Panel E: Banking and Investments

Mr. Baeckelandt has more than 15 years of investment experience. Prior to joining Mercer Investment Consulting, Mr. Baeckelandt spent three years investing and raising capital for private placements in Chicago and the Pacific Rim. Earlier, Mr. Baeckelandt spent eight years at William Blair & Co., where he established the first foreign firm to receive a dual, investment advisory/broker dealer license, and where he managed the firm’s Japanese subsidiary. From 1988 to 1994, Mr. Baeckelandt sold investment management and employee benefit trust products for the predecessor banks of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Bank. Earlier, Mr. Baeckelandt worked as an interpreter and translator.

Mr. Baeckelandt holds an MA and a BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He has published and spoken extensively on Japanese and Chicago financial history (most recently on the historical origins of Japanese Corporate Governance and Chicago’s Financial Firsts). Mr. Baeckelandt holds and has held board positions with various non-profits and private firms in North America and Asia.
 

David A. Posner, Managing Partner, has been involved in direct and indirect private-equity investing since 1989. Before founding Cambridge Capital in 2001, he worked at Waud Capital Partners, a lower-middle market buyout firm, and at DN Partners, a middle-market merchant bank, where he completed transactions in a variety of industries, including consumer products, financial services, healthcare, industrial manufacturing and information technology. Mr. Posner was previously part of the executive management team of Citibank N.A. in Korea, as well as a former consultant at McKinsey & Company. He is a member of the membership committee for the Association of Corporation Growth (ACG) Chicago and is also the founder and past Chairman of the Chicago Association of Private Equity Executives (CAPEX), member of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) and former head instructor of martial arts programs at the East Bank Club.

Mr. Posner graduated with a BA summa cum laude in Economics and International Studies from the University of California Los Angeles. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Pakpoom, who co-founded The Quant Group in 1998, spent his first 5 work years as an engineer at UNOCAL and later Hewlett-Packard. He began his career in financial services in 1990 as an investment analyst at Smith New Court.

He later joined Nomura Research Institute Hong Kong Limited as its chief market strategist & head of research for the Thai market. Amongst other titles for the five years he spent at Nomura, Pakpoom was a senior vice president & head of investment banking at Nomura International Hong Kong Limited.

Pakpoom holds a Computer Engineering degree and an MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Pakpoom currently teaches Investment Banking and Finance in the MBA program at The Assumption University, Bangkok and is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer at graduate business schools at Harvard, Duke, The University of Chicago, and MIT. Pakpoom is a board member of The Board of Visitors of Duke University Fuqua School of Business and a director of Thailand’s National Pension Fund.

Dr. Leftwich moved to the United States in 1974 to attend graduate school at the University of Rochester, New York in 1974. He received a Masters in Science (Business Administration) and a Ph. D. in Applied Economics and Finance from the Graduate School of Management at the University of Rochester in 1980.

Dr. Leftwich joined the faculty of the Graduate School of Business (GSB) at the University of Chicago in 1979. He was granted tenure in 1984 and is now the Deputy Dean for the Faculty in the Graduate School of Business and the Heller and Fuji Bank Professor of Accounting and Finance. He teaches courses in investments, financial statement analysis and corporate finance to MBA students and Executive MBA students in the U.S., London and Singapore, and to executives in the Executive Education Programs of the GSB.

Dr. Leftwich has published in peer-reviewed academic journals in accounting and finance and has served on the editorial boards of several of those journals. He is currently a co-editor of the Journal of Accounting Research, a prestigious academic journal.
In addition to his teaching and research responsibilities, Dr. Leftwich was the Director of the Center for Research in Security Prices from 1985 until 1989 and Director of the Seminar on the Analysis of Securities Prices from 1985 until 1995.

Dr. Leftwich has received several awards for his research and teaching activities. He was awarded the AICPA Notable Contribution Award in 1984, the Distinguished Alumnus for Academic Achievement from the Graduate School of Management of the University of Rochester in 1985, and the McKinsey Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1994. He was also awarded a Marvin Bower Fellowship at the Harvard Business School in 1986-1987.

Dr. Leftwich has consulted to financial institutions and has taught finance and accounting courses in financial institutions’ training programs for both trainees and senior executives. He has also served as an expert witness in federal, state and local courts.

Dr. Leftwich and his family enjoy tennis, sailing, travel, and music. He is particularly fond of cricket, Vegemite and warm weather.