DealZone

The upcoming initial public offering of A123 Systems could help ease the way for more clean-tech stock offerings, one of the early investors in the battery maker said this week.
The company, which Chrysler has chosento produce lithium-ion batteries for its upcoming electric cars, set an IPO price range of $8 to $9.50 per share, which would raise up to $244 million, based on the 25.7 million shares it plans to sell.
“It will certainly be good for the sector just to get a real exit out there, both from a branding standpoint and from a  financing standpoint,” said Jamie Kiggen, chief investment officer for clean tech ventures at Blackstone Group, who in his previous job at Alliance Bernstein was an early investor in the Watertown, Massachusetts-based battery maker.
“If the IPO window opens up, that helps all of us,” Kiggen said at a Boston conference organized by the Cleantech Group.
A123 first filed its IPO plans with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in August 2008. 
While the IPO market has picked up in recent months after a rough 2008, A123 would be the first U.S. clean tech company to go public since July 2008.

With highly touted plans for a new electric car in jeopardy, an overseas investor steps in to provide new capital and a much-needed endorsement.

GM? No, Tesla.

Remarkably, the terms of German automaker Daimler AG’s 10-percent stake in Tesla may have also helped the Silicon Valley electric-car start-up inch closer to GM in value.

Daimler’s vague disclosure of its purchase price as  “double digit million dollar” means Tesla is valued at a minimum of $100 million.
That would make Tesla, which was founded nearly six years ago, about one-eighth the size of 100-year-old GM.