John A. Allison (Chairman)

Chairman/CEO, UNIO Holdings

John founded UNIO to be a new kind of 21st Century operating & asset management company – combining within one unified, long-term-oriented culture the best of the businessperson’s management intensity and skill at making assets pervasively productive, with the investor’s ability to allocate capital and invest free cash flows, all to produce conspicuous value for operating company customers and UNIO shareholders. A senior leader at W.P. Stewart (1995-2005), he was both investor and businessperson, with responsibilities key to the firm’s becoming a global enterprise, going public on the NYSE, and undertaking global corporate and strategic partnerships and acquisitions. Before that he bought and built an asset management firm (1989-95) after being a Vice-President at Morgan Stanley (1983-89). He was also Chairman of a private family restaurant and real estate company based in Canada. He is active at Princeton’s Council for Economic & Policy Studies and Columbia’s Economic Advisory Council. He graduated from Princeton (BA) and Columbia (MA, MPhil) where he was writing his doctorate – “Keynes vs. Hayek: The Future Role of Government” when he was offered a “can’t refuse” job at Morgan Stanley.

Stephanie W. Abramson

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

Stephanie brings to UNIO a very rare blend of impeccable legal judgment and business acumen – and special skill in mergers & acquisitions and compliance issues associated with public companies. Now an advisor to boards of directors on complex matters including governance, an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law where she teaches the first student clinic in business transactions, and a director National Financial Partners Corp (NYSE: NFP), Stephanie has had a distinguished career that has brought together her legal and business skills – first as a senior partner in New York at Morgan, Lewis, Bockius, next as Chief Counsel of Young & Rubicam where she oversaw its recapitalization, its initial and follow-on public offerings, and sale to WPP in 2000, and most recently as Executive Vice President and General Counsel to DoubleClick where she was the lead lawyer in its 2008 sale to Google. Among her non-profit activities, she is a Trustee of New York University’s School of Law. She graduated with honors from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and with honors from New York University School of Law where she edited the Law Review.

Edward C. Butler

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

Ed is a broad-based Information Technology manager who has built and bought systems, managed staffs, lowered costs while improving quality, and consistently made dollar and time goals and for that experienced-based knowledge he is a critical advisor to UNIO as it evaluates and improves IT systems in companies it buys. Currently an independent consultant advising on large system installations between financial companies and their vendors, he was for 11 years, until his retirement in 2009, Director of Information Technology at W.P. Stewart & Co., Ltd. where he built and managed all aspects of that global asset management firm’s IT systems; and in earlier years worked in strategic, operational, consulting, communications, and management capacities in IT, most notably at Merrill Lynch (1986-95) where he led an IT staff of 200 in the Professional Securities Services Group where he was responsible, among other things, for reengineering and restructuring IT systems and support systems and migrating systems to new platforms within Merrill Lynch. Ed was educated at St. John’s School and the U.S. Army’s Electronics School.

Kevin K. Carton

Director, UNIO Holdings

A former senior practice partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers (New York), Kevin is to UNIO much more than his impressive visible balance sheet of assets: he is a force of energy, change, judgment, and continuing improvement – at UNIO and at the companies it intends to own. Retired in 2004 after 38 years at PW and then PwC, his most recent responsibility was to run the firm’s Global Entertainment & Media practice where he chaired its business development and thought leadership efforts worldwide. In addition to serving as lead engagement partner on the audits of some of the world’s largest companies, he has done large, varied mergers and acquisitions (up to $30 billion), post-merger integrations, and formation of corporate governance and risk management policies and systems. He has been Chair of the Audit Committees of Russell Reynolds and EMI Group where he has had key roles in matters such as CEO succession, Board composition and transformation, strategy formulation, and enterprise-wide risk management. His non-profit work has focused on Good Shepherd Services – on the President’s Council. His BS and MBA are from Rutgers University.

