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Alumni Connections
No. 43 - February 2008
Alumni Connections is a sampling of alumni
news gleaned from media online and in print, including news submitted
to Chicago GSB Magazine. Submit information about yourself or
fellow alumni to editor@ChicagoGSB.edu. |
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Quick Links
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Alumni on the Move
Accuray Incorporated
Jim Burtt, ’93, has joined as director of financial systems. Based in Sunnyvale, California, the radiosurgery firm’s Cyberknife system targets tumors anywhere in the body with precisely aimed, high-dose radiation.
Arthur D. Little, Inc.
Markus Yap, ’05, has joined as a senior consultant in the global health care and life sciences practice of the Boston-based consulting firm.
Bear Stearns Companies Inc.
Steven Kwok, ’97, is heading a private equity fund in a strategic alliance between Bear Stearns, Bear Stearns Merchant Banking, and Eagle Investment Group, a Chinese investment firm based in Beijing. The private equity firm will focus on retail and consumer investment opportunities in China. Bear Stearns is headquartered in New York.
Bridge Finance Group
Larry Hund, ’90, has joined the Chicago-based financial company as CFO.
Cameco
David Doerksen, ’97, has been appointed vice president, marketing strategy and administration. Headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Cameco is the world’s largest uranium producer.
Circle Peak Capital LLC
Holbrook Forusz, ’05, has been promoted to principal at the New York–based private equity firm, which focuses on leveraged buyouts in the middle-market and lower middle-market consumer, industrial, and financial services sectors.
Citi Private Equity
Blair Jacobson, ’99, has been promoted to partner at the firm and managing director within Citi Alternative Investments. Jacobson is based in the London office of the firm, which is headquartered in New York.
Fellowes, Inc.
Brian Cooper, ’84, has been named CFO at the Chicago-based company, which makes shredders and other office equipment.
GAMCO Investors, Inc.
Mark Yim, ’97, has been named analyst and portfolio manager for the Gabelli Japanese value fund and a member of the firm’s global growth team. Headquartered in New York, the company manages private advisory accounts, partnerships, and mutual, closed-end, and offshore funds through its subsidiaries.
Handleman Company
James Nicholson, ’67, has been elected chairman of the board. Based in Troy, Michigan, the company makes and distributes music and video game hardware, software, and accessories. Nicholson is president, CEO, and director of PVS Chemicals, Inc.
Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc.
Daniel O’Brien, ’80, has joined as CFO. The federal and state income tax preparation company is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey.
Jefferies & Company, Inc.
Steven Tricarico, ’97, has joined as a managing director in the consumer and retail investment banking group. The global investment bank and institutional securities firm is based in New York.
The Jordan Company
Mark Emery, ’83, has joined as president of its U.S. operations management group. Based in New York, the private investment firm specializes in buying and building businesses in partnership with management.
Konarka Technologies, Inc.
William Collins, ’86, has been named to the board as an independent director. Headquartered in Lowell, Massachusetts, the company develops polymer photovoltaic technology to generate renewable power. Collins is the former president and CEO of GAF Materials Corporation.
Kosan Biosciences Incorporated
Helen Kim, ’88, has been appointed chief business officer. The biotechnology company is headquartered in Hayward, California.
Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc.
Steven Cowan, ’96, has joined as managing director of the energy group and is based in the firm’s new office in Houston. Headquartered in Miami, the company offers retail and institutional brokerage and investment banking through its principal operating subsidiary, Ladenburg Thalmann & Co.
Liberty Mutual Group
Luis Bonell, ’96 (EXP-1), has been named director, Europe. Bonell had been president of the Liberty Seguros Group in Spain, a subsidiary. Liberty Mutual is headquartered in Boston.
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company
William Spitz, ’74, has been elected to the board of directors. The life insurance company is headquartered in Springfield, Massachusetts. Spitz is former vice chancellor of investments for Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Moelis & Company
Mark Henkels, ’89, has joined as a managing director based in the investment bank’s New York headquarters.
MSC.Software Corp.
