GreenHunter Divests Chinese Wind, Picked up by Local VCs

Caveman 92223, via Flickr

Clearly, the Chinese venture capital market is hot right now. In addition to sinking some hefty scratch into local ventures — along with the Chinese and provincial governments — the VC community is on the prowl for more. When U.S. renewable energy producer GreenHunter Energy was ready to sell off its minority stake in Guangdong MingYang Wind Power Technology, it found a buyer in Chinese growth venture firm DT Capital Partners, which agreed to play for $9.1 million.

GreenHunter Energy picked up its stake in the Chinese manufacturer of industrial-scale wind turbines back in late 2007. It seems pretty safe to infer that the company made the move back then because the U.S. equivalent wasn’t far enough along. Now, says CEO Gary Evans, the U.S. wind turbine biz is far enough along, making it preferable to owning a piece of a Chinese company.

China launches $1.32 billion VC fund

The Chinese government is committing $1.32 billion to launch venture capital funds jointly with several of its provinces, according to a Reuters report. Private investors will also be involved in the effort, the purpose of which is to bolster the growth of the high-tech sector across China. Specific sectors that will benefit include information technology, energy, pharma and environmental.

China isn’t spending all its money in one place. Rather, it’s spreading the cash across 20 venture capital funds. One billion yuan (slightly more than 10% of the capital) will come from the Chinese government, with 1.2 billion yuan coming from the local governments. The rest is being kicked in by the private sector.

Social Media: Choose Your Platform Wisely

Businesses looking to promote themselves in the social media world are either eager to find new opportunities or have faced the reality that they’ll soon have no choice but to venture into this space. As with any endeavor, though, trying to do everything will ultimately yield nothing. You need to understand the alternatives available and select those that are most manageable given the resources you have and will deliver the biggest bang for your buck.

While most of these tools – such as Twitter, Facebook and Digg – have many similar features, there are subtle differences among them, which will factor into the execution of your social media plan. Sometimes, you don’t really know what you’re getting into until you’re knee-deep and watching the water rise. Just by having a sense of what’s out there, you can focus your efforts on the tools that are most likely to address your specific needs.

French newspapers gives up on revenue under new bailout

Okay, we all know that the print industry is completely and totally screwed. Circulation is plummeting around the world … leaving ink jockeys little hope of keeping their jobs for the rest of their lives (which is really their only goal anyway). They may have hope, however, thanks to an unusual French bailout plan. Leave it to French job protectionism to set a model for the rest of the world. The folks at the NY Times – which rain this story – must be salivating right now.

Blood flows at Condé Nast

When the world around you is falling apart, there’s only one thing to do: find a new world.

While Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair was in the grip of severe layoffs, the editor decided not to be the bearer of bad news, taking a vacation instead. The NY Post didn’t say if he used Gadling to choose a destination, but we’re all hoping he did. The total discharged from Condé Nast is believed to be greater than 450 this year, and there are likely to be more to come among the contributing editors. The sizeable cut at Vanity Fair is largely the result of Carter’s decision to generally ignore the order to cut 5% of the crew late last year.

Conspicuous Consumption: The New Davidoff Cigar Band

This is luxury of a level that I just can’t fathom. If you’re interested, you can pick it up at De La Concha.

Penguin seeks to print the Bard’s tweets

Demonstrating a profound commitment to dead trees and bookstores, Penguin is releasing Twiterature: The World’s Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter. The book consists of comments on the works of William Shakespeare and other classics. University of Chicago students Emmett Rensin and Alexander Aciman are the book’s authors tweeters, sharing their irreverent and profane – and sometimes insightful – 140 character-or-less thoughts on the playwright known to anyone who’s completed at least a year of high school.

Heathrow named worst airport again

The fliers have spoken: London’s Heathrow Airport sucks.

A poll of 14,500 frequent fliers, all participants in the Priority Pass airport lounge program, has again ranked the best and worst of the airport world, with Heathrow hitting rock-bottom for the second year in a row. Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris landed second from the floor.

Los Angeles International Airport was third worst, despite having poured $1 billion into a recent overhaul. Frankfurt International and Miami International round out the lowest five. In the United States, voters reserved their venom for Chicago, Atlanta and JFK, along with those awful enough to make the global list.

Where I Write

A friend of mine e-mailed me last week to ask where I write. He can’t sort it out through all the tweets and links and so on. I can understand; I’m all over the place. So, if you’re interested in following my work, see the following links:

Gadling (travel): http://www.gadling.com/bloggers/tom-johansmeyer (If you want to read about hostels and backpacking, go read someone else. I tend to roll upscale)

Luxist (art and cigars): http://www.luxist.com/bloggers/tom-johansmeyer/ (Occasionally, I do a luxury travel or real estate story here, too)

BloggingStocks (finance, economics and markets): http://www.bloggingstocks.com/bloggers/tom-johansmeyer (I do a bit on the clean technology sector, venture capital, private equity, hedge funds and social media for this blog, in addition to all my work as a generalist)

DailyFinance (finance and economics): http://www.dailyfinance.com/bloggers/tom-johansmeyer (I don’t have a specific beat, though I do write a lot about cleantech, social media and the alternative investment space)

Envy (travel): http://envymags.com/index.php?s=johansmeyer (It’s not a regular gig, but I am starting to do more with this magazine)

Gotta Love the Ayn Rand Crowd

The so-called “Objectivists” are easy to manipulate. All you need to do is post a story with the slightest dig at Ayn Rand, and they mobilize online, rewarding your rudeness with plenty of traffic and comments. Whenever one of my sites needs a little surge, I write about Ayn Rand (as I’m doing now). So, when I had the chance to cover a private equity fund named for Howard Roark for DailyFinance, I jumped at the opportunity.

It didn’t take long for me to pick up a few Ayn Rand-related followers on Twitter, and several comments materialized on the website almost immediately. Fun stuff.