William R. Elfers

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

Bill has been a venture-capitalist and traditional business-builder who provides UNIO with the perspective and hands-on experience of BUYING enterprises, structuring them, expanding their markets and reach while improving the productivity of their assets. Currently Chairman of Illume Software, which he co-founded in 2009, and Managing Partner of Tower Capital Partners, an investment firm he founded in 2001, Bill spent 22 years at Fidelity Ventures, Ltd. and Fidelity Capital where he was, respectively, General Partner and Managing Director. In 1990, he founded Community Newspaper Company for Fidelity, serving as its chairman and CEO until its sale in 2001. Bill is an active participant in the non-profit community: as Trustee of both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Museum of Fine Arts, 15-year (retired) Treasurer of the Hotchkiss School and its current vice president of the board of trustees, Trustee of Newton-Wellesley Hospital, trustee of the Windsor School and former President of The Daily Princetonian. Educated at Princeton (BA) and Harvard (MBA), he lives in Wellesley, MA, with his wife, Deborah, and his two daughters.

Richard N. Foster

Director, UNIO Holdings

Dick, as a world leader in understanding what makes companies great, what leads to their deterioration, and what kind of culture a company requires to be where the future is going – has a mindset, developed most prominently at McKinsey where he was a Senior Partner and Director for 22 of 31 years, that is critical to UNIO’s quest to optimize companies. Now Managing Partner of Millbrook Management Group, Senior Faculty Fellow at Yale Teaching and a director of Athenahealth, Trust Company of the West (subsidiary of Société Général) and Chamber’s Street Advisory Group (advisors to Goldman Sachs), Dick spent his decades at McKinsey advising very large to mid-size companies on strategy, organization and operations – in fields including technology, chemicals, healthcare, and private equity. In the non-profit world, he is a director for the National Academies President’s Circle and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and was a director at the Council on Foreign Relations (2004-09). He received his BS, MS, and PhD from Yale University and is Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Peter A. Georgescu

Director, UNIO Holdings

Peter is one of a handful who deeply understands how to manage people businesses – a gift displayed over 37 years at Young & Rubicam, especially as its transformative CEO & Chairman (1993 – 2000). At Y & R, where he was the first chairman born outside the United States, Peter created a proprietary model for managing global brands, became an industry-wide champion for unified communications and value-based accountability and compensation programs, and took what had been a private company, public. Still Chairman Emeritus of Y & R, Peter has wide-ranging business involvements including as director of Levi Strauss & Co., International Flavors & Fragrances and Geeknet. Recently he has also been a director of Toys R Us, EMI and Briggs & Stratton. Beyond business, he has been a director of A Better Chance, Polytechnic University, is Vice-Chair, New York Presbyterian Hospital, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2006 he published his first book, The Sources of Success on why personal values and creativity drive 21st Century business success. He was educated at Princeton (BA), Stanford (MBA), and elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame (2001).

Leigh W. Hoagland

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

With 35 years in banking, both as a creator of financial solutions for high net worth, institutional, and corporate clients that have stood the test of time, and as Managing Director and Head of institutions like of Deutsche Bank’s (DB’s) US Private Bank – Leigh is the quintessence of the prudential, all-seasons, banker. Retired from DB in 2009 Leigh, is currently Managing Partner of Boxwood Strategic Advisors, LLC, a firm advising entrepreneurs on their capital structures and financing options. At DB he played a variety of active banking roles such as being a member of the Executive Management Committee of DB’s US Private Wealth Management decisions. In all those roles Leigh created innovative solutions for clients such as specialty structured financings for entrepreneurs and family business owners but built discipline into everything he did such as being responsible for creating DB’s global private banking risk assessment and credit management procedures. Prior to DB’s acquisition of Banker’s Trust (BT), he headed BT’s Private Bank Global Lending business and had extensive experience in wholesale and merchant banking activities. Leigh was educated at Princeton (BA) and Harvard (MBA).

David A. Jones

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

“Experience counts, but independent thinking counts even more” – that would describe the value that David brings to UNIO, with 35 years’ experience in private wealth management and trading as a senior executive at major banking and securities firms and in his current role as independent advisor and trustee for a number of wealthy families. Before retiring and starting his own firm in 2003, David was Managing Director and the senior client executive at Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management, advising wealthy families in all aspects of their financial lives; and in earlier days held senior positions in the Capital Markets at Bankers Trust, Citicorp (as CEO, Citicorp securities Markets, Inc.), and as Manager for Goldman Sachs fixed income trading in London. In other business capacities David has served as member of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee and as vice chairman of the Primary Dealers Committee. He has focused his non-profit on seniors, as past chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish HomeLifeCare System (New York) and as chairman of Fund for the Aged. He was educated at Princeton (BA) and Harvard (MBA).

