Corrections or additions?
These articles were prepared for the
May 2, 2001 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Finding Gold In Paperwork
There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip, as those
who hold restricted stock in a new company will testify. Because
selling
restricted stock is a such a cumbersome process, you may not get the
price you want.
A handful of Princeton University alumni have set up a financial
services
technology platform and are trying to simplify the process of working
with restricted stock. Based in Research Park, Restricted Stock
Systems
(RSS) has closed a professional round of financing and hired a new
president, Lisa Corvese.
RSS bills its product as an integrated solution for managing
restricted
stock transactions. Restricted stock can be the private placements
issued before a company goes public, or the stock that results from
a merger, or the stock that executives receive as compensation.
From preparation through clearance, restricted stock transactions
go through an arcane and frustrating process that often takes weeks
or even months to complete, says Joe Studholme, chief technology
officer
of RSS.
“The reason there is restricted stock is to help protect the
regular
shareholders,” says Studholme, “but everyone’s goal is to
make restricted stock unrestricted — to sell it, borrow against
it, or give it to charity. Everyone wants it to go through the sausage
factory and become salable. But the sausage factory is a paper
factory.”
RSS wants to streamline these transactions for its clients, which
could include brokerage firms, shareholders, transfer agents, venture
capital and private equity firms, issuers of stock, wealth management
portals, application service providers in such areas as human
resources
or accounting — even the Securities and Exchange Commission. The
RSS tools can promote good communications between an investor
relations
department and the restricted stock shareholders.
“The process is pretty arcane and the rules are old fashioned.
We are trying to help the financial services community do a better
job in building the architecture across different parties. Our goal
is to reduce the time needed to sell stock to one day,” says
Studholme.
“If we are successful, everyone will be happy,” he says.
“Shareholders
will get money faster and understand the options. Brokers will give
better service. Lawyers will be happy because they will spend less
time finding the information.”
Early partners in the RSS system can participate in beta tests and
qualify for reduced fees. The system offers a “glass pipeline”
workflow and tracking system based on advanced data architecture.
A variety of methods can help integrate the RSS system into the
brokerage
enterprise. For brokerage firms, the system can help them improve
their service to high net worth and institutional clients by improving
accountability, increasing efficiency, and decreasing costs.
Lisa Corvese, the new president, grew up in Bryn Mawr,
where her father was in marketing and sales and her mother ran an
overhead garage door company. After majoring in Slavic linguistics,
economics, and computer science at Boston College in 1981, she worked
for Reuters America and Reality Online, both in business development
jobs. Most recently she was executive vice president for a start-up,
Giving Capital Inc., an application service provider that offered
private labeled charitable wealth management programs to the financial
services industries,
Gregory Besner, the co-founder and CEO of the 12-person firm, majored
in finance and English at Rutgers, has an MBA from Wharton, and
managed
restricted stock transactions at Goldman Sachs’ Private Wealth
Management
Group. Most recently, as vice president in the private client group
at Merrill Lynch, he and his team were managing $13 billion of
restricted
stock.
The board chairman is Richard Marin, most recently the CEO of Deutsche
Asset Management, vice chairman of BT Alex, Brown, and general partner
for B2B-Hive LLC, a New York-based venture capital fund. He has a
BA and MBA from Cornell. With him on the board are Michael Ellis of
SunGard Banking Systems, Michael Golden of the Golden Opportunities
Fund, Gary Kaminsky of Rose Glen Capital Group, Charles Stryker, the
chairman and CEO of Naviant, a supplier of precision marketing
information,
and Jack Sunday, founder and president of Group Five Inc., an
independent
research firm that focuses on shareholder and issuer satisfaction
in the securities industry.
Virtually all of the members of the technology team are Princeton
alumni. Studholme graduated in the Class of 1986, earned a degree
at Rutgers, and spent 10 years leading projects and Internet
development
in Princeton University’s Advanced Technology Group. He has also been
a vice president at New York-based Connect Systems, which does large
scale data integration and client service projects for financial
institutions.
