Stefano Bacci is a Partner and Ambienta’s ESG Manager, and is based in London. He joined Ambienta in 2012 and has been involved in a number of transactions including Tower Light, Calucem, Oskar Nolte and IP Cleaning.

Prior to joining Ambienta, he was a Partner at Palamon Capital Partners (London) for nine years and spent eight years at the Boston Consulting Group (Milan, Stockholm, Helsinki), focusing on European industrial companies. He started his career at BASF in Basle, first in the R&D division and eventually in the stabilisation of recycled plastics.

Stefano graduated from Politecnico University of Milan with a degree in Chemical Engineering and holds an MBA from the Helsinki School of Economics and MIT in Boston. He also completed Postgraduate studies in Physical Chemistry at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.

Stafano speaks Italian (native), English (fluent) and German (fluent).

Richard Bernstein is a director of the Manager and a member of the Investment Adviser. He is also chief executive of Eurovestech, a pan-European development capital fund focused on high technology enterprises.

Véronique is Head of Corporate Governance at CIAM, a European Event Driven & Activist investment management firm. Over the last five years, the funds managed by CIAM have been involved in a number of engaged situations, the most public ones being Club Med and Euro Disney, which each time addressed poor corporate governance practices.

Véronique has a professional experience of more than sixteen years in Finance. She is member of the Corporate Governance Committee of the French Asset Management Association. Prior to joining CIAM, Véronique worked eight years at Amundi Asset Management, the European leader in Asset Management, mainly as a Corporate Governance Expert. She was in charge of corporate governance issues, including shareholder dialogue and proxy voting.

Prior to this role, she worked as a corporate governance analyst at UBS Asset Management and CCR Asset Management. She initiated the creation of first SRI fund in France with focus on Governance issue.

Véronique holds a MBA in Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from ICN Business School & EM Strasbourg Business School.

Arthur B. Crozier is Chairman of Innisfree M&A Incorporated of New York and of Lake Isle M&A Incorporated, Innisfree’s wholly-owned UK subsidiary.

Mr. Crozier’s practice includes the representation of U.S. and international clients in a wide variety of transactions and proxy contests, as well as annual and special meetings. In addition, he counsels an international roster of clients on corporate governance, shareholder engagement and executive compensation issues.

Recent high profile situations he has worked on include: Dell Technologies in connection with the conversion of its Class V common stock; Cigna Corporation in its acquisition of Express Scripts Holding Co, despite opposition by Carl Icahn; The Walt Disney Company in its acquisition of Twenty-First Century Fox; Automatic Data Processing (ADP) in its successful proxy contest against Pershing Square Capital Management; Deckers Brands in its successful proxy contest against Marcato Capital Management; Taubman Centers, Inc. in its successful proxy contest against Land and Buildings Investment Management; Tesla Motors in its acquisition of SolarCity; Chicos FAS in its successful proxy fight against Barington Capital; the successful defense at DuPont against the proxy contest waged by Trian Partners; the successful defense at Allergan against the unsolicited offer by Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Pershing Square Capital Management; the acquisition of Dell Inc. by Michael Dell and Silver Lake Management, despite opposition by Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management; and the successful defense at Agrium against JANA Partners’ proxy contest.

Mr. Crozier has written numerous articles and spoken extensively on the subjects of corporate governance, shareholder engagement, proxy contests, hedge fund activism, executive compensation and international voting practices.

He received his B.A. degree from the College of the Holy Cross and his J.D. degree from Boston College Law School.

He is a member of the National Investor Relations Institute, the International Bar Association, the Advisory Board for the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, and the Society for Corporate Governance; as well as a Director of the Boy Scouts of America, Greater New York Councils and a Trustee of The Commonwealth Charitable Fund, Inc.

Tom advises publicly traded companies and private organizations on strategic communications matters across a broad range of industries and sectors all around the world. During his 30+ years with Kekst CNC, he has worked with the boards and senior leadership of numerous corporations and institutions in the areas of crisis mergers & acquisitions, shareholder activism & corporate governance; investor relations, crisis communications, and litigation & regulatory support.

In 2018 alone, Kekst CNC represented companies in activist defense or preparation with combined market caps of $1 trillion. And over the years, Tom has advised companies in campaigns involving virtually all of the major shareholder activists multiple times.

