M·CAM, Marsh USA in program development pact

Date:  Tue, 2000-02-29

Bridge News February 29, 2000 M·CAM and Marsh USA entered a strategic relationship to develop a program to enhance the value of intellectual property as collateral so it can be used to secure commercial debt. The companies will work to develop liquidity sufficient to support the mid-year introduction of a program based on M·CAM’s Certified Asset Purchase Price contracts. “This collaboration with Marsh will enable us to roll out our domestic U.S. collateral enhancement program rapidly,” said David Martin, M·CAM’s founder and chief executive. “This relationship will create a new type of debt financing that we believe has the potential to significantly alter the way that certain kinds of organizations finance themselves and certain kinds of lenders look at the universe of borrowers.” In practice, the CAPP contract would depreciate based upon asset specific parameters. CAPP provides the lender with information about the depreciation schedule for the asset’s life and also identifies critical covenant considerations that preserve the value of the asset and the integrity of the lien. The lender is not obligated to sell the asset to M·CAM and may seek other buyers limited only by M·CAM’s right of first refusal to purchase the asset. The core business of M·CAM is the monetization of intellectual property and other intangible assets for three primary sectors: banking and commercial finance, under-utilized asset liquidation and actuarial asset accounting. Initially formed to provide a mechanism for lenders to use intellectual property and intangible assets as collateral for lending by providing liquidity-backed puts to attribute value to these assets, M·CAM has applied its analysis and marketing expertise to broaden its markets horizontally. M·CAM’s proprietary analytic systems are the first to standardize the determination of enterprise-independent value for properties such as patents, copyrights, licenses, trademarks and other intangible assets. Additionally, these systems allow business and regulators to corroborate the validity of property claims by conducting innovation audits on international intellectual property and publication databases.