Executive Management Bios

Caspar Hobbs

CEO and Co-Founder

Caspar Hobbs is CEO of The Mergermarket Group, overseeing strategy, expansion, sales & marketing and general management of the business. Prior to this he executed the MBO of a financial data business of which he was co-founder. Previously he was a career officer in the British Army. He was educated at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and INSEAD.

Email Caspar: caspar.hobbs@mergermarket.com

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Charlie Welsh

Group Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder

Charlie has been covering exclusively European mergers and acquisitions since 1995. His background includes being the senior M&A correspondent at Financial News and co-founder of its M&A monitoring business. He has also been Editor of Corporate Money and has worked at Newsweek in New York. He graduated from the London School of Economics in 1992 and attained an MIA from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in 1994.

Email Charlie: charlie.welsh@mergermarket.com

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Gawn Rowan Hamilton

CFO and Co-Founder

With over five years experience as a financial advisor at Schroders and before then at Ernst & Young Corporate Finance, Gawn is responsible for all M&A data at mergermarket. He graduated from Cambridge University with a law degree in 1991. He has successfully launched two small businesses: a music promotion and a holiday let business.

Email Gawn: gawn.rowanhamilton@mergermarket.com

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Dawid Rheeder

Director of Operations - Asia-Pacific

Dawid read Law at the University of Pretoria, attaining his LLB in 1987. Having completed the set-up and first two years of mergermarket's US operations in New York, he is now heading up the operations of the Asia-Pacific division based in Hong Kong. Before joining mergermarket, he worked as strategic head of a London B2B marketing agency, Database UK, following a three year period as co-founder and director in charge of finance and strategic development in Cape Town projects and investment group, Capeshore IM. Prior to that, he was the youngest regional manager at a top-three South African investment and real estate group, Seeff Trust.

Email Dawid: dawid.rheeder@mergermarket.com

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Hamilton Matthews

Head of Sales, Europe

Hamilton joined mergermarket in August 2001 and has 12 years of experience in Financial Information, including 5 years at Thomson Financial where he was European Sales Manager for the Investment Banking and Capital Markets division. He is responsible for furthering The Mergermarket Group's electronic product penetration into the European market. Hamilton's team introduces mergermarket, Debtwire, dealReporter and Wealthmonitor to a broad network of clients throughout Europe. They can also consult on developing customized solutions for clients and assist with their business development process.

Email Hamilton: hm@mergermarket.com

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Marc Katz

Head of Sales, Americas

Marc Katz joined mergermarket in October 2003 as the Head of Sales for North America with over 14 years of experience in the financial services marketplace. Prior to joining mergermarket, he served as Senior Vice President of Sales for the Banking & Brokerage group at Thomson Financial. Marc's team at Thomson Financial was responsible for leading the sales efforts servicing the Investment Banking, Advisory, Consulting, Legal, and Academic sectors. Marc is now responsible for introducing mergermarket to the American client base with a focus on establishing relationships, developing customized solutions for clients, and helping clients with their origination process.

Email Marc: marc.katz@mergermarket.com

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Christopher Brown

Head of Sales, Asia-Pacific

Christopher Brown joined mergermarket in July 2005 as the Head of Sales for Asia-Pacific with over 8 years of experience in the financial services marketplace. Prior to joining mergermarket, he served as Head of Sales, Asia-Pacific for the Research division at Reuters where his team was responsible for leading the sales efforts servicing the Investment Banking, Equities and Asset Management sectors. Christopher is now responsible for introducing mergermarket to the Asian client base with a focus on establishing relationships, and helping clients with their origination process.

Email Christopher: christopher.brown@mergermarket.com

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Simon Anam

Managing Director, Remark

Simon runs Remark, mergermarket's market research and publications division. He joined the company in January 2000 as an Account Manager with mergermarket, where he handled some of the firm's leading private equity clients, investment banks, and law firms. Previously he was a financial services researcher with Egon Zehnder International. He graduated from Cambridge University with an English degree in 1997.

Email Simon: simon.anam@mergermarket.com

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Erik Wickman

Head of North American Sales, Remark

Erik joined mergermarket in March 2005 as the Head of North American Sales for Remark. Erik has over ten years sales and sales management experience, most recently working as the Director of Technology and Content Licensing for Money.net Business Solutions, a provider of financial software. Previously he was with Forrester Research and prior to that with the Seybold division of Ziff-Davis/Key3Media Events. Erik graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in Political Science and Economics.

Email Erik: erik.wickman@mergermarket.com

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Jonny Shingles

Head of Customer Relationship Management

Jonny heads up the CRM teams in Europe, USA and Asia-Pacific with responsibility for ensuring clients maximise their investment in mergermarket. He joined mergermarket after completing an MBA at London Business School. Prior to the MBA he spent 10 years flying fast jets in the Royal Air Force, during which time he was an aerobatic display pilot and trained fast jet instructors. Jonny is responsible for service management and strategic initiatives to ensure mergermarket remains a completely customer focused organization.

Email Jonny: jonny.shingles@mergermarket.com

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Marc Talbot

Head of Customer Relationship Management, Europe

Marc joined mergermarket in July 2000, where he initially spent a year as a researcher before moving to the CRM team. Prior to this he gained a degree in Accountancy and Finance from Hull University. Marc is responsible for customer service and the training & development of The Mergermarket Group's European, Middle Eastern and African clients.