Prior to joining Kekst, Tom was a Fulbright Scholar at the Universität Konstanz in Constance, Germany. He also attended the Universität Bonn in Bonn, Germany.

He holds a B.A, two M.A.’s, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida in Gainesville. He is fluent in German.

Bruce Duguid is Head of Stewardship at Hermes Equity Ownership Services, providing stewardship services to over 40 asset owner and manager clients and representing more than $450B of assets. As well as overseeing the team of engagement professionals, Bruce leads engagements with environmentally-exposed companies across the Oil and Gas, Mining, and Utilities sectors. Prior to joining Hermes, he was Head of Sustainability at the UK Green Investment Bank, where he spent four years working on the project to establish the bank. This followed a variety of corporate strategy roles, including as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group.

Ertan Enginalev is the founder and CEO of WSD Capital Management, a value-oriented investment firm that commits people, capital, and fortitude to help address the critical issues facing public companies. Founded in 2014, WSD is the first activist investor and the first global hedge fund management firm in Turkey. Mr. Enginalev is known for his unique position in the investment profession built on a distinctive process of developing outstanding assets into outstanding companies through “benevolent hostility”. He has 20 years of experience in the financial markets, with particular emphasis on mergers, acquisitions and special situation equities. Mr. Enginalev received a MBA and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Miami’s School of Business.

Gianluca A. Ferrari head of shareholder activism at Shareholder Value Management AG (“SVM”), an employee owned investment company based in Frankfurt, Germany. SVM advises over €3bn in AUM through various investment vehicles, allocating capital under a value-oriented framework and frequently engaging with portfolio companies’ management teams to improve shareholder returns.

Gianluca also sits on the board of directors of Retelit SpA and BE-TSE, two publicly traded portfolio companies of SVM in Italy.

James is a long-term relationship value investor focused on publicly quoted European companies with improvement potential.  He has 27 years of experience working with private equity and corporate boards, management teams and shareholders.   Most recently, he was Co-Founder of Blackmoor Investment Partners, a European mid-cap relationship investing firm.  Previously, he was Founding Partner of NuOrion Partners, an investment firm that partnered with best-in-class managers to effect change at corporate fallen angels.  Prior, James was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley in London, responsible for pan-European coverage of the firm’s largest private equity clients.  He was also a Managing Director in JP Morgan’s Financial Sponsors Group in New York, a Managing Director and Founding Member of UBS’ Financial Sponsors and Leveraged Finance Group and an investment professional at Investcorp, a leading global private equity firm.

James received a MBA from the Harvard Business School and a dual BA degree with Honors in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Simon Kerr is an experienced executive in the asset management business with some media interests. He has worked in portfolio management and risk management for hedge funds, a pension fund and an insurance company. His consultancy does strategic level projects for hedge fund businesses on risk management, portfolio construction and marketing.

He has written two books and runs a website about hedge funds (www.hedgefundinsight.org). He has worked with the Risk Management Laboratory of Imperial College London on hedge fund related projects, and is a Visiting Fellow at the Business School of South Bank University. He teaches on Henley Business School’s Executive Programmes.

Harald Kinzler is a specialist for complex ECM and cross-border M&A transactions as well as dual-track processes, investor relations, shareholder activism and financial communications.

