Professional
I am a business strategist, financial consultant, college professor,
and blogger. What runs through all these activities is a profound
understanding of the convergence of strategy and finance. Over
the years the role of information technology has become increasingly
critical to understanding this convergence and I have become
more and more a technologist. My interest in technology is what
now gets me up in the morning; my ability to develop strategies
is how I differentiate everything I do; my knowledge of finance
is how I earn much of my living.
From the time I left Hamilton College with a philosophy degree
I have basically traveled the world on behalf of clients and
companies that employed me. While some would have turned this
into a study of foreign cultures, early on I rejected the notion
that the world's people are all different. I opted to look for
lessons, techniques and customs that I could make part of my
own approach to business and life. The resultant approach is
almost equally influenced by Latin America and Asia, and hopefully
I have extracted the best concepts.
I learned most of my basic finance at Chase Manhattan Bank in
their International Credit Training Program, back in the days
when commercial banks were widely respected. An MBA at Columbia
University provided more theoretical knowledge of finance and
trading derivatives in Asia was my post-graduate training. I
have found that theory is the basis for all good finance and
that risk management is a critical component in any financial
decision.
I learned about strategy working for a big consulting firm in
New York after business school and then refined these skills
over the next ten years doing strategy work for the largest companies
in Japan, such as Fujitsu and Marubeni Corporation. I have been
a life long student of business strategy and believe that every
significant business decision or problem starts with strategy.
These first seventeen years turned out to be excellent preparation
for the next phase of my career as an operating executive. I
went to Indonesia and built a retail company with $1 billion
in revenue. Working with the Darmawan family, we built the then
largest retailer in Asia outside Japan–Matahari Putra Prima.
We built the company by using access to foreign capital to leverage
the strategy, by constantly planning and by always focusing on
the customer. In a sense it was the culmination of all my previous
business experience. I have been looking for another Matahari
ever since, but I am still looking.
After the Asian Financial Crisis, in 1999 I returned to the
U.S., was involved in an Internet company and ran a telecom company
for three years. These two positions greatly increased my understanding
of information technology and fostered a continuing desire to
learn more. What I do now is explained below.
Today I am a strategist, capital raiser and operating executive.
I create the strategies to grow large companies, I raise the
capital to support the strategies and I have the operating experience
(much of it in emerging markets) to execute the strategies or
advise on execution. I carry out my activities through GH Capital
Partners, headquartered in Miami, but my clients are global.
I tend to work on complex projects that involve a combination
of strategy and finance. I work with both private and publicly
traded companies. My smallest client was a startup medical device
company seeking venture capital and my largest client has annual
revenues of over $1 billion and completed 27 acquisitions in
the last five years.
I am also an advisor to several early stage companies and always
welcome the opportunity to meet new entrepreneurs.
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