Mr Chris Rhoades

KANDO id: 86740

Bio

Chris joined SAIL in 2011, following the successful exit of a company he ran as CEO for eight years. His career included two distinct and synergistic phases: first, working in international institutional and corporate finance for Merrill Lynch and second, acquiring, operating, financing, and merging companies as CEO. At Merrill Lynch, he worked in the debt markets group that raised hundreds of billions of dollars for Fortune 500 clients. Merrill Lynch relocated Chris to San Francisco in 1994, where he became a Managing Director and producing manager in charge of the Institutional International Equity Division for the Western Region of the U.S. Chris's client list included large mutual funds, hedge funds, and institutional investors in the Western Region (e.g., Janus, Capital Guardian, Franklin Funds, Brandes, Citadel, and Wells Fargo) who purchased equity securities of companies located in Europe. He travelled extensively throughout Europe and South Africa in an effort to find the companies that had the best investment potential for his institutional client base. Chris travelled with hundreds of CEOs of European companies for both deal and non-deal road shows and helped hundreds of companies raise billions of dollars in both the equity and debt markets during his 11-year career at Merrill Lynch. Additionally, as Managing Director, he hired and built a highly effective team that quadrupled revenues and maintained the number one market share with the Western U.S. Institutional client base throughout his tenure. In the second half of Chris's career, he negotiated, financed, and purchased a building materials company where he served as CEO. Chris and the team integrated companies, upgraded talent, and installed the Company’s first outside sales force. As CEO he led the Company to focus on carrying exclusively green products, installed a solar system to power the headquarters, and implemented new logistics and delivery systems to increase customer satisfaction. In 2010-2011 he led a highly successful strategic sale of the Company. Chris graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from UC Berkeley, and earned his MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Business.

Education