The May 15 meeting of the PVF Roundtable was a resounding success.  With an attendance in excess of 140 people, it became the largest meeting in the history of the organization.  Congratulations to the hard working Board of Directors to create and mange such an outstanding event.

The nominees for the Board were announced to the audience and a voice vote to elect the proposed Directors was successfully conducted.  We welcome Harold Armstrong, Armstrong Weatherly & Associates; Greg Johnson, United Valve; Ginger Restovic, Newman’s Valve; Rick Hodgson, Bechtel Corp.; and Larry Kirkland, BP Products North America to the Board and look forward to working with them.

The May meeting of the PVF Roundtable is always the meeting for announcement of the companies selected for the PVF Hall of Fame, sponsored by the Wholesaler magazine.  The inductees for the year were All-Tex Pipe and Supply, Fisher Controls International, Porter Pipe and Supply and Victaulic.  Morrie Beschloss announced the inductees to the audience and presented them with the plaques recognizing their industry achievements.  This has become an important event and the audience is always eager to learn who has been inducted for the year.

Don McNeeley, President of Chicago Tube & Iron was the Keynote Speaker for the event.  Don gave an outstanding presentation on Private Equity firms that included how they function, what are their objectives and why are they suddenly interested in the PVF industry.  The audience was very responsive to Don who is a dynamic speaker and one could easily tell this subject is dear to his heart.  Since the PE firms are presently active in our industry and are expected to become major players, the topic of Don’s presentation should be of interest to everyone that attended the meeting.  We have received numerous requests for copies of the power point presentation Don used and are working with his office to obtain the data which will be placed on our website. We would like to thank Don for his participation and the membership has extended him an open invitation to speak at any of our meetings.  He is truly a dynamic individual and is someone that has lived the “American Dream” of buying the company he began working for as a teenager.

The Board intends to continue to pursue high energy speakers for our meetings and believes we will be successful in providing our members and their guests with high quality presentations at each meeting.

Our next General Assembly Meeting is scheduled for 21 August 2007.  Please put it on your calendar and plan to attend.  We also have the annual meeting at ASA in early October.  We will have a morning session that will encompass a panel of PVF industry experts addressing current events in the industry and providing their opinions of the future outlook.  The meeting will be held at the Hyatt Hotel in Anaheim.  

Don Caffee
ValPers, Inc.
(281) 313-5111


pvf@pvf.org