John S. Lillard

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

John is a founder, investor, businessperson with very wide-ranging experience and intellect to match who combines the practical and visionary – abilities essential to UNIO’s future success. Recently chairman of Wintrust Financial Corp., a $12 billion bank in Lake Forest, John has a long history of founding, chairing, and building companies – notably Lake Forest Bank & Trust (Illinois) in 1990, and JMB institutional Realty (1978) which he sold to United Asset Management 16 years later – after beginning his career with an affiliate of Scudder, Stevens & Clark, the investment counseling firm of which he became the Illinois President and Chairman and director of the national firm. In other activities, John has been Trustee of trusts and mutual funds and served as long-time director of two highly successful, now established, growth companies – Cintas Corp. (1978-2000) and Stryker Corp. (1978 to the present). His many charitable activities span children’s causes, the environment, but especially music (e.g. Chicago Symphony) and education (e.g. Jefferson Scholars Foundation). He received his BA at University of Virginia, MBA at Xavier University and served as a line officer in the US Navy.

A.G. “Tony” Mantzavinos

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

Tony has had broad experience in the international financial world over many decades with one of his greatest assets being that he “knows how a bank should not be run.” At Citibank from 1964-1990, he ran several major, profitable businesses of the Bank – Financial Institutions, Asia, Europe/Africa/Middle East, and the World Corporations Group and after his retirement was, among other activities, a member of the Board of the monetary Policy Committee of Greece’s Central Bank. He has been involved with several non-profits, most notably the Onassis Foundation for over 20 years and the Asia Society when he resided in New York. He was educated at McGill University where he received his BA and MA. His home base is Athens.

Samuel L. “Tony” Milbank

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

In UNIO’s view, Tony is one of a relatively few who recognizes, through his successful management of four endowments over 20 years, that dynamic asset allocation and risk management is an imperative and understands directionally how to achieve it. He has held senior management positions over the past three decades at Milbank Roy, Lehman Brothers, and Salomon Brothers where he was active in interest rate and currency risk management and more recently involved in private equity investing and M & A advisory work. His notable outside activities include serving, since 1990, as Chairman of the Milbank Memorial Fund whose focus is providing evidence-based studies to improve healthcare policy-makers’ decision-making; and being Trustee and Treasurer of the International Center of Photography. He serves on the investment committees of two churches, a school, a club employee pension fund, two foundations and a museum.  Tony was educated at Columbia University (BA and MBA) and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business (MBA).

Satoru Murase

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

Satoru has a rare, in-depth understanding of the interrelationship between the US (where he lives and works) and Japan and the connection of both to China – a view of inestimable value to UNIO. A partner at Bingham McCutchen Murase LLP, Satoru has a broad corporate and international law practice, advising major Asian and Japanese corporations on corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, litigation, restructurings, cross-border investments, and, for media firms, IP and technology; and has represented international clients before various US Government agencies such as the International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce. Outside law itself, Satoru is a frequent speaker on international business issues to major corporations and accounting firms and is an active member of leading international bodies such as the Trilateral Commission and the China-US Symposium (Program on International Financial Systems). His non-profit work includes being a Director of the Japan Society, and Director Emeritus, the Children for Children Foundation. He was educated at Harvard (BA), Georgetown (JD), speaks fluent Japanese, and, as he puts it, “seeks to maintain his Chinese.”

Paul K. Napoli

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

Paul has been both an investor and senior business manager at US Trust and as such embodies one of the characteristics UNIO is building – people of high bandwidth that combine the mindset of the businessperson with the mindset of the investor. Paul spent the bulk of his career (1983-2007) at US Trust where he began as a professional investor, managing the firm’s first equity mutual fund and at his retirement was Vice Chairman, a member of the management leadership, and an authority on the direction of the wealth management industry; and before that was 11 years at The Bank of New York as a portfolio manager – all the while, no matter what positions he held, staying close to investing and to clients. His outside business activities have included active membership in the New York Society of Security Analysts, the Association for Investment Management and Research, and the Rockefeller University Trust and Estate Council. His non-profit work includes being a Trustee of St. Peter’s Prep and a Member of the Advisory Board of the Salvation Army. Paul received his undergraduate education at Boston College (BA) and his MBA at Columbia University.

