Siemens Clashes With CEO of Former Lighting Unit Over Strategy

Siemens AG withdrew its backing for Chief Executive Officer Olaf Berlien of Osram Licht AG, bringing to a head a long-festering dispute about the strategy of its former lighting unit.

Siemens used Osram’s annual shareholder meeting in Munich on Tuesday to criticize Berlien’s performance last year. In a procedural move, Siemens lawyer Christian Bleiweiss told shareholders the steering of a change in strategic direction unveiled in November by Berlien was inadequate and said Siemens would vote against his actions.

Osram shares rose as much as 8 percent and were trading 6.8 percent higher at 41.185 euros as of 14:05 p.m. in Frankfurt. About 1.2 million shares were traded, more than double the three-month daily average.

The challenge by Europe’s biggest engineering company focuses on Berlien and spares his finance head Klaus Patzak, Osram’s only other management board member. Berlien has presided over a 30 percent decline in the share price since the shift in strategy, which some investors said exposed the world’s second-biggest lighting maker to less profitable end markets.

Siemens’s lawyer on Tuesday demanded that the annual vote to ratify the decisions made by the whole board last year be exceptionally split into separate votes for each manager.

Criticism Met With Applause

A CEO must “carefully direct a company’s actions while keeping in mind its further development and investors’ interests,” Bleiweiss said. “This was not sufficiently the case” at Osram, he added to applause from sections of the auditorium in the convention center where the meeting was being held.

See entire article at Bloomberg.com: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-16/osram-jumps-after-siemens-proposes-separate-votes-on-ceo-cfo?cmpid=yhoo.headline

Blackstone, Onex & Apollo said to Advance with Philips Lighting Bids

  

Royal Philips NV has selected buyout firms including Blackstone Group LP, Onex Corp. and Apollo Global Management LLC and U.K. investment company Melrose Industries Plc to advance to the second round of bidding for its lighting division, according to people familiar with the matter.

CVC Capital Partners and KKR & Co., who were working jointly with Onex, have dropped out of the auction because of concerns about the unit’s outlook, said the people, asking not to be identified because talks are private. The business, which makes end products including street lamps, could fetch about 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion), people familiar with the matter said earlier this week.

Talks are ongoing and the bidder list could still change, the people said. Representatives for Philips, CVC, KKR, Onex, Melrose and Blackstone declined to comment and Apollo couldn’t be immediately reached.

Philips is selling the lighting division along with its Lumileds business after scrapping a $2.8 billion sale of the smaller components unit to a consortium led by GO Scale Capital of China last month. Chief Executive Officer Frans van Houten is focusing on the company’s health-care business as demand increases for technology that allows hospitals to analyze clinical data and patients to monitor their health on smartphones.

Shares of Philips rose 0.9 percent to 23.20 euros at 9:14 a.m. in Amsterdam, valuing the company at about 21.6 billion euros.

Original Article at Bloomberg.com:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-04/blackstone-melrose-said-to-advance-with-philips-lighting-bids

QUBE COLOR-CHANGING SMART BULB

Each bulb will put out 1,000 lumens at max brightness, well above the 800 lumens you’d expect from a 60W replacement LED, from a stated power draw of 11.5 watts. Qube promises iOS, Android, and Windows compatibility along with support for the Apple Watch. Compatibility with Apple HomeKit, the set of smart home protocols programmed into Apple’s mobile devices, is also a possibility — Qube says it’s already applied for MFi certification. If it happens, that would allow you to turn your lights on and off, dim them up and down, or change their color simply by asking Siri. Also interesting: the bulb features Bluetooth in addition to the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi radio. Qube estimates that it’ll begin shipping bulbs out worldwide this June. Projected price is $19 per bulb.
See original article at Energy Watch News: http://energywatchnews.com/qube-color-changing-smart-bulb-just-19-per-bulb/

GE In Love With LED, Breaks Up With CFL's

GE is breaking up with compact fluorescent lamps.
This year, GE will cease production of its coiled compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) for the  U.S. market and instead focus its consumer lighting efforts on LED lamps. Few people will mourn the end of the CFL era. Introduced in the mid-1980s, CFLs enjoyed a spurt of popularity after Oprah Winfrey endorsed them in 2007. The bulbs briefly accounted for about 30 percent of U.S. light bulb sales. But the bulbs, which heat gas rather than a filament, were never really beloved, and last year accounted for just 15 percent of sales. Consumers complained CFL light was too harsh, didn’t work with dimmers, flickered and took too long to warm up and light a room.GE is breaking up with compact fluorescent lamps.

But the bulbs served an important purpose. Starting in 2012, U.S. regulations demanded that incandescent light bulbs – the kind that Edison invented – needed to use 30 percent less energy to meet minimum efficiency standards. That ruling instantly made incandescent lights almost obsolete.

Read the full article from GE here: http://www.gereports.com/say-goodbye-say-hello-ge-stops-making-cfls-says-go-go-go-to-leds/