Small Business Hawaii, known as Hawaii’s most outspoken small business advocacy organization, will hold its 28th annual Hawaii economic and investment conference “Small Business 2004: Platform for Hawaii’s Capital Formation and Economic Growth,” on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004, at the Ala Moana Hotel.
Keynoting the event is Dr. John Rutledge, a top economic and investment advisor to the Bush White House on both the dividend tax cut and rebuilding Iraq and a member of the then Pres. Ronald Reagan transition team and a principal architect of the Reagan Economic Plan. Rutledge is the Chairman of Rutledge Capital, a private equity investment firm that has invested more than $150 million in middle market manufacturing, distribution, and service companies, of Rutledge Research, an economic and investment advisory firm, and founder of The Rutledge Institute, a forum for capital and growth policy. He also is Chairman of the Advisory Boards of B.V. Group, a venture capital, hedge fund, and real estate investment firm, and Saugatuck Capital, a private equity firm.
Well known for his dynamic presentations, Rutledge lectures on global economics, financial markets, investment strategies, technology and the economy, and how to own and grow a business.
People who have heard him say they like the fact that he practices what he preaches; after tours of duty in both academics and government policy, he has started, run, chaired, owned, and harvested dozens of real companies, and managed real money in both mutual funds and private equity. His talks give people the tools to do their own business and investment thinking.
Among his many advisory and speaking clients are Verizon, General Electric, Boeing, Forbes, Fortune, AIG, Fidelity, Franklin/Templeton Funds, UBS, ING Realty, Houlihan Lokey, Huntington Bank, National Association of Federal Credit Unions, Young Presidents Organization, Association for Corporate Growth, National Association of Manufacturers, Gilder Publishing, Times/Mirror, Turner Construction, Kuwait Fund, Permal, Bobbin Forum, Aluminum Extruders Institute, Steel Service Center Institute, American Petroleum Institute, Institutional Investor, Wachovia Bank, Toyota, Edison Institute, New York Society of Security Analysts, Bankhaus Metzler, Fremont Investment Advisors, Lazard Freres, Rittenhouse Trust, and many others.
A prolific author, Rutledge writes a regular column in the American Spectator on the intersection of ideas from science and economics, he has written the Business Strategy column in Forbes for more than a decade and writes columns for Forbes.com and TheStreet.com. He has written two books and hundreds of articles for The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, Barron’s, Forbes, Fortune, The National Review, The Financial Times, US News and World Report, Business Week, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Boersen Zeiting, and other publications. He has testified before many Congressional Committees and has advised government officials in the US, UK, Ireland, and Kuwait.
Rutledge founded the Claremont Economics Institute, an economic advisory business in Claremont, California. As CEI’s Chairman for twenty years, he worked in dozens of countries advising CEOs on business, financial, and restructuring strategies.
In 1980 to 1981, Rutledge served as a member of the Reagan transition team as one of the principal architects of the Reagan Economic Plan.
During the past 20 years, Dr. Rutledge has founded a family of mutual funds, served on the boards of more than three-dozen private and public companies, and participated in over 30 leveraged buyout transactions.
Rutledge’s Asset Market Shift framework for analyzing capital markets, in which interest rates and other asset prices are determined by private arbitrage behavior, is based on applying the rigorous foundation from thermodynamics to economics and portfolio management. It was at the heart of the Reagan Economic Plan. It is the basis for Rutledge’s economic analysis, asset allocation, portfolio selection, business strategy, restructuring, acquisitions, and divestitures. This framework is also the basis of The Value Tracker, a publication advising investors how to structure stock portfolios to take advantage of opportunities created by a temporary divergence of prices from Intrinsic Value.
Rutledge began his career on the faculty of Tulane University and Claremont McKenna College, where he taught monetary economics, international finance, and econometrics. He holds a BA from Lake Forest College, and a PhD from the University of Virginia. He has a passion for mathematics, physics, complex adaptive systems, cognitive science, history, music, and foreign languages.
This is not the first time Rutledge is speaking in Hawaii. As a young and upcoming economic leader, Rutledge spoke at the annual SBH conference in 1983 and 1987 when he headed up the Claremont Institute in California. Those who heard him speak say they his unique and accurate economic forecasts and presentations are memorable.
Rutledge also spends a considerable amount of time in Hawaii — he has a part-time residence in Maui, spending the rest of his time in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Beside Rutledge, U.S. Congressman Ed Case, D-Hawaii, 2nd District, a member of the House Small Business Committee and education subcommittee, will report on business and economic conditions from the national perspective. Case recently returned from an extensive fact finding trip to Iraq and will review the military call-up on Hawaii’s economy.
Gov. Linda Lingle, members of her cabinet, legislative leaders and small business achievers also will discuss current business and political issues facing Hawaii and important to SBH members after the first year of “The New Beginning.”
The conference is being sponsored by a number of Small Business Hawaii members including: JS Services, Alphabetland Preschool, Heavy Metal Barbell Co., ALTRES Inc., The System Center, Fernandez Entertainment, Business Brokers Hawaii, Aloha Petroleum, HMA, New England Financial, AIG Hawaii, Cruiseland Hawaii, Charley’s Taxi, Hawaii Home Inspections Inc., Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, The Copy Shop, Peterson Sign Co. and Hawaii Reporter Inc.
Complete preliminary program agenda and a reservation form are found at https://www.smallbusinesshawaii.com or by calling SBH at 396-1724.