December 8, 2012

Officers & Directors

Edward S. Adams is Chairman of the Board of Scio Diamond Technology Corporation. Ed is also the Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Senior Managing Director of Focus Capital Group, Inc. (“Focus”), an investment banking firm composed of over twenty-five seasoned investment bankers and other professionals from both major investment banks and industry with trusted relationships that have executed collectively over $300 billion in merger and acquisition transactions and financing assignments representing over 250 discrete transactions across multiple industry verticals and geographies. In 2010, its first year in active business, Focus completed a series of transactions valued at almost one billion dollars.

In the late 1990s, Ed co-founded a business consulting and financial advisory practice which through acquisition and organic growth grew from two to over two hundred employees with $30 million in annual revenue in less than six years. As an attorney, business advisor and consultant, and principal, Ed has billions of dollars of transactional experience in public and private offerings of equity and debt, hedge and institutional fund formation and management, mergers and acquisitions of public and closely held corporations via either stock or asset purchase transactions, loan restructurings, receivables financing, structured finance, commercial transactions, and bankruptcy liquidations and reorganizations. Ed has written and spoken on various corporate and commercial topics to over two hundred law firms, bar groups, and companies, and has served on numerous private and public company boards of directors. He has also acted as a chairperson of the noteholders committee of one of the largest steel industry bankruptcy reorganizations in American history.

In addition to serving as an investment banker, Ed holds an endowed chair in finance and law at the University of Minnesota Law School and teaches courses at both the law school and in the graduate MBA program at the Carlson School at the University of Minnesota. He is also a partner in the corporate law firm of Adams Monahan, LLP, which specializes in corporate advisory and transactional practice. Following his graduation cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School where he served as Managing Editor of the University of Chicago Law Review, Ed clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and worked in the Chicago and Los Angeles offices of the renowned national law firm Latham and Watkins and as of counsel at Fredrikson & Byron, P.A. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the author of over twenty-five books or editions of books (including a new leading treatise published by prominent business publisher, Wolters Kluwers, entitled Corporate Counselor’s Business Handbook), and of dozens of articles on business-related issues. Ed is a two-time recipient of the University of Minnesota Law School’s Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year Award, a 1997 M.B.A. graduate with highest honors of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, a 1998 Vance K. Opperman Research Scholar at the University of Minnesota Law School, and a co-holder of the 1999 Julius E. Davis Chair in Law at the University of Minnesota Law School.

In the recent past, Ed co-founded a project to provide free legal services to members of the community in New York, was a founding member of a project to provide free legal services to families of servicepersons serving in the Persian Gulf. He also created a program at the University of Minnesota Law School to introduce disadvantaged high school students to potential career opportunities in the legal field.

 

Steve Kelley has nearly 20 years of leadership experience in technology businesses, most recently as Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Cree, Inc., a worldwide leader in LED, silicon carbide and gallium nitride material technologies. His responsibilities at Cree included worldwide production, licensing, technology development and the chips & materials business. At Cree, Mr. Kelley directed a capacity expansion program that more than doubled unit output in 24 months while significantly lowering unit cost.

Prior to his employment at Cree, Mr. Kelley was a Vice President at Texas Instruments, Inc. (“TI”), where he led the turnaround of a large business unit. Prior to joining TI, Mr. Kelley was a Senior Vice President at Philips Semiconductors, where he successfully grew sales and profits at a variety of small and large businesses located in North America, Europe and Asia.

Mr. Kelley earned a SB ChE at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a JD at Santa Clara University. He is also member of the board of Switch Lighting, a California-based LED lighting company.

 

Michael R. Monahan is a founding Senior Managing Director of Focus Capital and is both an investment banker and an attorney specializing in a corporate advisory and transactional practice. As an investment banker his practice focuses on financings for early stage companies preparing for significant growth. He has considerable experience as a strategic advisor with an emphasis on new product and market analysis, competitive landscape development, strategic planning development and implementation, corporate structuring, financial modeling and valuation analysis, financings, transaction support, deal management and coordination.

Michael has over $1 billion of transactional and structuring experience in private offerings of equity, in addition to considerable experience structuring debt, contracts, mergers and acquisitions of public and closely held corporations, loan restructurings, receivables financing, structured finance and various commercial transactions. He has served as an advisor and special committee member to private and public company boards of directors.

Michael also has eleven plus years of experience as a corporate and securities attorney, including experience as a litigator in corporate, business, labor and employment law. Michael also has extensive experience in consultative sales, having worked for Thomson Reuters in its legal services division for five years. As a practicing attorney he has represented both publicly-traded and private companies, and has served as a business advisor, consultant and principal for several clients.

Michael is an honors graduate of Siena College, and of Albany Law School and is registered with FINRA as a General Securities Principal (Series 7, 24 and 63) and a Limited Representative – Investment Banking (Series 79).

 

Theodorus Strous brings over 20 years of diamond industry experience at the highest levels to Scio Diamond.

Theo was a Managing Director and a member of the Executive Committee of the Antwerp Diamond Bank until 2010. He was responsible for many aspects of ADB, including strategy and management of the home market, international division, and product development for the bank.

Prior to the ADB, Theo ran a diamond industry consultancy. As an executive with ABN Amro and ABN Amro Bank in the Antwerp Diamond Center, he held numerous management positions from 1988 to 1997. From 1985 to 1988, Theo was employed by ABN Amro Bank to help salvage and restructure the bank’s diamond credit portfolio, which was at the time one of the largest in the world. Through his two-plus decades in the diamond industry, Theo has gained an invaluable understanding of managing the various aspects of diamond company risks during periods of both prosperity and severe downturns.

A graduate of the Universite’ Libre de Bruxelles with a degree in economics, he also attended the Central State Jury in Brussels, Belgium. Theo began his banking career as a clerk with Generale Bank (Fortis today) and gained his first management experience at one of the investment and corporate branch offices.


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