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The Investment Managers

The Investment Managers

“I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn't count, building arks does.”

Warren Buffet

The Investment Managers work as a committee.

Seonaid Mackenzie

Seonaid Mackenzie, ASI, CF (47) - Managing Partner of Sturgeon Ventures, leads the firm’s overall investment strategy as a Portfolio Manager and an Investment Manager. Prior to founding Sturgeon Ventures, Seonaid Mackenzie’s career comprise over 15 years spent in global stock broking firms such as Prudential Securities (Prudential-Bache), Natwest Markets and Bear Stearns as an American focused Stockbroker with a few years focused on emerging markets of Latin America at James Capel. As a stockbroker in the American stock markets she took an active interest in the food sector, and each year attended the Consumer Analyst of NY meetings. Seonaid then created Sturgeon Ventures as an American family office wherein Seonaid and her team invested in public and private companies, with Seonaid taking a pro-active role in some of the private companies as a management consultant and raising further funding. Seonaid left the investment world for a short time to be involved with a start up company on the development and implementation of marketing strategies, before spending 6 months in a corporate finance boutique focusing of equity growth financings. Seonaid returned to the financial services industry by setting up her own firm as an incubator for financial services companies for whom she and her team also offered regulatory compliance advice.

Over the last two years she has also served as an investment manager

to a pre-IPO fund based in London, investing in expansion phased companies, with no sector bias.

Seonaid has been an investor privately and on behalf of funds in venture backed companies and also a fundraiser. She has operated private company start-ups and consulted on the marketing strategies and implementation for venture backed companies and shares the experience of the entrepreneurs with whom she works. This has given her the strong analytical and business development background that she uses in these areas of business to achieve a high level of performance. Seonaid is an Associate of The Securities and Investment Institute and the Institute of Chartered Accountants, having in May 2008 been awarded the Corporate Finance Advanced Diploma. Seonaid is also a member of The Worshipful Company of International Bankers, a British Livery Company.

Stan Yakatan

Stan Yakatan (62) has over 35 years of life sciences experience with an exceptional awareness of biotechnology. He is currently Chairman of the Board at Biocomm, a business development agency and early stage venture fund in Melbourne, Australia that interacts with more than 25 Universities. Stan is also Chairman and CEO of Biophan Technologies and Grant Life Sciences, a consultant advisor with The Scientist and Chairman of Katan associates, a private consulting company. He is past Chairman and CEO of Quantum Biotech, also President and CEO of New Brunswick Scientific.

Educated at the University of Pennsylvania, Stan has an MBA and marketing qualifications. As an athlete he has a special interest in health and wellbeing programmes. Stan’s personal goals are to help where his experience and contacts provide value and his specialties include: corporate strategic development, partnering activities, M&A activities, government and economic advisory work, also corporate training.

Stan has launched products for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals and held senior management positions (including President and CEO roles) at New England Nuclear, ICN Pharma, DuPont, New Brunswick scientific, Biosearch and Unisyn technologies. Over a 15 year period Stan’s venture capital roles included being a venture partner and chairman of the investment committee at Biocapital, Chairman of Biocomm, Australia and an adviser to H & Q life sciences, Ventana, Technoventure Management (Germany), Medical science partners and CDC Innovation (Paris). Stan has founded or co-founded over 15 companies in Europe, the United States, Israel and Australia.

As outstanding investment performance examples, Stan chaired Biocapital as a Quebec-based VC fund that made $200m (Canadian) return on investment from $10m pension funding invested in 35 diagnostic areas. Further investments in therapeutic devices and natural products over a 4.5 year period resulted in 25 companies listing on the Toronto stock exchange. The government was given back $200m in the 5 years of this fund. In Australia Biocomm was a conglomeration of 4 financial institutions that were participants in a play-for-pay fund, creating 4 companies in 2 years. As a result of this success, the Victorian government created 4 new funds focusing on start-up companies. Additional current roles are with Grant life sciences (a public company developing a novel assay for cervical cancer), and serving on the board of Response Medical a publicly traded novel health care company located in Vancouver Canada, also membership of a few relevant private boards. Stan has been an adviser to the Canadian government, the Israeli government, the Quebec government and the Victoria government in Australia.

Public profile www.linkedin.com/pub/0/632/193.

Dr Wang Chong

Dr. Wang Chong MBBS, MBA, ASI (42) – Portfolio Manager of Sturgeon Ventures and Investment Manager. Prior to joining Sturgeon Ventures, Dr. Wang Chong’s career comprises over 19 years spent in the healthcare industry. He also has significant capital markets experience including raising funds for and listing small to medium size companies in the UK; he has been instrumental in raising over £60 million for small cap companies in the last six years and was previously the Life Sciences Analyst at Canaccord Capital (Europe) Ltd, the multinational investment bank. In the healthcare industry, previous positions include CFO and Commercial Director of Phytopharm plc, a leading botanical pharmaceutical and nutraceutical company, CEO of Osmetech plc, a medical diagnostics company, Leader of UK Healthcare Initiatives at Arthur D. Little Inc, the management consultancy firm, commercial roles at Glaxo Wellcome plc and SmithKline Beecham plc, and an endocrinologist in the National Health Service.

Wang combines his analytical and business development expertise with

his operational and medical background to achieve results. Dr. Chong graduated with a medical degree from King’s College London and an MBA from London Business School. Wang is a Council Member of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Pharmaceutical Medicine & Research Section and an Associate of the Securities and Investment Institute.

Alan Thomas

Alan Thomas C.Dir, MSTA, FSI

Investment Manager of Sturgeon Ventures and Portfolio Manager.

Alan received a BA (Hons) degree in Economics and Statistics from the

University of Wales. Alan’s career started at Unilever in 1959,

following 2 years of military service in the Royal Air Force

(1954-1956). His management training at Unilever was followed by a

distinguished career, in the financial services industry spanning 48

years, so far.

Alan started in the City at James Capel as one of the only two

research analysts in the firm; followed by a number of years (1967-1983) were he was Head of Research and Head of the International Department for UK stockbroker, Sheppards and Chase (previously Roger Mortimer). For the next decade he was an investment manager with leading investment firms such as Fidelity Investments where he managed several funds, with a focus on the mid-small cap companies, predominantly investing in the American market. He left Fidelity when the funds he managed where moved to Fidelity’s HQ in Boston. Alan then

spent 4 years as a regulator with IMRO acting as adviser to the heads

of monitoring and enforcement (IMRO was the regulator of the fund

management before it merged with the FSA). This well rounded

background was the perfect platform for his next career as a

compliance consultant, which has spanned more than a decade. As a

compliance adviser he has worked with well known, investment

management firms who are managing funds of funds, hedge funds, and

other derivative products. Alan has also advised re-insurance brokers,

UK investment banks and corporate finance firms. Alan spent a couple

of years during this latter decade of his career as a fund manager and

member of the investment committee of a UK EIS fund, investing in

venture and growth equity for UK smaller companies, with no sector

focus.

Alan has written extensively for such magazines as The Investors

Chronicle and The Hedge Fund Journal, both on fund management and

traded options. Alan is a Fellow of the Chartered Securities Institute, a Member of the Society of Technical Analysts, is a Regular Member of the CFA Institute and is a Chartered Director at the Institute of Directors.

Alan is also a Member of the Worshipful Company of International

Bankers.