Larry Frakes
Larry A. Frakes, 58, has served as a director on our Board of Directors since April 2007. Mr. Frakes served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Everest National Insurance Company, which specializes in primary program insurance opportunities written through underwriting managers and is a subsidiary of Everest Re Group, Ltd. (NYSE:RE), from June 2001 through January 2007 and as President from June 1997 through June 2001. From November 1996 through June 1997, Mr. Frakes served as an Executive Vice President of Everest National Insurance Company. During his tenure at Everest National Insurance Company, he also served as an officer and director of various affiliated companies. Prior to joining Everest National Insurance Company in 1996, Mr. Frakes served as Senior Vice President and Director of Empire Insurance Group from November 1991 through November 1996. From 1970 through 1991, Mr. Frakes held various positions with CIGNA. Mr. Frakes received a B.S. in Business Administration from Northern Kentucky University in 1976.
Johan Gedda
Johan Gedda was raised in Gothenburg, Sweden. He attended M.I.T. (B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering/Thermodynamics), and Harvard Business School (M.B.A. 1988).
After graduation from engineering school, Mr. Gedda joined Royal Dutch Petroleum in The Hague, the Netherlands, later posted to Gabon, West Africa for 4 years of onshore and offshore exploration and production project management. Following business school Mr. Gedda was involved in several private and public software companies serving as COO, Country Manager and President. He successfully bought and sold a number of software businesses. Mr. Gedda is a co-founder of Rocket Software, a leading enterprise infrastructure software vendor where he continues to manage the company's M&A activities, completing over 25 acquisitions over the last decade. In addition to his involvement with Rocket, in the 1990's Johan was a partner with the Vitol Group of Companies, a privately held Swiss oil trading partnership, managing the partnership's London based investment portfolio.
Seth Gersch
Seth J. Gersch previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of Fox Paine.
He serves on the Board of Directors of Global Indemnity plc (NASDAQ: GBLI), Penhaligon’s Holdings (Cayman) Ltd., L’Artisan Parfumeur Holdings (Cayman) Ltd., and Erno Laszlo Holdings (Cayman) Ltd.
Prior to joining Fox Paine, in addition to other positions, Mr. Gersch was a Partner and Managing Director at Montgomery Securities which subsequently became Banc of America Securities. He was responsible for all aspects of the day-to-day operating functions of Montgomery and in 1995 Mr. Gersch founded the BrokerDealer Services Division of Banc of America Securities where he served as President and CEO. This division provided outsourced services to a select group of securities firms located throughout the United States
Mr. Gersch has served as a member of the Regional Firms Advisory Committee to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange and on the Securities Industry Association's Regional Firms Committee and Operations Committee.
Mr. Gersch is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco 49ers Foundation, the charitable arm of the San Francisco 49ers football organization and has served as a Board member of many charitable community organizations. He was raised in Brooklyn, New York and is a graduate of Pace University.
James R. Kroner
Mr. Kroner retired in December 2005 as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd. He served as a member of the firm’s executive committee and on the company's Board of Directors
Mr. Kroner joined Endurance from the private equity firm of Fox Paine & Company where he was a Managing Director.
From 1988 to 1999, with the exception of his tenure at American Re, Mr. Kroner was a senior investment banker focused on the industry. He served as a Managing Director and co-head of Insurance investment Banking in the Americas for JP Morgan & Co. He has also served as a Managing Director at Salomon Smith Barney focused on Insurance Mergers & Acquisitions and as a Director in the Financial Institutions Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Merrill Lynch & Co.
From 1995 to 1997, Mr. Kroner served as Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and member of the executive committee of American Re Corporation. He headed American Re’s direct investment function and managed a portfolio of $110 million in private equity investments in seven insurance companies.
Prior to becoming an investment banker, Mr. Kroner was an Assistant Vice President in the Insurance Ratings Group at Standard & Poor's focused on the property casualty industry. At S&P, he won the McGraw Hill Editorial Excellence Award for a series of analyses of the property/casualty industry.
He currently serves as a member of the Board of the Board of Directors of Global Indemnity PLC where he chairs the investment committee and is a member of the Audit and Nominating & Governance Committees. He also previously served on the Board of Directors of Terra Industries Inc., serving on the Audit Committee.
Mr. Kroner holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Northwestern University and Masters in Management from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
Mr. Kroner currently serves on the Board of Directors of Terra Industries Inc., where he serves on the Audit Committee and United America Indemnity Ltd., where he serves as Chairman of the Investment and 162 (M) committees and as a member of the Audit Committee. He previously served on the Boards of Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd., WJ Communications Inc., and American Reinsurance Company.
He received a B.A. in International Relations from Northwestern University and a Masters in Management from Northwestern’s Kellogg School.
Mr. Kroner is 49 years old and raised in Salinas, California.
Raymond Panza
Mr. Panza serves on the Paradigm board of directors and is Chairman of the Audit Committee. With a broad background in diverse industries, Mr. Panza possesses recognized financial expertise, proven operational leadership and extensive transactional skills, including global M&A experience. From August 2004 to December 2009, Mr. Panza served as Executive Vice President, Corporate Operations, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary of SPSS Inc., a global predictive analytics company that was acquired by International Business Machines Corporation in 2009. From 2000 to 2004, Mr. Panza was the Vice President, Finance of Thomson, a provider of technology service solutions for integrated media and entertainment companies. Prior to 2000, Mr. Panza held executive positions with a number of companies, including Ameritech Corporation, DQE RKO (broadcasting, motion pictures and bottlers), Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gulf Oil Corporation. Mr. Panza is a certified public accountant and holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in accounting from The Pennsylvania State University.
Eldad Weiss
Mr. Weiss is a co- founder and a Vice- chairman of Basilica Estate Development, a Cyprus based real-estate developer specializing in high-grade building projects in central Moscow, leading the company through rapid expansion, to result in an over 60,000 SQM of prime assets under development, funded through two rounds of equity investment totaling $47million and subsequent $20 million debt facilities from Bank of Austria.
Mr. Weiss is a founder and vice chairman of Paradigm, and served as its Chief Executive Officer for 18 years, since its inception in 1988. Paradigm, a $200M annual turn–over oilfield exploration and production technologies software company, based in the Cayman Islands. Under his leadership, Paradigm has grown from a small boutique technology player into a full-solution powerhouse, serving all the major oil and gas producing provinces in the world.
Mr. Weiss led Paradigm through ten strategic acquisitions as well as several financing rounds, including a NASDAQ IPO, a $100 million Going Private transaction with Fox Paine, and subsequent $40 million debt facilities from Bank of Scotland.
Previously, Mr. Weiss served as Senior Vice-President of Grant-Tensor Geophysical Corporation, a Houston-based oilfield services company (today a division of Geokinetics Inc - GOK ), where he headed its geoscience software division. From 2003 till February 2007 Mr. Weiss served as board member of Enegistics (http://www.energistics.org) a global membership-sponsored consortium for the development, deployment and maintenance of the upstream oil& gas standards. Mr. Weiss is a board member of Open Spirit a Houston based oil& gas data interoperability middleware provider.
As a business leader and industry visionary, Mr. Weiss's articles and interviews were published frequently in trade magazines and the business press, and he has served as keynote speaker at industry events. Mr. Weiss has been awarded, in 2002, the prestigious E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year award for the high-tech segment. Mr. Weiss holds a Bachelors and a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering.