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Pacolet Milliken Expands its Biomass Platform with the Acquisition of Georgia Renewable Power

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GREENVILLE, S.C., Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Pacolet Milliken, LLC (“Pacolet”), a sustainability-focused, family-owned investment firm, announced today it has acquired 100% of Georgia Renewable Power (“GRP”), which owns two biomass power plants in northeast Georgia, one in Franklin County and one in Madison County (the “Plants”). This acquisition roughly triples the size of Pacolet’s biomass platform. Financing was provided by Manulife. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The Plants have 116 MW of combined generating capacity and sell their output to Georgia Power under long-term power purchase agreements. The Plants are fueled by woody biomass, qualify as a source of renewable power under federal and state standards, and sell renewable energy credits on the open market. Pacolet entered the biomass sector in 2024 with its acquisition of Piedmont Green Power (“PGP”), a 55 MW biomass plant in Barnesville, Georgia.

“This transaction represents a significant next step in growing Pacolet’s Power & Infrastructure portfolio and meets both our financial and sustainability goals. Franklin and Madison are modern, efficient facilities that complement PGP well,” said William Crawford, CEO of Pacolet. “We look forward to working with our partners and regulatory authorities to continue the plants’ success, as well as ensuring the Plants have a positive impact on their respective communities. We are committed to operating the plants at the same high standards of safety, environmental stewardship and operating efficiency that we do with every asset in our portfolio.”

Lance Jordan, Co-Head and Chief Investment Officer of Pacolet Power & Infrastructure, commented, “GRP is a natural fit alongside PGP. Operating three facilities in the same state creates meaningful operational synergies. Going forward, we continue to see compelling opportunities to acquire high-quality assets that meet our sustainability and financial goals. We remain focused on pursuing additional renewables investments throughout the U.S.”

Pointing to the continuity of the financing partnership, Mr. Jordan added, “We are especially pleased to expand our relationship with Manulife, which also financed our PGP acquisition. This transaction reflects the long-term partnership both companies envisioned when we first worked together.”

“We appreciate the opportunity to once again work alongside the Pacolet team on another successful acquisition. The expansion of their biomass platform in Georgia is a meaningful milestone for the business, and we are pleased to provide financing that supports their long-term growth objectives,” said Nicholas Violandi, Managing Director, Power & Infrastructure Project Finance, Manulife.

Vinson & Elkins served as legal advisor, and Genesis Capital acted as debt financing arranger for Pacolet on the transaction. Day Pitney served as counsel to Manulife on the transaction.

About PACOLET MILLIKEN

Headquartered in Greenville, SC, Pacolet is a family-owned investment firm that owns and manages a diverse set of power & infrastructure and real estate assets located across the United States. Pacolet’s Power & Infrastructure assets include a regulated electric utility (Lockhart Power), an industrial utilities company (Bushy Park) and a substantial solar, wind, biomass, and landfill gas portfolio. Pacolet’s Real Estate division has a national portfolio of industrial, multi-family, office, and self-storage properties. In both divisions, Pacolet seeks to positively impact the communities in which it operates and be a good steward of the environment.

https://www.pacoletmilliken.com 

About Manulife

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Anchored in our ambition to be the number one choice for customers, we operate as Manulife across Canada and Asia, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States, providing financial advice, insurance and health solutions for individuals, groups and businesses. Through Manulife Wealth & Asset Management, we offer global investment solutions, financial advice, and retirement plan services to individuals, institutions, and retirement plan members worldwide. At the end of 2025, we had more than 37,000 employees, over 106,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving over 37 million customers with operations across 25 markets globally. We trade as ‘MFC’ on the Toronto, New York, and Philippine stock exchanges, and under ‘945’ on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Not all offerings are available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit manulife.com. 

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SOURCE Pacolet Milliken LLC

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Before You Take That Job or Stay Put, New Data Reveals if Women Actually Get Promoted There

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Free new database gives women X-ray vision into whether every major U.S. company promotes women equally — rankings from real workforce numbers.

ATLANTA, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Every working woman has asked herself the same quiet question: do women actually get ahead here? Until now, the only way to answer it was to take the job and wait years to find out. Now the answer takes about thirty seconds. Type nearly any major U.S. employer’s name into a free public site recently launched by data scientists and funded by the Women Leaders Association, and see its Glass Ceiling Score: a simple measure of whether women there rise into management and executive jobs at the same rate as men, calculated from the company’s actual workforce numbers — not its recruiting brochure.

