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These are the personal views of Peter Darbee, chairman, chief executive and president of PG&E Corp. (PCG), and Lew Hay, chairman and chief executive of FPL Group Inc. (FPL):

With concerns rising that America has embarked on a jobless economic recovery, one industry that stands ready to invest billions of dollars and create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs in every part of the country is waiting for Washington to make key decisions.

The nation’s electric utilities plan to spend as much as $2 trillion over the next 20 years to modernize the nation’s electrical infrastructure. However, before the companies in our sector can pull the trigger on these investments, we need clear targets to aim for.

Instead, uncertainty around energy and climate change legislation is making it impossible, or at least dangerously imprudent, to guess which future clean energy and infrastructure investments will be the right ones for our customers.

Utilities make capital spending decisions on a 30- or 40-year time horizon. Power plants cost billions of dollars and last for decades. A bad bet on the wrong technology can sink a company or stick consumers with the bill. That’s a risk few utilities are willing to take. Continue reading…

By Martin Peers
   A DOW JONES COLUMN

It’s a sign of Google’s extraordinary success that its name has become synonymous with Web searches. It should be careful that it doesn’t also become a metaphor for trying to do too much.

Reports that Google plans to begin selling a cellphone directly to consumers should worry its shareholders. Going around wireless carriers by selling directly to consumers promises to be costly. Google will either have to sell a phone pitched at a much higher price than the competition or subsidize the costs itself as carriers do now. Either way, it is going up against a plethora of other smartphones without the marketing firepower that carriers bring to bear on new phones they sell.

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SANTANDER (Dow Jones)–Telefonica SA’s (TEF) chief operating officer, Julio Linares, said Monday the European Commission has a unique opportunity to change its regulatory policies.

“The European Commission is renewing the mandate of its telecommunications directorate… it’s an opportunity to reorient (the regulatory model) in favor of different objectives,” Linares said in a telecommunications conference.

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These are the views of Faisal Ghori, Principal at Middle East Ventures, a strategy consultancy focused on the greater Middle East and North Africa, on Yahoo buying Maktoob.com:

Hope is often in short supply in the Middle East, but that may be quickly changing, at least for the region’s entrepreneurs. On Aug. 25, Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), the Internet giant, announced it will acquire Maktoob.com, the Middle East’s largest web portal and online community founded and operated in Jordan.

As the first acquisition of a Middle East-based technology company by a U.S. technology giant, this is nothing short of a sea change for the region. Overnight it has bolstered the region with instant credibility and given its entrepreneurs reason to hope that they too can succeed in creating companies. The acquisition, in short, has fundamentally altered the technology landscape in the Middle East.

In a day and age when business in the Middle East has become synonymous with Dubai, this story’s genesis is found in the rocky crags of Jordan. Better known for Petra and the Dead Sea, Jordan has been the region’s leading base for technology startups. While Dubai may boast an Internet City, more of the region’s startups were founded and operate in Jordan than anywhere else in the Middle East. This is due in large part to investments made by King Abdullah II in its technology sector.

Amongst its peers, Jordan is the only Middle Eastern nation with a state-funded technology incubator designed to assist startups, and a fledgling technology ecosystem comprising an incubator, two technology-focused venture capital firms, many technology startups and a burgeoning culture of entrepreneurship. Proverbially overnight, Samih Toukam, Chief Executive Officer and founder of Maktoob.com, and his team have accomplished what Jordan has spent the better part of a decade trying to do: garner international attention for its technology sector. This is nothing short of a coup. Jordan and the region’s entrepreneurs are now in the spotlight.

For Toukam, the road to success has been considerably longer than overnight. He founded the company in 1997 when the Internet was still nascent in the Middle East. Originally founded as an Arabic online email service, over the past 12 years Maktoob.com (literally meaning ‘written’ in Arabic) expanded into a fully-fledged search portal and online community, providing a vast array of services ranging from matrimonials to local sports. By any measure, Maktoob.com is the Middle East’s undisputed Internet leader with over 16.5 million unique users.