Email Marc: marc.talbot@mergermarket.com

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Pablo Lopez

Head of Customer Relationship Management, Americas

Pablo is responsible for customer service, training and development of mergermarket's American clients. He joined mergermarket in October 2005, where he spent 18 months as the CRM executive for the Italian, Turkish and Greek clients. Prior to this he worked as a financial journalist for an online publication covering the Institutional Investment markets. Pablo graduated from Hull University in 2004 with a joint degree in Italian and Spanish.

Email Pablo: pablo.lopez@mergermarket.com

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Andre Sawyer

Editor, mergermarket Europe

Andre joined mergermarket in March 2000 and in addition to his editorial duties covers the healthcare sector. He has appeared on CNBC and CNN both as a sector specialist in healthcare and as a commentator on general M&A trends. Prior to joining the company, he spent four years reading and teaching economics and international business. He holds an MSc in International Business from the Manchester School of Management, UMIST.

Email Andre: andre.sawyer@mergermarket.com

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Abigail Roberts

Editor, mergermarket Americas

Abigail is based in New York and runs the mergermarket Americas editorial team. She joined mergermarket in 2003 starting as a reporter covering the consumer and media sectors, before being made Assistant Editor of mergermarket's North American product. Prior to joining the company, she was an associate at the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where she worked on a variety of mergers and acquisitions-related legal projects. She holds a JD from Georgetown Law School and a BA from Bard College.

Email Abby: abigail.roberts@mergermarket.com

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Catherine Raisig

Editor, mergermarket Asia-Pacific

Catherine is based in Hong Kong and runs the Asia-Pacific editorial team. She joined mergermarket in April 2002 starting as a reporter covering the German market, before being made News Editor of mergermarket's European product. She was trained as a journalist by the National Council for the Training of Journalists and holds a BA in International Relations with Development Studies from Sussex University.

Email Catherine: catherine.raisig@mergermarket.com

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Greg Ford

Editor, dealReporter and Group Deputy Editor

Greg has six years experience in business journalism and has served as telecoms reporter and then news editor of mergermarket. Since 2003 he has led the group's coverage of public deals as editor of dealReporter. He appears regularly on CNN and CNBC and was nominated Journalist of the Year for breaking news by the BVCA in 2004. Greg trained as a journalist with Euromoney in 1999 and before that spent five years consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Greg studied law at the University of London (LLB 1993 UCL).

Email Greg: greg.ford@mergermarket.com

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Elias Latsis

Head of Research

Elias joined mergermarket in February 2003 and is currently responsible for overseeing the quality and product development of the deals database, having initially worked as a Merger Arbitrage Analyst for the dealReporter team. Elias previously worked at Morgan Stanley covering mergers and acquisitions and equity capital markets. He graduated from Imperial College London with an MSc in Finance and from University College London with a BEng in Mechanical Engineering.

Email Elias: elias.latsis@mergermarket.com

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Yoke Chian Wong

Head of Product Development

Yoke Chian joined Mergermarket in June 2005 and now runs the Product Development team. She started her career as a programmer and has been in the online information industry for almost 10 years. She first came to London in 1997 as a web developer for Financial Times Electronic Publishing and then went on to join LexisNexis Asia in 2000 in charge of their Asia Enterprise Solutions team, transferring to London in 2002 as a Global Product Manager for LexisNexis.

Email Yoke Chian: yokechian.wong@mergermarket.com

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Mark Lissaman

CTO

Mark joined mergermarket in July 2000. After graduating from Newcastle University in 1996, Mark went on to study for a Masters in Information Systems at Christ Church College Canterbury, graduating in 1998. Before joining the company, Mark worked for 2 years at Blue Curve, an internet consultancy. While there he worked and managed database driven web projects including: subscription based, content driven, websites; insurance call centre (claims tracking and workflow) groupware; and intranet "best practice" consultancy.

Email Mark: mark.lissaman@mergermarket.com

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Jina Kwon

Head of Marketing

Jina is responsible for marketing across The Mergermarket Group. Jina initially joined mergermarket working in Customer Relationship Management, developing the initial client base for mergermarket North America. From there she moved over to marketing, managing the marketing effort for the Americas, and then was anointed to direct the marketing effort globally. Jina graduated from Cornell University where she studied economics and history.

Email Jina: jina.kwon@mergermarket.com

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Hannah Bagshawe

Head of Communications EMEA

Hannah is based in London and is responsible for all Communications/PR in Europe, the Middle East & Africa, across The Mergermarket Group. She worked for several investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Societe Generale before joining mergermarket in August 2006. Hannah holds an MA in English Literature and French from The University of Edinburgh.

Email Hannah: hannah.bagshawe@mergermarket.com

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Latest Feature

Alberta oil and gas juniors face a buyer's market, industry sources and bankers say25 June 2008

by Divya Balji, Cheryl Thompson and Heather West

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Upcoming Events

Japanese Outbound Investment Forum

28 October 2008, Four Seasons Hotel Chinzan-so, Tokyo, Japan

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New Publications

M&A in Renewable Energy

A thought leadership publication from Landsbanki in association with mergermarket.

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New Subscriptions

If you would like to subscribe to the mergermarket service or to inquire about a trial, please contact:

Americas-Marc Katz
tel: +1 212-686-5716

Europe-Hamilton Matthews
tel: +44 (0)20 7059 6105

Asia-Pacific-Christopher Brown
tel: +852 2158 9730