Think of it as a Glassdoor for promotions. Before accepting an offer, before asking for a raise or a bigger role, before believing a Careers page that promises “women thrive here,” a woman can check what the numbers say — about the company courting her, and about the one she works for now. Women earn roughly 15 percent less than men on average, Pew Research estimates, and that gap usually starts with who gets picked for management. Pay gets measured constantly; promotion almost never — until now.

Two scores, built from the numbers companies cannot massage

By analyzing each employer’s workforce counts by gender and job title, the team developed two metrics:

The Glass Ceiling Score measures whether women advance into executive roles at the same rate as men.

The Management Entry Score measures whether women reach first-level management at comparable rates — the rung where research shows most careers stall.

Anyone can look up a company at no cost and see both scores, compare employers within an industry, and drill down by metro area and state, where the tool ranks the major employers in each market and highlights the top performers.

“Women have been told for fifty years to try harder, negotiate harder, and find a mentor. The missing piece was never effort — it was information,” said Lydia Price, 2026-2027 Volunteer Chair of the Women Leaders Association. “When a woman can compare how her employer advances women on average in comparison to men on average it changes the entire frame of reference, the conversation changes from trust us to show me.” The companies that excel in promoting women equally into management also receive Top Women’s Workplace awards at the chapter and national levels.

Who the data serves

Women entering the workforce or considering offers can identify employers with strong advancement records. Current employees can benchmark their own company and bring data to promotion and career-development conversations. Consumers and investors can direct support toward companies with fair practices, and corporate leaders can see — often for the first time — how their promotion patterns compare with competitors’.

Building on a decade of gender-equality research

The Glass Ceiling Score stands on the shoulders of a decade of important, groundbreaking work. The Economist’s influential Glass Ceiling Index (https://www.economist.com/interactive/graphic-detail/glass-ceiling-index) has put the issue on the global agenda by ranking conditions for working women annually — though at the country level, not by employer. The Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (https://www.bloomberg.com/company/press/bloomberg-2023-gei/) helped set early standards for corporate transparency, tracking several hundred public companies that self-reported through voluntary disclosure. Forbes’ widely read Best Employers for Women list (https://www.forbes.com/lists/top-companies-women/) surveys employees at a few hundred large firms each year, and The Times and Business in the Community’s respected Top 50 Employers for Gender recognizes UK organizations that apply for consideration.

The Glass Ceiling Score builds from that and goes further on every dimension: it covers far more companies, publishes an individual score by company rather than a limited list of a few hundred, offers location-level drill-downs, and rests on unambiguous workforce statistics rather than surveys, self-disclosure, or applications. And because every score is computed directly from actual workforce data without remuneration, sponsorships, payments, and public relations cannot influence a company’s result — and no employer can opt out of being measured.

“Earlier indexes did pioneering work, but each could only cover the companies that participated or made a short list. We measured everyone,” Price said. “If an employer promotes women fairly, the data will celebrate it. If it doesn’t, the data will say that too — and for the first time, a woman gets to see it before she signs the offer letter.”

What comes next

The initial release covers most major U.S. employers, with expansion planned across Europe and Asia. Future versions will add deeper demographic analysis, including promotion-fairness scoring for women of color and other underrepresented groups. The project was funded by the Women Leaders and organizers expect additional women’s foundations and equal-pay philanthropists to support the effort, with the goal of keeping the platform permanently free to women worldwide.

The tool is available now at https://WomanLeaders.org/r/GlassCeiling

About the Women Leaders Association

The Women Leaders Association is a non-profit committed to the development and advancement of women in the corporate arena, with chapters in most major U.S. cities. The tool includes analysis by key metros and states, with rankings of the major employers in each, including Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Denver, Washington, Dallas, Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Nashville, Detroit, San Antonio, Cincinnati, Omaha, St. Louis, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Phoenix, Portland, Miami, Austin, Baltimore, Tampa, Orlando, Hartford, Raleigh, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Norfolk, Richmond, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Greensboro, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Columbus, Tulsa, Sacramento, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Albuquerque, Rochester, Boise, Knoxville, New Orleans, Buffalo, Baton Rouge, Charleston, Spokane, El Paso, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Greenville, Providence, Springfield, Honolulu, Madison, Columbia, Tucson, Stockton, Des Moines, Syracuse, Harrisburg, Jackson, Bakersfield, Akron, Wichita, and Augusta, plus most states including California, Texas, Florida, and New York.

