer Partners, a private equity firm that invests in branded consumer businesses. Novelty Hill Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor to Firehook on the deal. Established in 1992 by founder Pierre Abushacra, Firehook began as a neighborhood bakery in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, and has risen to become a national artisanal cracker brand. Novelty Hill Capital is a middle-market investment bank and financial advisory firm with expertise in mergers and acquisitions, raising capital, and evaluating strategic alternatives throughout the consumer, industrial and agribusiness value chains. Michael Barber is the CEO and managing director of Novelty Hill Capital.

Lattice Semiconductor

Lattice Semiconductor's Lattice Avant FPGA platform was selected as a 2024 Environment + Energy Leader Award winner. Lattice Avant was recognized for its power efficiency, performance, and small form factor in the Business & Infrastructure category. The awards celebrate innovation within the industry, and highlight companies making an impact in driving forward a sustainability agenda. The Avant platform enables Lattice to address an expanded set of customer applications across the automotive, communications, computing, and industrial markets. Lattice is headquartered in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Apr 24, 2024

The Standard

Briggs

Portland-based Standard Insurance Co. (The Standard) promoted Julie Briggs to vice president of strategic innovation and emerging markets and Asset Management Group actuary. In her new role, Briggs is responsible for the leadership of all AMG actuarial and finance functions, working closely with The Standard's corporate partners to balance growth, risk and the increasing contributions of AMG to the company. Briggs joined The Standard in 2005 where she has held actuarial positions in Retirement Plans working with defined benefits and product and risk management as well as a leadership role on the Corporate Actuarial team. Most recently, Briggs served as assistant vice president of retirement plans actuarial and finance. Prior to joining The Standard, Briggs worked nearly seven years at Towers Perrin and Mercer (now WTW) in benefits plan consulting.

Briggs earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and classical studies at Willamette University. She is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

Silver Creek Capital

Seattle-based Silver Creek Capital Management, an alternative investment boutique focused on developing investment solutions for institutional and sophisticated investors globally, announced that Nathan Kelso has joined the Firm as chief technology officer. Kelso has nearly 30 years of experience serving in information technology roles in the investment management sector. For more than a decade, Kelso was chief information security officer of Research Affiliates. Prior to Research Affiliates, he was director of the platform and integration team supporting BlackRock Alternative Advisors, where he managed the deployment of a client tracking system across the platform. Kelso joined BlackRock in 2007 upon its acquisition of the core asset management business of Seattle-based Quellos Group, where he was associate director, product management. Bob Ratlife is president of Silver Creek. The addition of Kelso follows Silver Creek's recent hiring of David Matter as co-chief investment officer and Michael Callahan as managing director, business development.

NanoString Technologies

Bruker Corp. announced that it has entered into a definitive acquisition agreement with NanoString Technologies, headquartered in Seattle. Under the asset purchase agreement, Bruker expects to acquire substantially all of the assets and rights associated with NanoString's business product lines for approximately $392.6 million in cash, and the assumption of certain liabilities. In 2023, NanoString generated revenues of approximately $168 million. On April 19, 2024, the transaction was approved under a court-supervised Chapter 11 sale process pursuant to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, and it is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024, subject to customary closing conditions. NanoString is a provider of life science tools for discovery and translational research for spatial transcriptomics and gene expression analysis. Bruker expects to fund the acquisition with cash on hand and established debt instruments. Following the closing, the NanoString business will become part of the Bruker Spatial Biology business. By 2026, Bruker expects the NanoString business to have rebounded and to be near break-even with resumed revenue growth and margin improvements, also taking advantage of deal synergies, as Bruker is not acquiring NanoString's public company overhead in this asset deal. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Goldman Sachs & Co. are serving as legal and financial / strategic advisors, respectively, to Bruker. NanoString is represented by Willkie Farr & Gallagher as counsel, AlixPartners as restructuring advisor and Perella Weinberg Partners as restructuring investment banker.