Ted Nadeau, chief technical architect, was a computer science major
at Princeton University, Class of 1986, and has been a consultant
for Prudential on the ADR class-action settlement, the project manager
for wealth management technology systems for J.C. Bradford, and chief
technology officer for CyberSites, a New York-based Internet firm.
Other alumni include Nick Karp, Class of 1985; Hugh Lynch and Vadim
Polyakov, both in the Class of 1990; David Genetti and Andrew House,
in the Class of 1997, and Todd Meierhans, Class of 2000. “That’s
a lot of tigers,” says Studholme.
Restricted Stock Systems Inc., 412 Wall Street,Princeton 08540. Lisa Corvese, president. 609-430-7400; fax,609-430-7500.Top Of PageEmpyrean: HR OutsourcingJust because you are a subject expert doesn’t mean youwill be a good manager. Yet all too often, workers are promoted tomanagers and not given appropriate training for how to hire, retain,and fire. That fallibility is one of the more dangerous consequencesof Parkinson’s Law. “In many cases, managers are promoted buthave no experience in hiring people and managing groups andprojects,”says Michael Kalinsky of Empyrean Management Group. “They mayhave had very little training if any in how to intervieweffectively.”Kalinsky’s company does recruiting but aims to go beyond that toreengineerthe business process related to recruiting and retention. Empyreanis a management consulting firm focused on recruiting, retention,and training focused on pharmaceutical, biotech, IT, and consultingcompanies. It has started in incubator space at the Trenton Businessand Technology Center.Empyrean’s onsite staff augments the client’s HR department. Oneclientthe company cites is Nycomed Amersham in the Carnegie Center. Kalinskysays Empyrean helped staff an imaging group — > people in threemonths, doing everything from recruiting to writing the offer letter.We implement a process, teach them how to do it, and then weleave,”says Kalinsky. “We took a hiring process that ranged from twoto three months, and we took it down to 2 1/2 weeks. We fill jobsrequiring one to two years experience all the way to directorlevel.”Other companies with a similar approach are the Rosen Group in CherryHill and T. Williams Consulting in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.One of three sons of a food broker who lived in Westchester andTeaneck,Kalinsky wanted to be a television reporter. He majored in speechcommunications at East Stroudsburg University, Class of 1992, andgot a crash course in management as a second lieutenant in the U.S.Army in the armored division at Fort Knox. He is married to a womenhe met in college who is a lending officer at Progress Bank, and theyhave a four-year-old son.Though Kalinsky had never considered himself a liberal, he stood outas a “freethinker” compared to others in the officer corps.”I adapted and got what I wanted out of it. Our whole organizationis focused on core values — honor, knowledge, innovation, focus,and community — and I got that from the military,” he says.Back in civilian life, he joined forces with a boyhood friend, Rutgersalumnus Allen Jordan, whom he has known since they were seventh grade.They both worked for Aerotek, one of largest contract recruiters inthe United States, and then for R.D. Rabb in Chadds Ford.Now Kalinsky and Jordan are building a management consulting companybased on people solutions. Funding is from a family member who dippedinto retirement funds, and Kalinsky says he is on schedule to payback the loan.”Recruiting is the easy part,” he says. “The investigationbefore we start is where we earn our money. We interview everyonefrom the receptionist to the most senior person who feels the headacheof not getting people hired.” The goal is to figure out what makesthe company attractive. Nycomed Amersham, for instance, valued helpingits employees develop their careers but needed help communicatingthat value to potential hires.”We interview the hiring manager, take a snapshot of the currenthiring environment — how long it takes, where are they sourcingfrom, and how much are they spending,” says Kalinsky. All thisinformation gets compared to what a company’s competition is doingand gets put into a recruiting and retention marketing program.Also offered are programs to train managers on how to intervieweffectively.Among the admonitions:Be very detail oriented — do not leave any stoneunturned.Ensure that the interview process runs as smoothly aspossible.Spend a little more time up front with a new hire, so theyare more likely to stay. “Drug trials take three to five years,and you don’t want a lot of turnover.”Most important, treat any candidate as a potential client.”Our biggest concern is that we walk away from clients withthem referring us to the next client. From making one cold call, wehave had 10 clients in less than a year,” says Kalinsky. “Wedon’t say we will reinvent the wheel, but we hope the clients cometo us to help themselves long term, not only to get the people butto keep the people.”Empyrean Management Group Inc., 36 South BroadStreet, Suite 12A, Trenton 08608. Michael Kalinsky. 