It isn’t surprising then that Maktoob.com was the first regional Middle Eastern technology company to be acquired. However, what is surprising is that the acquisition happened now. If nothing else, the acquisition signifies that the Middle East has, for the first time, become relevant in the eyes of U.S. Internet giants, and with their attention, the region has become globally relevant for its technology-based entrepreneurship.

This significance hasn’t been lost on Toukam. For him the acquisition signifies “it’s time to invest in the Arab world. The market is ready and has huge growth potential and there is good talent and brains out there and also good exits for your investments.”

Given the lack of initial public offerings as a viable exit (no technology company has ever gone public in the region), the acquisition will assuage investors’ concerns about exiting a technology investment in the Middle East.

Emile Cubeisy, Managing Director of IV Holdings, a venture capital firm that invests in technology companies in the Middle East, says the acquisition “is an important milestone, in that it proves to Arab entrepreneurs that if you focus on building true value in your businesses, execute patiently and with professionalism, and go through the full stages of growth, real exit opportunities will emerge.”

While IV Holdings is one a handful of regional venture capital firms, U.S. technology giants like Intel Corp. (INTC), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) began investing a while ago with other U.S. investment firms slowly following their lead. Tiger Global Management, a U.S. investment firm, was amongst the largest stakeholders of the company.

Maktoob.com’s acquisition will now make it increasingly harder to ignore the 300 million audience that comprise the greater Middle East.

Maktoob.com’s accomplishment wasn’t without its difficulties. In the typical investment cycle of technology startups, an investment lasts between five to seven years. For Maktoob.com, it took nearly twice as long.

Throughout the region, nearly 13 years after the Internet was introduced, entrepreneurs still refer to the technology market as being in its infancy. Ahmad Humeid, perhaps the region’s earliest serial tech-entrepreneur, observes that regionally e-commerce activity and quality of Internet content remain “dismal” with Middle Eastern nations widely censoring the Internet, and the overall environment for technology companies remains bleak.

Clearly, the Middle East hasn’t done as well as other global technology hubs including Israel, Europe and Asia, all of which can point to billion-dollar companies from their shores. It is rumored that Yahoo! acquired Maktoob for around $85 million to $100 million. While this amount is significant for Jordan and the region given its small scale, it wouldn’t move the needle in Shanghai, London, or Tel Aviv.

Yet Maktoob.com, with its widespread reach, did move the needle enough in Sunnyvale, Calif., for Yahoo! to move off the sidelines. The acquisition has done for Jordan and the region what AOL’s acquisition of Mirabilis, the maker of the chatting client ICQ, did for Israel nearly a decade earlier: it has provided vital lifeblood for technology-based entrepreneurship.

For all of Ahmad Humeid’s pessimism, he remarks that for him the acquisition “represents a real breakthrough. It sort of gives me a push to hold on to the dream of building something worthwhile on the ‘Arab Internet.’ “

Regionally, that type of hope is worth much more than whatever Yahoo! paid to acquire Maktoob.com.

(TALK BACK comments may well be submitted by readers who have a financial interest in securities that are being discussed.)

These are the personal views of Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission:

Like a boxer staggering to its feet, the U.S. economy is recovering.

Since May, real consumer spending has been gradually rising. Technology spending is looking up, as computers age and Asian growth pulls demand for sophisticated components. New home construction is showing new life.

These will permit 2% GDP growth in the second half of 2009, but a second credit squeeze could knock down the economy again.

Regional banks are in a sorry state, laboring under failing commercial loans. Through August 2008, the FDIC closed or merged 83 banks into stronger institutions and 400 more banks are on the critical list. Continue reading…

By Neal Lipschutz
   A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN 

The resignation of Eric Schmidt, the chief executive officer of Google Inc. (GOOG), from the board of directors of Apple Inc. (AAPL) is just a glaring example of a poor industry practice. Currently serving CEOs should not be board members of other public companies.

In the Schmidt/Apple affair it took head-on competition in some areas between the two companies before the announced mutual decision that Schmidt should take his leave. Dow Jones Newswires also noted there has been a Federal Trade Commission look at the boards of Apple and Google, as they not only shared Schmidt as a member on both but also Genentech Inc. (DNA) Chairman Arthur Levinson.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs thanked Schmidt for being “an excellent board member,” but added, “as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest.”

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