Media Contact:

Lydia Price
2026-2027 Volunteer Chair, Women Leaders Association
Lydia@WomanLeaders.org 678-427-6771

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SOURCE Women Leaders Association

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Orca and Loopscale Merge to Build Capital Markets for AI and the Frontier Economy

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Operating as Formation, the combined team brings together two leading crypto platforms spanning trading, credit and vault infrastructure to expand access to capital across AI, robotics and other frontier industries.

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Orca and Loopscale today announced their merger, bringing together Orca’s trading and liquidity infrastructure with Loopscale’s credit and vault infrastructure. The combined team will operate as Formation, led by Loopscale co-founder Luke Truitt as CEO. Formation aims to give emerging assets a path from issuance to financing and liquidity, while expanding the range of assets and strategies available to capital allocators. Both the Orca and Loopscale protocols will remain the foundation of the ORCA and xORCA token network. Formation will build new, unified capabilities across origination, vault strategies, and distribution, building on the existing protocols.

Closing the gap between capital and innovation

AI, energy, robotics and defense companies are driving a new wave of capital demand. Apollo estimates that nearly $3 trillion will be needed for AI infrastructure alone through 2028.

Many of the companies behind that demand do not fit neatly into traditional capital market boxes, where fixed underwriting, legal, servicing and distribution costs favor larger, standardized deals.

Formation broadens access to capital by reducing the cost and complexity of structuring, distributing and financing assets.

“The frontier economy is creating new business models and financing needs more rapidly than traditional market infrastructure is evolving to serve them,” said Luke Truitt, CEO of Formation. “Every major technological revolution has been paired with a financial one. We’re at an inflection point that requires capital markets to keep pace with the industries reshaping the economy.”

Built on proven infrastructure

Orca has processed more than $550 billion in trading volume since 2021. Loopscale has more than $150 million in deposits and has facilitated more than $2 billion in loans. Together, they bring a battle-tested platform and decade of operating history across trading, credit and vault strategies.

“Orca has spent years building deep liquidity, and we’ve seen firsthand that liquidity alone isn’t enough to scale an asset,” said Christopher Montagano, Chief Strategy & Legal Officer of Orca. “The greater challenge is building the credit and distribution those assets need to grow, and Orca and Loopscale built complementary pieces of that infrastructure. Together, we can give issuers a complete path from launch to long-term market adoption.”

Powering the next capital formation cycle

Formation is building across origination, issuance, liquidity, credit and distribution, with a path into regulated U.S. capital markets. Over the next 12 months, the team plans to introduce new tools for issuers and capital allocation strategies alongside its existing trading, lending and vault offerings.

Formation is already working with Figure, Shinhan Asset Management, Superstate, R3 and Securitize to bring new assets to market and expand distribution.

“Having originated over $30 billion of credit onchain and scaled tokenized products to more than $650 million in DeFi, we know how much high-quality distribution partners matter for growth,” said Reid Simon, President of Digital Assets at Figure Technology Solutions, Inc. “We’ve worked closely with both the Orca and Loopscale teams over the past year, and are excited by what the unification of trading, credit and vault strategies will unlock for tokenized asset growth.”

Formation’s leadership includes Luke Truitt as Chief Executive Officer, Mary Gooneratne as Chief Operating Officer, and Christopher Montagano as Chief Strategy & Legal Officer.

About Orca

Orca is a decentralized exchange on Solana, providing trading infrastructure for digital assets. Since 2021, it has processed more than $500 billion in trading volume. Learn more at orca.so.

About Loopscale

Loopscale is a credit and vault infrastructure platform with more than $150 million in deposits and over $2 billion in loans facilitated across a broad range of markets. Learn more at loopscale.com.

About Formation

Formation is building capital markets for the frontier economy. Established through the merger of Orca and Loopscale, it brings together trading, credit and capital allocation infrastructure. Learn more at formation.so and join the conversation on X.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements, including regarding planned products and the expected benefits of the merger. Actual results may differ materially. Planned products are subject to applicable legal and regulatory requirements and may not be available in all jurisdictions or to U.S. persons. Nothing in this release is an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or other financial product, or investment, legal or tax advice.

Media
press@formation.so

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SOURCE Orca Management Company S.A.

