Robert A. Spira, Chairman
Robert A. Spira has a career spanning over forty years in the financial
community. Mr. Spira formed Chapman, Spira & Carson, LLC in 1989 to
pursue private merchant banking opportunities, to invest in intellectual property
and to offer investment banking services to his clients. He currently is
a director of Rhumbline Advisors, an investment fund managing over $8 billion
for institutional clients. He is the former President of Haas Securities,
and he is or has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange, a member of the
Boston Stock Exchange (where he served on the listing committee), a member of
the American Stock Exchange (where he served on the Arbitration Committee), a
member of the National Association of Securities Dealers (where he served on the
Arbitration Committee and was a director of the District Business Conduct Committee
– the ruling and enforcing arm of the securities industry), a member of
the New York Futures Exchange (where he served as chairman of the New Business
Committee) and the American commodity Exchange and a member of the Midwest, the
Pacific Coast and the Philadelphia Stock Exchanges.
Mr. Spira has
been an advisor to the House Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Sub-Committee
of the U.S. Congress with regard to the securities markets. He is a member
of the World Trade Association, United States Senatorial Club, International Platform
Association, Wall Street Planning Group and the National Options Society and is
now or has been a director of American Philatelic Society, Professional Association
of Scuba Divers and the Keystone Fund Group; he was the 1988 co-chairman (Fundraising)
of the U.S. Olympic Committee and is a member of the prestigious U.S. Congressional
Advisory Board. After receiving a BA degree from Roosevelt University, Mr.
Spira served with the Green Berets, U.S. Army during the Korean War. Top
David
L. Morano, Senior Managing Director
David Morano has been on Wall Street for three decades, beginning as
a member of the Boston Stock Exchange, where he was a specialist responsible for
making the market in Chrysler, 3M, Sears, Dupont, Homestake Mining, Caterpillar
and Hewlett Packard. In New York, David was employed by such firms as A. G. Becker
& Co., Purcell Graham and Challenge Securities, where he was a floor partner.
David was also affiliated with Carl Icahn, specializing in merger and acquisition
analysis. He was one of the early members of the New York Futures Exchange, where
he dealt in currencies and various U.S. Government obligations. In 1986, he became
a member of the New York Stock Exchange, where his clients included Merrill Lynch,
Bear Sterns, Goldman Sachs and Paine Webber. Educated at Boston University, he
received a BS Degree in Chemistry. David is a member of the National Association
of Underwater Instructors and is active in the Jacques Cousteau Society. Top
Roy
M. Lemkin, Managing Director
Roy Lemkin joined Chapman, Spira & Carson, LLC as a Managing Director
after having served as a Managing Director at Mayer Capital and as a consultant
for Simmex Industries. In these various capacities since 1995, Mr. Lemkin has
negotiated in excess of $30,000,000 in contracts with IT vendors and customers
worldwide. He has developed IT markets in Africa and the Middle East, including
IT contracts valued at $1,000,000 in South Africa with Telkom, the largest telecommunication
company in South Africa, and Noryich, a large insurance company. Roy has also
developed IT markets in the United States for early stage technology companies,
integrators and other IT vendors based in Israel.
He has negotiated IT
service contracts with airlines, hospitals and clients based in the US. After
the events of 9/11, he developed market entry strategies and structured corporate
business models for Israeli start-up companies that had invented disruptive technologies
by partnering them with Fortune 500 companies, focusing on Cyber terror, UAV and
related issues. Roy began his business career negotiating and structuring government
bids for defense products with the Israeli Defense Department office in New York
City.
Roy Lemkin has served in the Israeli Defense Forces for nearly
eight years and received an honorable discharge with the rank of Captain. During
the 1991 Gulf War, he supervised domestic and international security protection
for a US Airline in California. Roy holds a BA in Business & Finance from
Baruch College in NY. Top
W. Robert Gibson
W. Robert Gibson, President of the Concord Group, Inc., has 35 years of experience
in complex program planning, management, company start-ups and turn-arounds.
He has started three financially successful entrepreneurial companies in widely
diverse fields. Mr. Gibson provides technical due diligence services to major
investors and strategic planning for corporations preparing to seek equity
investments in their enterprise. He also assists in the commercialization of
technology from National Laboratories and private industry.