Robert Schriesheim, ’86, has been named to the board of directors. Based in Santa Ana, California, the company makes software for designing and testing manufactured products. Schriesheim is executive vice president, CFO, and a director at Lawson Software.
National Credit Union Administration Board
Michael Fryzel, ’80, has been named a member by President Bush. The federal agency charters and supervises federal credit unions and insures savings in federal and most state-chartered credit unions across the country. Upon confirmation by the Senate Banking Committee, Fryzel would become chairperson. Fryzel is an attorney in Chicago.
New York Life International
Vikram Sawhney, ’95, has joined as senior vice president of business development. A part of New York Life Insurance Company, the firm offers insurance and asset accumulation products through subsidiaries and affiliates in Argentina, China, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.
NovaBay Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Thomas Paulson, ’78, has been appointed CFO of the biopharmaceutical company, which is based in Emeryville, California.
Paradigm Management Services
Raj Marwah, ’03, has been named chief information officer. Headquartered in Concord, California, the company manages medical services for workers who have suffered catastrophic and complex injuries.
Piper Jaffray
Charles Fishman, ’82, has been named a senior research analyst for the firm’s investment research based in St. Louis. The middle-market investment bank and institutional securities firm is headquartered in Minneapolis.
Platform Computing
Andrew Giblon, ’84, has joined as vice president, support. He leads a team of about 70 staff members in the United States, Canada, China, India, Japan, and France. The software company is headquartered in Markham, Ontario, Canada.
PPG Industries
Aziz Giga, ’76, has been promoted to treasurer. He also remains vice president, strategic planning. Based in Pittsburgh, the company makes paints, coatings, chemicals, optical products, specialty materials, glass, and fiberglass.
The PrivateBank – Chicago
Hugh McLean, ’86, has been promoted to the new position of executive managing director and president of suburban offices. The financial company is part of PrivateBancorp, Inc., which is headquartered in Chicago.
Towerstream
Maria Perry, ’90, has been named interim CFO. She is controller at the Middletown, Rhode Island–based company, which offers high-speed internet access to businesses.
Turin Networks
Niel Ransom, ’86 (XP-55), has been appointed to the board of directors. Based in Petaluma, California, the company provides network equipment to wireless telecommunications carriers, cable service providers, utilities, and government organizations.
Uranium 308 Corp.
Christopher Metcalf, ’99, has been named a director. The company, headquartered in Las Vegas, currently is exploring for uranium in Mongolia. Metcalf is president of Altitude Funds LLC and vice president of GF Private Equity Group LLC.
US Oncology
Glen Laschober, ’77, has been named executive vice president and chief operating officer. The Houston-based company builds cancer care and research centers. |
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Alumni to Know
Ray Chadwick, ’89, president of Diageo Chateau and Estate Wines Co., was named Wine Enthusiast magazine’s Man of the Year in its 2007 Wine Star competition, according to a January 3 article in the St. Helena (California) Star. With more than 30 years in the wine industry, Chadwick’s achievements include adding wines from California, Washington, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and France. “The company’s wine portfolio has exploded from three brands in 2001 to 21 at the beginning of 2007,” the article said. The company also reached the top three of premium wines with a 9 percent market share, the article said. Chadwick played a role in the company’s mergers with Seagram and the Chalone Wine Group and oversaw his company’s conversion to organic grape growing, the article said.
 Colonel Corey Carr, ’94, will lead the Indiana National Guard 76th Infantry Brigade in Iraq, according to a January 2 profile in the Indianapolis Star. Carr, executive director of the Columbus Economic Development Board, is taking a leave from his job to head the 3,400-member brigade, which is training at Fort Steward, Georgia, before shipping out to Iraq in March, the article said. The brigade is “the largest contingent of Hoosiers called up for combat since World War II,” the newspaper said. Brooke Tuttle, who preceded Carr as Columbus’ economic development director, told the Star, “There are certain people that when they walk into the room, there’s confidence, authority, there’s ‘can do.’ That’s Corey.”