609-695-9900;fax, 609-695-0601. Home page: www.empyrean-group.comTop Of PageName ChangesLa Principessa Ristorante and Pizzeria, 4437 Route27, Kingston Mall, Princeton 08540. Giovanni Procaccini, owner.609-921-3043;fax, 609-921-9363.The young Procaccini brothers, owners of La Borgata Ristorante justnorth of Princeton on Route 27, got into a legal battle with MGMregardinga future Atlantic City casino with the same name. Even though thecasino is not yet in operation, MGM had obtained global copyrightsto the name in 1992. John Procaccini says that he has been told hecould have won his case in court, partly because it is hard tocopyrighta noun, and partly because he had already started using that name.”But they have a lot more money, and I didn’t have the money orthe time to take them to court,” says Procaccini.The new name for the Italian restaurant, featured in U.S. 1’s fall,2000, dining guide issue, refers to an 18th century resident of theProcaccini family’s village in Italy. “Our borgata, or village,within the town of Petronella was the only borgata to have a princess.The princess liked it so much that she built her own house there in1792. So we named the restaurant La Principessa, the Italian termfor princess.” He says that many of clients relate to the namebecause of the movie “Life is Beautiful,” in which one ofthe Jewish-Italian characters falls in love with an Italian womanand goes around saying “Buon Giorno Principessa.”Top Of PageNew in TownTopdeq, 3 Security Drive, Suite 303, Cranbury08512.Karen Wolf, president. 609-409-3300; fax, 609-409-3320. Home page:www.topdeq.comIf you are buying furniture or office equipment and are tired ofsame-oldsame-old, check out this new catalog. Topdeq, a German mail ordercatalog business, opened at Exit 8A in January and has sent out itsfirst mass mailing to 75,000 businesses. It maintains a warehousebehind its office and will fulfill orders from that location.Topdeq sells direct to consumers, “IKEA style,” with breezy,informal descriptions and futuristic designs, often by name designers.The catalog offers everything from trash cans to display cases. Butwhen Topdeq translated the parent company’s catalog, Takkt, intoEnglish,it eliminated items it thought would not have appeal in the U.S.market.Catalog items range from an Alessi Bauhaus ashtray for $66, a servingcart (considered worthy of display at the Museum of Modern Art) for$89, a space-age coat and umbrella stand for $148, a teeter-totterseesaw workseat for $369, a “playfully elegant” trestle tablewith glass top for $420, and a workstation that can shift from sideto side to accommodate different tasks for $1,099.One cut-rate gem in the current catalog, touted on the cover, willgive architect Michael Graves’ Nassau Street studio store a littlecompetition. Topdeq is selling Graves’ Alessi-designed tea set —the one with the whistling bird spout, not the Target store model— for $343 plus shipping, reduced from $381. It includes teapot,sugar bowl, spoon, creamer, and serving tray. The kettle alone is$101, down from $112.Topdeq’s new neighbor at 3 Security Drive in Cranbury Business Parkwill be the record storage and data management company Sequedex LLC.Top Of PageManagement MovesAmerican Repertory Ballet, 80 Albany Street, NewBrunswick 08901. Graham Lustig, artistic director. 732-249-1254; fax,732-249-8475. Home page: www.arballet.org.The new executive director is Jeffrey A. Kesper, who comes to thedance company from the Southern Arts Federation in Atlanta, a regionalorganization serving nine states. A Rutgers alumnus and a NorthBrunswickresident, he had been executive director of the New Jersey StateCouncilon the Arts from 1983 to 1990, a time when dance flourished in thestate.He has also been the head of the Middlesex County Cultural andHeritageCommission and a librarian in north Jersey. ARB, the resident dancecompany of New Brunswick Cultural Center, is a national touringcompanyassociated with not-for-profit Princeton Ballet School.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