Harald spent 15 years in the investment banking industry in London and New York, starting as an economist at Lehman Brothers and moving through a range of roles in the equities business. He later worked as Head of Corporate Broking at Berenberg Bank in London. Harald holds MSc Economics degrees from the University of Saarbrücken and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ele is a partner at Schulte Roth & Zabel, where he is co-chair of the firm’s global Shareholder Activism Group and serves as a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. He practices in the areas of shareholder activism, mergers and acquisitions, securities law and regulatory compliance. He represents activists, investment banks and companies in matters ranging from corporate governance and control to proxy contests and defensive strategies. His recent representations have included representing Trian Fund Management, Elliott Management in Akamai Technologies, Hess Corp and Marathon Petroleum, Jana Partners in Jack in the Box, Whole Foods, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Tiffany, Greenlight Capital in General Motors, Cevian Capital in Autoliv, ABB and LM Ericsson, Starboard Value in Stewart Title, Blue Harbour in Investors Bancorp, venBio Select Advisor in Immunomedics, Saba Capital in First Trust, Oasis Capital in Stratus Properties, Altimeter Capital Management in United Continental Holding, SRS Investment Management in Avis Budget Group, Clinton Group in Campus Crest Communities, and Anchorage in connection with board representation at Houghton Mifflin. Ele is also well known for his expertise since the early 1990s in the development and implementation of alternative investment structures for private equity investments and, specifically, the structuring and negotiating of private investments in public equity, or PIPEs, and related products including registered direct offerings, convertible 144A offerings, reverse mergers, equity lines and SPACs. Ele works on numerous activist campaigns and PIPE or PIPE market-related transactions every year for some of the largest private investment groups and investment banks in the United States and abroad.

In addition, Ele advises on initial public offerings and secondary offerings, venture capital financing, and indenture defaults and interpretation, and he counsels clients in regulatory areas including material, non-public information, short selling, Sections 13 and 16, Rule 144, insider trading and Regulation M/Rule 105.

Ele has become a leading source for business journalists and business news organizations, and a much sought-after speaker by sponsors of shareholder activism, PIPEs and regulatory conferences. Ele has served as a moderator and speaker at numerous conferences and events addressing shareholder activism, regulatory and reporting issues, PIPEs, M&A deals, the capital markets and other topics of interest to the alternative investment industry. He contributed to The Activist Investing Annual Review 2018 (produced by Activist Insight in association with SRZ) and the 2018 Shareholder Activism Insight report (published by SRZ in association with Activist Insight and Okapi Partners) and authored the “Transaction Reporting” chapter in Investment Management: Law and Practice (published by Oxford University Press) covering Schedules 13D and 13G and Section 16 filings. Additionally, Ele’s extensive PIPEs experience is reflected in his contribution to PIPEs: A Guide to Private Investments in Public Equity (Bloomberg Press), a leading treatise in the PIPEs arena, as well as the “Private Investments in Public Equity (PIPES)” chapter in the Insider Trading Law and Compliance Answer Book (published by Practising Law Institute) in which he is a co-author.

Ele is listed in Chambers USA, The Legal 500 US (listed as a leading lawyer), New York Super Lawyers (one of the most respected listings of lawyers recognizing the top lawyers in the New York metropolitan area), its New York Metro Top 100 list and Super Lawyers Business Edition (a national listing selected from the Super Lawyers regional awards). He was also named to The DealFlow Power 20 list for being a top influencer in the small-cap financing market.

Ele received his law degree in 1991 from Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of The Yale Law Journal.

Rupert Krefting joined M&G in 2016 as Head of Corporate Finance and Stewardship. M&G manages £350bn with c. £60bn in equities – half is in UK and half is Global. Rupert qualified as a chartered accountant then worked in investment banking for more than two decades. Most recently, he was at Numis for 8 years. At M&G, Rupert chairs M&G’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee which pulls together all M&G’s responsible investment initiatives internally and externally and sits on the following external committees:  Investment Association’s Stewardship Committee; European Fund and Asset management Association Stewardship and ESG committee; Institutional Investors for Global Climate change (IIGCC); UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF); Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA); International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) and All Party Parliamentary Corporate Governance Group.

Pat McHugh is a Founder and Senior Managing Director of Okapi Partners. He has over 20 years of experience in managing complex solicitations and campaigns. Pat has managed solicitation campaigns related to annual and special meetings (domestically and abroad), M&A solicitations, consent solicitations as well as fixed income-related matters, including numerous tenders and exchanges.

In addition to hundreds of annual and special meeting solicitations, Pat has represented Fortune 500 corporations involved in complex transactions including contested M&A deals, proxy fights and restructurings. He frequently works on contested solicitations where he provides strategy and advice to clients including campaigns on behalf of activist investors as well as providing defensive counsel to corporations that have been targeted by activists.

Prior to establishing Okapi Partners, Pat was a Senior Managing Director of Georgeson Inc. and a member of its Global M&A Advisory team. He received his B.A. in Economics from East Stroudsburg University.