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s son, Patrick Daley, ’04, has been sent overseas in a U.S. Army Special Operations deployment, according to a December 12 article in the Chicago Sun-Times. The Daley family is not releasing his deployment location. He enlisted in 2004 after graduating with honors from the GSB.
Víctor Manuel García de la Vega, ’95, founder and general manager of Finalitica, S.A. de C.V., was featured in the December 2007 Mexican business magazine Poder, which means “Power.” His financial firm uses lastest technologies and financial information to advise clients. One of the problems in Mexico’s financial culture, the article said, is the lack of reliance on financial derivative products, which are seen as gambling rather than an aid to financial risk management. Only 10 percent of Mexican corporations use derivatives at all, García de la Vega said; if more Mexican companies used derivatives to hedge their energy needs, for example, they could save billions of dollars every year. This has led to one of his company’s most profitable business arenas–providing financial training to companies, he told Poder. The company also valuates businesses, conducts risk management, and develops financial application software.
 Shigeki Makino, ’90, portfolio manager of Putnam Global Equity Fund, was featured in a profile December 17 in Barron’s. Makino’s love for investing started in high school: “I would go to the public library, check out Value Line [Investment Survey] and see what stocks had the highest returns on a three- and five-year basis,” Makino told Barron’s. “I think my classmates thought I was a broker.” The article said Makino has produced “strong, consistent returns of 13.13 percent, 16.11 percent, and 16.74 percent, respectively, over one, three, and five years, according to Morningstar.” Makino has more than $1 million of his own invested in the fund, the article said. “We look for stocks trading at a reasonable discount to expected cash flows, with sound growth prospects and a nice return on equity,” he told Barron’s.
John Miller, ’00, of Nuveen Investments Inc., faces his first annual loss because nearly half his assets had been placed in unrated securities, according to a December 20 article in Bloomberg.com. Miller, who has been the second-ranked municipal bond-fund manager of the past five years, saw losses resulting from the subprime mortgage crisis, the article said. But Miller seems to be holding fast to his strategy. “We’re not in the business of repositioning between high grade and high yield,” he told Bloomberg. He predicted 2008 would be a “significantly better year,” with credit markets rebounding and the flight from debt slowing.
 Retired Kroger chairman and CEO Joe Pichler, MBA ’63, PhD ’66, has been named to the 2008 class of Great Living Cincinnatians, said a December 22 article in the Cincinnati Post. Bestowed by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, recipients are chosen for community service, business and civic attainment, leadership, awareness of the needs of others, and distinctive accomplishments that have drawn favorable attention, the Post said. Under Pichler, Kroger expanded from about 1,200 supermarkets and $20 billion in annual sales to more than 2,500 stores and $54 billion in annual sales, the article said.
 Goldman Sachs banker Byron Trott, ’82, is credited with helping to engineer the $4.5 billion sale of Marmon Holdings, an industrial conglomerate, to Warren Buffett, according to a December 27 article in the Wall Street Journal. The sale was announced on December 25. It wasn’t the first time that Trott drew Buffett’s attention. In his 2003 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett wrote, “Byron…understands Berkshire far better than any investment banker with whom we have talked and–it hurts me to say this–earns his fee,” the Journal said.
A December 23 story in Diario el Mercurio discusses how James Veeneman, ’03, GSB associate dean, maintains ties in Chile to help raise funds for the Becker Center on Price Theory. Among the alumni Veeneman has visited in Chile is Jorge Larrain, ’66, the article said. “We want our collaborators to understand that this can be a good investment for intellectual capital,” Veeneman told the newspaper, “that the ideas of the Becker Center can change the world.”
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CEO Watch |
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Making Headlines
Lambertus J. H. “Bart” Becht, '82
CEO
Reckitt Benckiser
Becht was named by the Times of London as one of the “Power 100,” the most influential men and women in British business. He joined Procter & Gamble after earning his MBA. Today, at Reckitt Benckiser, the world’s largest household products manufacturer, Becht “is one of the best-remunerated chief executives in the UK,” the article said, “earning more than £4 million in 2006.”