Top
William
M. Noe, Managing Director
William M. Noe is an established
venture capital and real estate executive who joined Chapman in 2001, after having
been the Chief Executive Officer of Asset Development Corporation for more than
26 years. Formed in 1974, Asset Development Corporation provided consulting services
and investment banking advice to enterprises seeking capital to undertake new
business ventures or real estate developments. William has negotiated over $350
million in transactions, often joining client companies as an officer and shareholder
to provide “hands on” management during the critical early stage of
development. He assists in the documentation of a client’s business plan
and financial forecast, then oversees the process of capital raising.
William is now or has been the Chairman of the Board of the Managing Director
of three companies in the real estate and construction industries addressing the
use of innovative building materials and fast tract building systems to mass produce
low cost housing. He is an advisor to the Board of Directors of several companies
in the computer, finance and technology fields. Prior to this, William was the
Director of Communications for the Wall Street firm Kidder, Peabody & Co.,
Inc. at the time of its acquisition by General Electric. He began his career on
Wall Street as Vice President of Newberger, Loeb & Co., Inc., a member firm
of the New York Stock Exchange.
William earned a Masters in Business
Administration (Finance) from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Arts
from the University of Southern California. He has been approved by the State
of New York to teach continuing education courses in real estate, which he has
done at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Top
Larry
Kars
Larry
Kars, Experience: The addition of Larry Kars to our staff provides the firm with
special expertise in tax matters from a legal point of view. Larry has just about
been everywhere and done everything in his field. The
following is a short critique of his background. Private
Practice, 1979 to present Specialist in Federal and State Tax Law, Civil and Criminal
tax litigation. Securities transaction. Cases litigated in Tax Court, Federal
District Court and State Courts. Admitted to Second Circuit, Fourth Circuit, Firth
Circuit, Seventh Circuit, Ninth Circuit and Tenth Circuit. Clients include partnerships,
public and private corporations, brokerage firms, major known entertainers and
artists. NASD Arbitrator since 1995, Assisted corporations in investigations,
Financing, stock, stock option planning and analysis. Appeared on CNN and NBC
as a tax specialist. Quoted in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Internal Revenue Service, Office of Chief Counsel, 1965-1979, Senior Tax Trial
Attorney, Developed, tried and negotiated settlements of tax issues, with respect
to corporations, estates and individuals. Office foreign tax coordinator and corporate
"slush fund" coordinator. Supervised office attorneys and served as
acting Assistant Regional Counsel and Assistant District Counsel. Lectured Internal
Revenue Agents at Hofstra University. North-Atlantic Region Coordinator and Senior
Trial Attorney for Commodity Tax Straddles and cases involving securities of public
companies. LL.M in Taxation, J.D. Law. Member Missouri and New York Bars. Represented
Chief Counsel's Office in the following cases docketed before the Tax Court: I.T.T
- Rayonier; I.T.T. - Hartford - Simplicity Pattern:
Schering-Plough; American
International Insurance; Bunge Corporation;
Deak & Co.; R.H.Macy; Barden
Corporation; Singer Corporation;
Citizen's Utilities; and other cases involving
valuation of publicly
held Corporations, real estate, and works of art. Top
Hisao
Sal Miwa
Chapman, Spira & Carson, LLC and also the Chief Operating Officer
and a Director of RealRead Inc., an online document service provider in New York
and Tokyo. Sal is also the Vice Chairman of the Board of Advanced Environmental
Recycling Technologies, Inc. (AERT) a NASDAQ listed composite plastic building
material manufacturer in Arkansas with 400 employees. AERT's decking product,
"ChoiceDek" can be seen at Lowe's 1,000 stores across the country. In
addition, he holds board memberships at a number of private corporations around
the world. In the past 25 years, he was instrumental in forming several start-up
companies in various fields from commercial real estate, to injection mold manufacturing,
to importing fiber telecommunication equipment and has successfully managed these
companies. His areas of expertise
include the management and operations of start-ups, international sales organizations,
and bridging the U.S.-Japan cultural gaps. Sal graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University with a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology with a Science Master degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering.
Sal has also acted as a Japanese interpreter for many occasions including for
a former U.S. President, Mr. Richard Nixon and the current World Bank President,
James Wolfensohn. Top
Jules
J. Haberman, D.V.M.
A graduate of Cornell University's Colleges of
Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Haberman,
since 1981, has been a consultant to industry,
selected universities and private inventors. His expertise
is primarily directed to working with patent attorneys, market
appraisal and licensing of technologies in the life science and related
fields. A new business due diligence advisor to investment brokers,
Dr. Haberman was previously employed (1971 - 1981) by University
Patents, Inc. As this corporation's coordinator of health-care
intellectual properties, he was involved in planning and implementing,
licensing negotiation strategy for a number of inventions.