Peter P. Nitze

Director, UNIO Holdings

Peter possesses in abundance the characteristic in a director that we at UNIO believe is the most critical: the capacity for general good business judgment in all seasons and circumstances – a characteristic all the more valuable, the more dislocated the times are in which we live. In 1970, Peter co-founded and is currently Chairman of Nitze, Stagen and Bedford Holding Company – both privately held companies that are primarily in the business of purchasing, developing, and managing real estate, while also investing in private equity and in a portfolio of liquid securities. In addition, he devotes significant time as a director of Charles Pratt & Co., LLC, a family financial management company. Peter’s career began at Shearman & Sterling (1960-70) where he became a partner and did litigation, general corporate work, and tax law. He has been a director of numerous companies including First Bank (New Haven), The Aspen Skiing Corporation, and American Exploration Company, Inc. In the charitable realm, he is Lifetime Trustee and member of the Finance Committee, the Professional Children’s School and Co-Chair of the Advisory Board, NYU Center for Global Affairs. He was educated at Harvard (BA) and at Harvard Law School (LLB).

Michael J.A. “Mike” Smith

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

MMike is a fiduciary through and through, not only because his career has been immersed in Trust departments of some of the country’s major banks, but because it is obvious when you meet him that Trust is a calling not just a profession. Currently a Fiduciary Consultant, Mike was until his retirement in 2009 Managing Director and the Senior Member of the Office of Chief Fiduciary at US Trust Bank of America Private Wealth Management where he was responsible for Trusts Assets Under Management of $220 billion, accounts from $1 to $250 million, and critical issues regarding compliance, risk management, client service, litigation, firm reputation, employee development, and major initiatives for improving client service. All these capabilities built on previous experience at Deutsche Bank, US Trust (when independent), Bankers Trust, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust. He has also been involved in trust-related associations: for example, as past President, Estate Planning Council of New York City. His non-profit affiliations include being Advisory Committee Member at Calvary Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering and the Archdiocese of New York. Mike was educated at Fordham (BA).

The Hon. John Train

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

As an investor, business founder, author, and public servant, John has “seen it all” and for that deep perspective adds enormous strength to our efforts at UNIO. He was founder of two investment counseling and financial planning firms, Train, Babcock Advisors and Montrose Advisors and is a director of numerous emerging markets funds. His business and investment activities are related to his many columns in publications like The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times to about half of the over 20 books he has written including Money Masters of Our Time, Investing and Managing Trusts Under the New Prudent Investor Rule: A Guide for Trustees, Investment Advisors & Lawyers, The Craft of Investing, and The Midas Touch: The Strategies That Have Made Warren Buffett ‘America’s Preeminent Investor.’ John has received part-time appointments from three Presidents of both major parties to act a director of government agencies dealing with Africa, Asia and Central Europe. He is also founder and chairman of the Train Foundation which annually awards the Civil Courage Prize “for steadfast resistance to evil at great personal risk”. John attended Harvard where he received his BA and MA degrees.

Mary Kate Wold

Executive Advisor, UNIO Holdings

Though an attorney for many years and, most recently, a senior finance and operating pharmaceutical executive; and now head of a major pension and benefits organization, Mary Kate’s outstanding characteristic has been her ability to troubleshoot and resolve seemingly intractable and complex corporate problems – critical to UNIO’s mission of “realizing its companies’ untapped potential”. She is currently President & CEO of the Church Pension Fund; a director at Unilife, a public medical device company on the Strategy (as chair) and Audit Committees; and was, until her retirement in 2009, Senior Vice President, Finance and a Principal Corporate Officer of Wyeth where she led the Treasury, Tax and Procurement departments through major performance-enhancing transformations, put in place an enterprise-wide risk management system, redesigned Wyeth’s global business outsourcing effort, and was involved in activities as diverse as financial reporting, investor relations, and supply chain management. Before Wyeth, Mary Kate was a partner at Shearman & Sterling and chaired its tax practice group focusing on international M & A and tax planning. She received her BA from Hamline University and JD from University of Michigan Law School.