The PerTrac Financial Solutions Advisory Board consists of investment industry leaders chosen by the company's management team for their knowledge and expertise. The advisory board advises PFS on product development and overall strategic direction. Board members serve for two years. The current board members are:
Dermot Butler, Chairman of Custom House Administration & Corporate Services Ltd. Mr. Butler has over 35 years experience in the financial services industry. In 1983, he helped set up McDonnell & Co., the Bermuda-based fund management company, and issuer of the McD range funds. He sold his interest in that company and moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1989 when he established Custom House, which specializes in the administration of alternative investments and hedge funds. He currently serves as Chairman of Custom House and is deputy chairman of AIMA.
Reza Farman-Farmaian, Co-Founder of Alternative Investments SA. Mr. Farman-Farmaian co-founded Alternative Investments SA, a Swiss-based independent asset manager, in 2000. Prior to that, he worked for J.P. Morgan (Suisse) SA as a product specialist in the J.P. Morgan Absolute Returns Products (ARP) Group, with responsibility for developing hedge fund research, analytics, portfolio construction, infrastructure and business group management. Mr. Farman-Farmaian also served as Investment Committee member and Assistant Portfolio Manager of J.P. Morgan’s Luxembourg funds of hedge funds. He is a CFA charter holder and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Alternative Investments SA.
Patrick Fauchier, Chairman of the Fauchier Partners Group. Mr. Fauchier co-founded Fauchier Partners Group in 1994. His previous experience includes running VUP, an information company specializing in hedge fund data, and serving as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the Universite de Paris V. He is also Chairman of the Advisory Board of the BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre at the London Business School.
John Ferguson, Chief Operating Officer of K2 Advisors. Mr. Ferguson joined K2 Advisors in April 2005 and currently serves as the firm's COO and a member of the management committee. K2 Advisors is a leading funds of hedge funds manager with over $7 billion in assets. Prior to K2, Mr. Ferguson was a Managing Director and the Global Chief Administrative Officer of Deutsche Bank's DB Absolute Return Strategies, which encompassed a full range of single manager hedge funds and fund of hedge funds products. Mr. Ferguson's earlier experiences include serving as portfolio manager both at a venture capital firm as well as an Eastern European fund. Mr. Ferguson holds an LL.M. (Taxation) from New York University, a JD/MBA cum laude from Indiana University, and a B.A. (Economics) from Cornell University.
Damien Hatfield, Principal-Head of Alternative Strategies Distribution at Pengana Capital. Mr. Hatfield has 25 years experience in the financial services industry. He currently is responsible for the distribution of Pengana Capital’s Alternative Strategies products and is also a Director of Pengana Hedgefunds Limited. Pengana Capital is an Australian-based boutique fund manager with AU$1.5 billion in assets. His earlier experience includes working at Colonial First State as Head of Hedge Funds, as well as various positions involving hedge funds and managed futures products at Basis Capital, Deutsche Bank (Australia), Deutsche Securities (Hong Kong), and ANZ McCaughan. Mr. Hatfield is ex-chairman of the Australian Chapter of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) and was recently inducted into the Australian Hedge Fund Industry Hall of Fame for contribution to the local industry.
Keith Jarrett, Founder and President of Rockport Solutions, a privately owned New York City-based company that focuses on automated solutions for the real estate and asset securitization industries. Mr. Jarrett also serves as a private advisor and investor to venture firms, as well as a board member of several companies. From 1986-2001, he was a founding member and senior executive of Thomson Financial, a leading vendor of information and technology solutions to the global financial community. During this time, he founded and directed Thomson Financial’s Corporate Venture Capital Group, served as the CEO of all non-US operations for seven years, and founded and developed many of the products and services for Thomson Financial’s Straight Through Processing (“STP”) initiatives, including the Thomson Electronic Settlement Group (now “Omgeo”). He joined Thomson Financial in 1986, with the acquisition of First Call/Technical Data Corporation, where he was a Principal and Chief Economist. Mr. Jarrett has an M.B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Ph.D. in Financial Economics from Harvard Business School. He worked as a Research Associate at the Harvard Business School and as a Professor at Simmons College Graduate Management Program. He previously served as a Captain in the U.S. Army after graduating with honors from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Josh Lewis, Chairman of the PFS Advisory Board, is Founder and Managing Principal of Salmon River Capital (www.salmonrivercapital.com), a leading investor in the financial services technologies sector. He has over 20 years of venture capital and private equity experience across a broad range of growth industries. Previously, he was a Partner of Warburg Pincus, where he served for over a decade, and a Partner of Forstmann Little & Co. He was also previously associated with Lehman Bros. and Noble Grossart Ltd.
Mark Pearl, MD, Managing Partner of Henderson Capital Management (a multifamily captive hedge fund of funds) and a Member of Angel Healthcare Investors LLC (which funds early healthcare companies). An Australian physician, Mark Pearl is a private investor and entrepreneur. Dr. Pearl has over 15 years of business experience in the healthcare industry. He occasionally consults to healthcare companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and leading venture capital firms. Dr. Pearl was a founder of two healthcare companies, including CareAgents, a predecessor company to WebMD. He was previously a partner in Psilos Group, a venture capital firm in New York and has worked as an associate at Solomon Smith Barney in the health care investment banking group. Dr. Pearl served as a member of the Greenwich Roundtable committee, which published the white paper “Best Practices in Hedge Fund Investing: Due Diligence for Equity Strategies” in spring 2005. He has also edited and co-authored an article entitled “Best Practices for Hedge Funds,” published in the Journal of Alternative Investments. Dr. Pearl received his MBA from Harvard Business School with second year honors (1987) and his MBBS (equivalent of MD) from the University of Melbourne, Australia (1981).
Frank Smith, Co-Founder of PerTrac Financial Solutions. Mr. Smith launched the company with Milt Baehr in 1996 with the mission to provide solutions for the technological needs of the financial industry. His earlier experience include serving as a principal of Witter & Lester, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor and Commodities Trading Advisor specializing in stock index futures and options, as well as Managing Director of both Morgan Keegan & Co., Inc. and Equitable Securities. Mr. Smith currently serves on the board of Crichton College and is actively engaged in fund-raising and leadership roles for various industry, community, and non-profit organizations. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a BA in Economics.
Bill Ullman, Founder of Right Wall Capital. Mr. Ullman has 17 years of experience on Wall Street and is founder and principal of Right Wall Capital, an investment fund focused on the global financial services sector. Prior to founding Right Wall Capital in 2006, Mr. Ullman was a Senior Managing Director in the Prime Brokerage Department at Bear Stearns. Before joining Bear Stearns in 1997, he was a Director in the Financial Institutions Group/Investment Banking Department at Merrill Lynch where he started in 1989.
Hans-Willem baron van Tuyll van Serooskerken, retired from Cargill. Mr. van Tuyll worked for the Cargill Group for 35 years before retiring in 2003. The last twenty years of his career with the firm were spent in the futures brokerage arm, where he directed his energy on the development of Cargill’s fund and hedge fund businesses. He also represented Cargill in The Alternative Investment Management Association, of which he became Chairman. From 1997 to 2001, Mr. van Tuyll represented the Netherlands as Consul-General in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Following his many years of activity among various groups in the Dutch community, Mr. van Tuyll was made a knight in the Order of Orange Nassau in 2005.