The licensees included such companies as Alcon Laboratories,
Pfizer, Lederle Labs, an American Cyanamid Division (now American
Home Products), Pennwalt and I.M.C. (Imcera). Since founding his
own firm in 1981, Dr. Haberman has consulted such institutions as the
Cornell Research Foundation, New York University's Medical Center, University
of Arizona's Division of Industrial Cooperation and the Arizona
Technology Development Corporation. He has successfully concluded
agreements, on behalf of his clients, for pharmaceutical, diagnostic
and medical instrumentation inventions with, for example, Bristol
Labs, Boehringer Mannheim Corp., S.I.B.I.A. (a Salk Institute Division),
Infinitech, Inc., Synergetic, Inc. and Cobra Pharmaceutical Corp.
Dr. Haberman is a member of the Licensing Executive Society, and
a one-time member of the Association of University Technology Managers,
and the Arizona Patent Lawyers Association. Top
Peter
P. Green III Mr.
Green has held executive positions with numerous corporations during the past
40 years. He has been at the management level with profit and loss responsibility
for such companies as the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Zurich Trading &
Commodities, Ltd. and Doubleday & Co.
More recently, Mr. Green has acted in the capacity of a management, financial
and distribution consultant to many domestic and international corporations.
Clients included such companies as Hoelter Industries GB, 3M, Grazia International,
Ltd. and American Cyanamid, among others. In this capacity, he negotiated
key agreements, established distribution networks and arranged for corporate financing
at almost all levels. Mr. Green
has been well positioned on "Wall Street" for many years and as such
he has arranged for both private and public funding for numerous companies both
in the U.S. and abroad. His experience in the equity and debt marketplace
has included arranging for private placements, bridge loans, mezzanine financing,
venture capital and initial and secondary public offerings. Further, he
has coordinated syndication between financial institutions and has been instrumental
in structuring a number of mergers and acquisitions.
For a number of years during the 1990's, Mr. Green serve as the executive director
of the investment banking consulting firm of Chapman, Spira and
Carson, LLC Top
Robert
P. Wong
Robert P. Wong joined Chapman, Spira & Carson LLC, an Investment Banking Consulting
Company in March of 2003 as a Senior Managing Director. Prior to joining Chapman,
Spira & Carson, he was the President as well as a member of the Board of Directors
of the Ergonomics Technologies Corp. While at Ergonomics Technologies Corp where
he refined their business model and completed equity funding and then with the
proceeds, implemented the business plan which incorporated the new business model.
This involved a unique automation of the company's engineering offerings and delivery
these services through an "intelligent" Web portal (patent pending)
on a worldwide basis. Mr. Wong also served as the Vice-Chairman of the Board and
Chief Technology Officer of BCAM, a publicly traded company. Prior thereto, he
was a founder and Chief Executive Officer of several technology companies including
Ultrasonic Research, Inc., Sound Water Systems, Inc., Medix Technologies, Inc.
and Uri-Thermix, Inc. (a publicly traded company).
For twelve years Mr. Wong was one of the principals involved in building Coordinated
Apparel, Inc., a manufacturer, designer and distributor of boy's clothing. When
Mr. Wong arrived at Coordinated, their sales were $14 million dollars a year.
When he left, sales had risen to $200 million-plus.
Moreover, Coordinated Apparel successfully invested its excess cash into several
high tech ventures, several of them were successful. In addition, he was the president
of several of Coordinated Apparel's Information Technology companies. After graduation
from MIT, he held various technical positions with Western Electric, Inc. (a former
subsidiary of AT&T now known as Lucent Technologies, Inc.) including Department
Chief of computer software development. Mr. Wong holds a SB in Electrical Engineering
and a SB in Industrial Management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
the co-inventor of several patents and he is uniquely capable of analyzing and
arranging strategic partnerships, authoring workable business models, managing
companies with emerging technologies, developing sophisticated intellectual property,
raising money while having a thorough working knowledge of GAAP, taxation and
corporate structuring. Moreover, Mr. Wong has been a successful investor in numerous
early stage companies. Top
Clement
Barbot, Director Clement
Barbot joined Chapman, Spira & Carson, LLC a few months ago and is part of the
management team. More information to come. Top |