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Nuix Neo Generative AI Framework

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Governed, Enterprise-Grade Gen-AI Orchestration Layer for Unstructured Data Intelligence

SYDNEY, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Nuix (ASX: NXL) announces the Nuix Neo Generative AI (Gen AI) Framework, which directly addresses the governance, confidence, and auditability concerns that have limited the use of large language models (LLMs) and Gen AI in high-stakes legal, risk and investigation matters.

Nuix Neo’s Gen AI Framework is a governed orchestration layer for putting Gen AI to work on organisations’ structured and unstructured data, with the auditability, guardrails and cost control that enterprise use demands. It brings together audit-grade telemetry and policy-enforced guardrails to support evidentiary integrity and corporate usage controls for LLMs. It monitors and meters token usage to prevent runaway token costs as well as intelligently managing the context window to ground answers and strengthens the reliability of AI outputs.

The framework enables the responsible, auditable connection of a customer’s selected LLM to enterprise data that is forensically and defensibly curated by the Nuix Neo platform. The Nuix Neo platform leverages over 25 years of R&D to deliver forensic-grade processing of an organisation’s unstructured data and in doing so, provides a curated and forensically defensible data intelligence layer relied upon by hundreds of the world’s most high-profile and high-stakes organisations. The Nuix Neo Gen AI Framework leverages this data intelligence layer and further tailors the experience to operationalise the application of customers’ selected LLMs, for the kind of responsible and auditable application of Gen AI demanded by high-stakes organisations. 

Under the Nuix Neo Gen AI Framework, customers retain the flexibility to choose the LLM and provider that best suits their requirements, with that flexibility designed to support the customers’ choice of strategic goals, business objectives and innovation appetite. Nuix provides the governance framework that securely connects that model to the curated data intelligence layer delivered by the patented data processing engine in the Nuix Neo platform.

This enabled the LA County District Attorney’s Office, for example, to select the AI models best suited to their business and then seamlessly integrate them into their Nuix Neo workflows.

Powerful application of the Nuix Neo Gen AI Framework

The Nuix Neo Gen AI Framework supports the delivery of two powerful capabilities known as Nuix Neo BYO AI and the Nuix Neo AI Agent, both of which leverage the framework’s comprehensive enterprise–grade infrastructure to operationalise LLMs in a manner demanded by high-stakes organisations.

Nuix Neo BYO AI

Nuix Neo BYO AI leverages the Nuix Neo Gen AI Framework and further tailors it to enable thorough AI analysis across every item in a dataset. Rather than relying on other approaches that prioritise or sample subsets, it applies repeatable workflows to systematically processevery item and then crafts structured reports, with links back to source items and citations for rapid and forensically defensible action, all the while providing clarity and control over key issues like token usage.

“With Nuix Neo’s latest AI, we can move quickly to implement targeted solutions to digital evidence challenges and investigative bottlenecks, while satisfying our unique compliance needs. Being able to leverage the latest AI advancements while staying confined within our own environment is an accelerator,” said Donn Hoffman, Chief Privacy Officer and Deputy District Attorney at Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Nuix Neo Agentic AI

The Nuix Neo AI Agent, a conversational investigation capability built on the Gen AI Framework, is available for Early Adopter participants, via the Nuix Responsible Innovation Framework. The AI Agent extends the Nuix Neo platform, allowing analysts to interrogate their data with reasoning across text, metadata, and images, with access to the full power of Nuix’s APIs, including enhanced context from a curated knowledge graph, in a consistent, auditable way. The AI Agent is fully integrated into Nuix Neo, allowing analysts to follow any lead, in a fully managed, controlled and secured fashion.

In addition to Nuix Neo’s powerful data processing and deterministic AI capabilities, the Gen AI capabilities provide flexibility and choice to customers to apply the most appropriate tool for solving enterprise use cases. Like Nuix Neo BYO AI, the AI Agent operates on that curated, forensically processed dataset in the Nuix Neo platform. As with any Gen AI capability, outputs remain probabilistic and must be verified against source material and are intended to support, not replace, the judgement of qualified investigators, analysts, reviewers, and legal professionals.

Organisations interested in the Nuix Neo Responsible Innovation Framework program, or in seeing the Gen AI Framework in action, can contact their Nuix representative or visit nuix.com/nuix-neo for more information.

About Nuix
Nuix is a leading provider of investigative analytics and intelligence software, that empowers customers to be a force for good by finding truth in the digital world. We help customers collect, process and review large amounts of structured and unstructured data, making it searchable and actionable at scale and speed, with forensic accuracy.
For further information, please visit nuix.com

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SOURCE Nuix

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