Directors and Executive Officers |
Name | Age | Position |
Michael K. Paulk | 63 | President and Director |
Steven P. Ensz | 60 | Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer and Director |
Douglas B. MacGregor | 59 | Director |
James L. Ferraro | 55 | Director |
William Yuan | 51 | Director |
Significant Employees |
Name | Age | Position |
Richard O. Mulford | 59 | Manager of Operations |
Robert G. Snead | 73 | Exploitation Manager |
Each Director of our company has been elected to serve until our next annual meeting of stockholders and until his successor has been elected and qualified.
Michael K. Paulk: Mr. Paulk was elected President and Director of our company in July 2001. From October 1994 to January 2001, when it was sold to Chesapeake Energy Corporation, he was the President and a Director of Gothic Energy Corporation ("GEC"). GEC is neither a predecessor nor affiliate of either us or our subsidiary, Gothic, and there was no affiliation between Gothic and GEC prior to January 2001. GEC was engaged, until its acquisition by Chesapeake Energy Corporation in January 2001, in the acquisition, development, exploration and production of natural gas and oil. Mr. Paulk has been engaged in the oil and gas industry for more than 30 years.
Steven P. Ensz: Mr. Ensz has been Vice-President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer of our company since July 2001 and is responsible for our financial activities. From March 1998 to January 2001, he held a similar position with GEC. From July 1991 to February 1998, he was Vice-President, Finance of Anglo-Suisse, Inc., an oil and natural gas exploration and producing company. He has held various positions within the energy industry, including President of Waterford Energy, an independent oil and gas producer, for more than 30 years. He is a certified public accountant.
Douglas B. MacGregor: Most recently, MacGregor has been a partner in the Eyes of Texas Partners and found success as a private equity investor in several venture capital projects in a variety of businesses in the high-tech industry as well as real estate, energy, sports entertainment and biotechnical development.
As a Fellow in the Harvard Leadership Initiative, MacGregor worked as a part of Harvard Business School with a distinguished group of scholars to raise the level of leadership in millions of people. Prior to his Harvard Fellowship, MacGregor helped build the desktop and notebook business for Austin-based Dell Computer Corporation in the 1990s. As the vice president and general manager of five different divisions of the company from 1993-99, he was successful in doubling the revenue of several of his divisions after only one year under his direction. While at Dell, MacGregor spent two years as a member of the 15-member Executive Committee that managed the company’s operations.
In 1992, MacGregor joined Data General Corporation as their Vice President of Hardware. In his effort to make Data General a more efficient organization, MacGregor re-engineered the company’s development operation by incorporating a coherent product strategy and product planning process.
Before joining Data General, MacGregor founded Solbourne Computer Incorporated. Serving as the President and CEO, he started the Japanese-based company in a partnership with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Solbourne relocated to the United States in Colorado and started the clone market for UNIX workstations in America. MacGregor used a management strategy that combined the best of an American company with the strength of a major Japanese corporation to create a new market.
MacGregor received his doctorate in Information Science at Kyoto University in Japan after completing a five-year term as a microprocessor designer at Austin-based Motorola, Inc. He completed his master’s degree in computer science at the University Illinois in 1980 after obtaining his Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Maryland.
MacGregor has also established The MacGregor Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to support 12-step based drug and alcohol. In 1999, MacGregor endowed the Muroga-Faiman Professorship at the University of Illinois and has been a member of the United Way Alexis de Tocqueville Society. He is currently, a Foundation Board member for Western Colorado State University.
James L. Ferraro: Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, attorney Jim Ferraro has lived in South Florida since 1975. He obtained his Bachelor of Business Administration in 1978 and Master of Science in Accounting in 1979 from the University of Miami. In 1983, he earned his Juris Doctor from the University Of Miami School Of Law. He became a Certified Public Accountant in 1980.
Following his law school graduation, Jim represented athletes and worked for a civil litigation defense firm. In 1985, he decided he would rather advocate on behalf of plaintiffs and launched his own mass tort and wrongful death litigation practice. Jim was only two years out of law school when he first opened The Ferraro Law Firm in Miami, Florida on May 13, 1985. He later opened another law firm, Kelley & Ferraro, with partner Michael V. Kelley in Cleveland, Ohio on June 15, 1997. He has focused his law practices in the areas of asbestos litigation, products liability, catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death, environmental disasters, toxic torts, defective drugs, medical malpractice, family law, white-collar criminal defense, False Claims Act qui tam matters and tax whistle-blower claims. The Ferraro Law Firm also has offices in Washington, D.C. and New York City. The Washington, D.C. office specializes in corporate tax fraud and tax whistleblower cases.
Jim has successfully tried many cases that resulted in multi-million dollar jury verdicts. In 1995, he received the largest compensatory award in the state of Florida for a mesothelioma case. In 1997, he also had the highest compensatory jury verdict ever in the nation for a non-malignant asbestos case. Jim has negotiated settlements on behalf of tens of thousands of clients in his years of practice. His negotiated settlements are over a billion dollars. His firms now handle nearly 50,000 asbestos cases, and are known nationwide for their environmental toxic tort practice. In 1996, Jim made American legal history when he successfully went to trial against DuPont in the first case ever prosecuted against a chemical company for causing a birth defect. The trial was broadcast in its entirety on Court TV and garnered worldwide media attention. In 1997, because of that case, Jim was named one often national finalists for Trial Lawyer of the Year. He is a member of the Ohio, New York, Florida and Massachusetts Bars.
William Yuan Bill Yuan is the Chairman of Fortress Holdings Group, an Asia-based mixed-staged venture capital and investment holding company, and Co-Chairman of Auga Group, as well as its subsidiary, Guangzhou Kingstar Culture Media Investment Co Ltd. He also oversees Virgo Capital Holdings as Chairman of its merchant banking business which specializes in China's cable industry.
Mr. Yuan began his finance career at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in Mergers & Acquisitions, after attending Cornell University and Harvard University's JFK School of Economics and Government as a Mason Fellow. He then served a senior-vice president and co-manager at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney's Portfolio Management Corporation with dual functions as co-head of the Capital Markets Derivative team, and Chairman of the Technology Investment Management and Executive Policy Committee. Mr. Yuan then became founder and managing director of the Corporate Institutional Services Group at Merrill Lynch Asset Management. He was the President and Head of Merrill Lynch Asset Management Asia, and Chairman of Merrill Lynch Global Asset Allocation Committee, which had $488 billion under management. Simultaneously, Mr. Yuan was the Chief Investment Officer / Portfolio Manager of the $1.2 Billion AmerAsia Hedge Fund domiciled in Asia with special emphasis on technology, media / entertainment, and telecom (TMT).
Our Board of Directors has not adopted procedures by which security holders may recommend nominees to our Board of Directors.
Significant Employees: Richard O. Mulford: Mr. Mulford has been Manager of Operations since June 2001. From April 1995 to November 1998, he was employed as Operations Manager of GEC and from November 1998 to January 2001 he was employed as Vice President of Operations of GEC. He has been employed in the oil and natural gas industry since 1978.
Robert G. Snead: Mr. Snead has been our Exploitation Manager since June 2001 and served in the same position with GEC on a full-time consulting basis from April 1997 to January 2001. Between early 1994 and April 1997, he was employed as an independent geologist and from 1985 to 1994 was the Senior Vice-President/ Exploration Manager of LOGO, Inc., an oil and natural gas well operating company.