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BUSINESS ADVISORY BOARD
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Mr. W. Ian Laird is a a member of the JDC business advisory board. Ian has almost 30 years of finance experience as a lawyer, an investment banker and private equity investor. Ian is currently a co-founder and partner at American Working Capital, a merchant banking firm that provides investment banking services and capital to middle market private companies. Until 2009, he was a principal of The Yucaipa Companies LLC, a multibillion dollar investment firm, where he was responsible for sourcing, structuring and executing private equity investments. Previously, he was a managing director at Duff & Phelps, an international investment banking firm, where he focused primarily on middle market mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance. From 1990 to 2003, Ian was the president and founder of Old Mill Partners, Inc. a merchant banking firm that specialized in advising on large-scale, non-recourse project financings in alternative energy, waste recovery, pulp and paper, infrastructure and mining, raising more than $1 billion in capital from institutional investors. The firm also specialized in arranging growth capital for environmental and information technology companies from both strategic investors and venture capital firms. Ian has extensive experience advising companies utilizing innovative technologies. In the power sector, he arranged financing for independent power producers using early cogeneration, solar, biomass and gasification technologies. In the industrial sector, he advised companies utilizing new process technologies across a range of industries, including a $230 million financing for Great Lakes Pulp and Fiber, the most technologically advanced deinked pulp plant in the world that processes mixed office waste paper into premium grade pulp, and a $60 million financing for Santee River, the first large scale cryogenic waste rubber reprocessing facility. From 1986 to 1992, he was a co-founder, officer and director of the Toll Road Corporation of Virginia that developed the Dulles Greenway, the first modern privately financed toll road in the United States which was recently sold to Macquarie for $1 billion.
From 1985 to 1989, Ian was head of investment banking at J. J. Lowrey & Co., where he specialized in advising clients in the alternative energy and environmental technology sectors. He was also the president and co-founder of First Principal Corporation, an affiliated management buyout firm, which sponsored management buyouts of industrial companies. During this period, he led the acquisition of Argo-Tech Corporation, the leading manufacturer of fuel pumps for jet engines, from TRW Inc. in a $150 million management buyout.
Ian started his career as an attorney at Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft. He received his B.A. with honors from Middlebury College and his J.D. from Washington & Lee University Law School where he was a member of the law review.
Mr. Malcolm S. Scott is a member of the JDC advisory board. He is a graduate of Engineering Chemistry from Queens University in Kingston Ontario.
While in Canada he was employed by Noranda Mines Ltd. After serving as manager of Noranda's fertilizer operations, Mr. Scott was appointed President of Noranda Phosphate Inc. and Central Canada Potash, a joint venture with CF Industries, positions which he held concurrently.
In 1976 Mr. Scott transferred to Florida with CF Industries where he was Vice President of the Florida Region with overall responsibility for the company's chemical plants in Bartow and Plant City, the Hardee County Phosphate Mine and CF's port facilities in Tampa.
In 1991 following the acquisition of US Agri-Chemicals by Sinochem Beijing, Mr. Scott was employed as President of that company, a position which he held for 13 years. He has over 30 years experience in Florida Phosphate and related industries and has served several terms on the boards of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the US Fertilizer Institute and the Florida Phosphate Council.
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Mr. Devin Megy: Member of the Business Advisory Board. Mr. Megy has 15 years of business development and business management experience. Mr. Megy started his career in the early 1990s as an electrical engineer at National Semiconductor. During the mid 1990s, Mr. Megy worked in product management positions at Advanced Micro Devices and at Intel Corporation. In the late 1990s, Mr. Megy was a Business Development Manager at Intel Capital, the corporate business development group at Intel Corporation. At Intel Capital, he worked on equity investments in technology companies and on corporate acquisitions as a member of the Mergers and Acquisitions team. Following his work at Intel, Mr. Megy was a Director of Business Development at a wireless data services provider and later was a financial consultant at Merrill Lynch, where he focused on providing financial services to businesses.
From 2003-2006, Mr. Megy was President of Jamegy, Inc., where he made important changes to the management team and implemented changes in sales strategy and in operations to increase sales and earnings and to position the company for sustainable growth. During his tenure managing the company, sales increased by a factor of five and earnings increased by more than a factor of ten. During his last year at the company, he engaged an investment bank to assist with the marketing and sale of the company while he managed internal efforts to prepare the company for sale. Interest in the company from potential acquirers was strong. At the end of 2006, the company was sold to a private equity firm.
Mr. Megy is currently focused on making investments in small private ventures as an angel investor. He holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Oregon State University, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
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