Gary Graves, '86
CEO
American Laser Centers
Graves became CEO after a private equity buyout completed in November 2007, according to a December 9 article in the Detroit Free Press. The company runs a network of 205 hair removal and skin rejuvenation clinics. “This is a large and growing industry, a $4 billion industry in the United States, for aesthetic procedures, and the noninvasive types that are ALC’s specialty have four times the growth rate of surgical procedures,” Graves told the Free Press. The company is now owned by two Chicago-based equity firms, the article said: Edgewater Funds and Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC.
Peter Handal, '65
Chairman, President, and CEO
Dale Carnegie Training
Handal was part of a group of experts that the Associate Press polled about mistakes. “My first job was with Exxon, in the treasurer’s department,” Handal said in a December 26, 2007 article. “I got it fresh out of the University of Chicago business school. In the few years I was there, I found I didn’t like these huge corporations where you couldn’t slam the car door and kick the tires. It was all about sitting at a desk, talking on a phone, looking at spreadsheets. I found I liked personal interaction–shaking hands, meeting people, being out in public. I left there and…eventually ended up here at Dale Carnegie with that kind of job.” The lesson, he told AP: “It’s important to learn from your experiences…The ‘right’ job is a place where you do what you like and have fun at what you do.”
Sheila Lyne, ’80 (XP-44)
CEO
Mercy Hospital
Lyne was featured in a December 3 article in Crain’s Chicago Business about competition among hospitals for $1.8 billion in federal funds over three years. A state program taxes hospitals to create funding for Medicaid, a state-run health program for poor people, and the federal government provides matching dollars. Based on a state formula, hospitals in wealthier suburbs receive less federal money because they serve areas with fewer people on Medicaid. Lyne will use $13.5 million of the money on a new computer system, radiation machine replacement, and renovation of the birthing unit at her hospital, which is on Chicago’s South Side. She called the federal money “our lifeline.”
 Joseph Mansueto, AB ’78, MBA ’80
Founder, Chairman, and CEO
Morningstar
While other Chicago CEOs listed children’s hospitals and public schools as favorite causes in a January article by editors of BusinessWeek, Mansueto took a different tack and listed “entrepreneurship.” He intends to advise and nurture startups with potential, he said in the article. “I felt for a long time that there’s a dearth of emerging growth companies in Chicago,” he said. “Hopefully, Morningstar is an example of a company trying to reverse that trend.”
 Chris McGurk, ’82
CEO
Overture Films
McGurk runs a studio that will make or acquire low- to mid-budget films in the $15 million to $30 million range, distribute them in theaters, and then send them on their way to cable channels and the internet, according to a January article in Conde Nast Portfolio magazine. The studio’s first release is Mad Money, starring Katie Holmes, Queen Latifah, and Diane Keaton. The movies are designed to appeal to an older crowd and play well on cable. “We built this company to be about the 10 movies we make, acquire, and market every year,” McGurk said in the article. Coming soon: Righteous Kill, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino; Traitor, starring Don Cheadle; and Last Chance Harvey, starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, the article said.
 William Osborne, ’01 (XP-70)
President and CEO
Ford Canada
In a December 24 profile in the Toronto Sun, Osborne credits a fifth grade teacher for helping him to see his full potential. “Sometimes the right people come into your life and you have to be prepared when those moments come,” Osborne said. “I don’t know how prepared I was when my Grade 5 teacher came into my life, but at some point I decided to start living up to my true potential and to use the gifts that God had given me.” He also credited his parents with teaching him about “hard work and self reliance, and that we all had a purpose here other than satisfying ourselves. They also told me it was important we serve others and try to make the world a better place than the way we found it.” The article said in October 2007, Osborne won the Planet Africa Professional Excellence Award, given by a current affairs television program about African heritage.
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Taking the Lead
Gregg Ribatt, '94
President and CEO
The Stride Rite Corporation
The footwear company is headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, and is owned by Collective Brands.
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Submit information about yourself or fellow
alumni to editor@ChicagoGSB.edu.
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