Team

Howard founded RK Equity Advisors in 2002 with Robert Friedland's Ivanhoe Mines and Ivanhoe Energy as his first clients. He has since overseen all aspects of the firm's development. From 2004-2008 Howard was also a Managing Director and registered representative of Broadband Capital Management helping raise capital for selective PIPE and SPAC transactions, including Capital Gold Corp, Inter-Citic Minerals, Services Acquisition/Jamba Juice, Endeavor Acquisition/American Apparel and Victory Acquisition Corp.

From 1997-2001 Howard led the institutional equity sales desk of Societe Generale focused on natural resource-oriented emerging markets in South Africa, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Greece, the Middle East/North Africa region and Japan. Howard also worked for two years as an investment banker in Budapest, Hungary and spent the first three years of his career from 1990 as a research analyst focused on privatization in Russia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic at Thomson Financial Securities Data.

Howard holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia University.

Bill joined RK Equity in 2004 and has been especially active in the Group's investor relations activities. He has organized dozens of roadshows in major and second-tier centers throughout North America and Europe. He has undertaken all aspects of RK Equity's outreach on behalf of clients, from message and presentation development to targeting, outreach and feedback. From 2004-2008, Bill was also a registered representative with Broadband Capital Management in New York.

Previously Bill worked with Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he sold Emerging European, Middle Eastern, and African equities to North American institutions. During that time, Goldman participated in primary market placements in South Africa, Turkey, Greece and Israel. In addition, he and his team organized non-deal roadshows for a diverse list of companies throughout the EMEA region.

Earlier in his career, he worked for Thomson Financial Services in New York and Fimat, Societe Generale's derivatives broker, in Paris. Bill holds a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Vanderbilt University and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University. Bill also speaks French fluently and is an accomplished Baritone singer.

Michael joined RK Equity Advisors in 2010 following a 20-year career in investment banking, private equity, and operations during which he was actively involved in about 40 companies worldwide, and associated with over $3 billion of deal value. He has been an investment committee member of six funds, and served actively on numerous boards.

From 1999-2009, Michael was president of ETF Group, a Swiss-based venture capital group, and Nexam Capital, with investments in eWork Exchange, Beast Financial Services, Commerce One, eFusion, Panacya, Hotspot FX and SDR Technologies. Michael also served as CEO of Portero, an eCommerce company in which Richemont was the largest investor.

From 1993-1999, Michael was Managing Director and founder of the international private equity business for Trust Company of the West, where he built joint venture offices in India, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. During this period, Michael was an investor in technology leaders including Niku, Neoforma, Mustek, Mosel Vitelic, O2Micro, and Worldwide Semiconductor.

From 1987-1993, Michael was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch and First Boston, during which time he led several significant telecommunications transactions, including TelMex, and natural resources transactions, including SQM. He was a founding member of Merrill Lynch's International Emerging Markets group, and from 1991 led the firm's equity investment banking activities for the Emerging Markets.

Michael holds a B.S. degree in Engineering from Northwestern University and an M.B.A. from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth. Michael grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and speaks Spanish fluently.

Before joining RK Equity Advisors in 2010, David spent 12 years working on over 80 M&A advisory mandates in the US, Asia, and Europe ranging from $5 million to $14 billion in purchase price.

From 2007 to 2010, David was Director of Mergers & Acquisitions at Barry Diller's IAC Corporation, a $6 billion public digital media conglomerate. During this time he closed 7 deals and led numerous strategic and business development efforts.

Prior to IAC, David spent ten years leading M&A advisory initiatives for large strategic and private equity investors including IBM, GE, UBM, Investcorp, Warburg Pincus, BRS, Apax, Cerberus, and Apollo. From 2000 to 2007 David was a senior member of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Transaction Services M&A advisory team based in New York and Hong Kong. He began his career at Arthur Andersen's audit, business and transaction advisory practices in New York in 1998.

David advised on NBC Universal's acquisition of Oxygen Media and minority investment in New Delhi Television Limited; Bain/CDR/Carlyle's acquisition of Home Depot's Supply business; Schering-Plough's acquisition of Organon Biosciences; Apax's acquisition of Thomson Learning from The Thomson Corporation; GS Capital Partners acquisition of ADESA; the sale of IBM's PC Business to Lenovo; and Sony's acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM).

David holds an accounting degree from Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business and is currently enrolled in Columbia University's Executive M.B.A. program.

Ari joined RK Equity Advisors in 2010 and will support the North American marketing for RK Equity's clients. From 2005-2010 Ari helped lead the Capital Markets group at Broadband Capital Management, raising capital from institutional investors, leading multi-city roadshows and working with issuers on structure. His focus included SPAC, Reverse Merger, PIPE and IPO transactions for both domestic and international issuers. Select transactions included: Services Acquisiton/Jamba Juice, Endeavor Acquisition/American Apparel, Lihua International, China Hydroelectric Corp and Examworks.

From 2001-2004 Ari played a key role in building out the business development, operations and sales effort of a start-up non-traditional advertising company BoxTop Media LLC based in New York.

Ari holds a B.A. in European History from Yeshiva University.

Paul merged a consultancy firm he formed in 2002 into RK Equity Advisors in 2004 and leads RK Equity's efforts in London, which have included investor relations and capital raising activity for private and public resource companies, including Ferrous Resources, Gulfsands Petroleum, Jinshan Gold Mines, Capital Gold, Western Lithium. In addition to his activities at RK Equity, Paul is non-Executive Chairman of Aisi Ukraine Realty, a closed-end real estate fund listed on AIM.

For the 15 years of 1988-2002, Paul held research, sales and management positions at Baring Securities, UBS and SG Securities in Hong Kong, Bangkok, and London, including country head of Thailand for UBS 1994-1998 and Special Projects Director/Emerging Markets Research at SG Securities in London from 1998-2001. Paul began his career as a journalist for The Economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review based in Seoul and subsequently London.

Paul holds a B.A. in History from Brown University and M. Phil. of Development Economics from Sussex University.

Simon joined RK Equity in the later part of 2009 and will be supporting RK's efforts in Europe.

For the past 3 years Simon helped build and run a Japanese Hedge Fund called Korokan. The strategy of the fund was to capture growth in Greater China through investment in Japanese listed equities. Prior to that he held senior sales and management positions at Morgan Stanley, UBS and Goldman Sachs in London, New York and Tokyo. His 23 year institutional sales career started at Nomura Securities in London covering the Japanese Equity Market. He was amongst the first group of foreign graduates that they hired.

Simon holds a BSc in Agricultural Economics from University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.