Kumutha Ramanathan is a former award-winning journalist who has worked at some of the biggest news agencies around the world, including Bloomberg, CBC, World Finance and The European CEO. Her career has taken her across Europe, Asia and North America and her interviewees have ranged from CEOs to political leaders. She is currently applying her international experience to business transformation efforts as the Head of CEO Communications at IFS, a global software firm.

Cas has been with Georgeson since 1998.  He is the resident expert on shareholder activism globally. Cas has worked on Activist fights in the US, Europe and Asia, for both issuers and activists.  Understanding shareholders governance and voting policies allows him and his team to provide direct, impactful guidance to Georgeson’s clients, on how to navigate the choppy waters of an activism defence.  Before taking on the role of Global Head of Activism in 2018 he ran the Northern European arm of Georgeson since 2002.

Prior to his time at Georgeson, Cas helped issuers in Europe and Asia develop and deliver their equity story to the US capital markets.  Part of his role was to develop a proprietary method of identifying investors irrespective of their country of origin.

Cas has an expert knowledge of global proxy voting mechanics and key governance matters affecting issuers and shareholders globally.

Rich Thomas is a Managing Director in Lazard’s Shareholder Advisory group, where he leads the European practice for advising clients on preparing for, and responding to, shareholder activism, unsolicited approaches and other related matters. He joined Lazard in 2006 as part of the Industrials group, where he provided advice to clients on a broad range of topics including M&A, restructuring and capital structure related decisions.

Selected recent advisory experience includes Pernod Ricard’s active engagement with Elliott, AkzoNobel’s defense from PPG’s unsolicited offer and its negotiations with activist shareholder Elliott, Forest City’s collapse of its dual class share structure and its negotiations with Land & Buildings and Scopia Capital, Buffalo Wild Wings’ proxy contest with Marcato, Landauer’s settlement with Gilead Capital, Rolls-Royce’s settlement with ValueAct, Xerox’s settlement with Icahn Associates and its separation into two businesses and Dow’s merger with DuPont.

Rich also advices a large number of clients regarding shareholder activism in non-public situations, as well as shareholder engagement, communication and governance matters in advance of any potentially challenged situations.

Prior to joining Lazard, Rich served as an Infantry officer in the 173^rd Airborne Brigade of the U.S. Army for six years.

Michiel van Esch is an engagement specialist at Robeco’ s Active Ownership department. He joined Robeco in 2008 and became member of the Active Ownership team in 2011. Within the team he focusses on corporate governance issues. Over the years he has led several engagement project for Robeco and has gained expertise knowledge on topics such as shareholder rights, corporate board oversight, nomination processes, executive remuneration, responsible tax practices and bribery and corruption. Michiel also oversees Robeco’s proxy voting team, and coordinates the implementation of the company’s voting policy and processes.

Michiel graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 2008 with a master’s degree in Sociology and a minor in Economics. In 2015 he obtained the CFA designation.

Philip Vernardis is Assistant Vice President of the Asset Stewardship Team and is responsible for our proxy voting activities, engagement with investee companies and analysis of corporate governance, strategic and sustainability related issues in the EMEA region.

Philip joined SSGA from Fidelity International where he worked as a Corporate Governance Analyst (Manager Level) responsible for the company’s proxy voting activities in a number of European countries and North America. He was also responsible for engaging with directors and executives of portfolio companies, advising active fund managers on corporate governance and for contributing to the company’s proxy voting policy development.

Prior to his position at Fidelity, Philip was Deputy Head of Research at Manifest, the proxy voting agency, managing a team of analysts and being responsible for the editing and publication of corporate governance research reports covering Europe, US and Asia.

Philip holds a Master’s Degree in Corporate Strategy and Governance from the University of Nottingham and the Investment Management Certificate (IMC). He has also passed Level I of the CFA program.

Paul Whitfield is The Deal’s Paris-based correspondent, covering international M&A across Europe and Asia. He has written extensively on mining, energy, private equity and European activism. Prior to joining The Deal, he wrote on finance and investment for British national newspapers and at the BBC, where he worked as a journalist for the daily business show, “Working Lunch.” He has also written for the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Street and FTSE Global Markets amongst others.