Mr. Sokolow became a director of the Company on June 1, 2006. From November 1999 until January 2007, Mr. Sokolow has been CEO and President of Finance, Inc., a publicly-traded financial services company, which he co-founded. From January 2007 until July 2008, Mr. Sokolow was the Chairman and CEO of Finance, Inc. until it merged into National Holdings Corporation, a publicly traded financial services company.
Since July 2008, Mr. Sokolow has been Vice-Chairman and President of National Holdings Corporation. Mr. Sokolow was Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Americas Growth Fund, Inc., a closed-end 1940 Act management investment company, from 1994 to 1998. From 1988 until 1993 Mr. Sokolow was EVP and General Counsel of Applica, Inc., a publicly-traded appliance marketing and distribution company. From 1982 until 1988 Mr. Sokolow practiced corporate, securities and tax law and was one of the founding attorneys and a partner of an international boutique law firm.
From 1980 until 1982 he worked as a CPA for Ernst & Young and KPMG Peat Marwick.
Mr. Butler has been a director of the Company since 1983. Mr. Butler, a full time resident of the Cayman Islands, has been the president since 1977 of Butler Property Development Group, a consortium of property development companies specializing in luxury resort projects in the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands and British Columbia, Canada.
Mr. McTaggart has been a director of the company since 1998, President since October 2000 and Chief Executive Officer since January 1, 2004. On January 1, 2004, Mr. McTaggart resigned as Chief Financial Officer, a position he held since February 2001.
From April 1994 to October 2000, Mr. McTaggart was the Managing Director of the Water Authority-Cayman, the government-owned water utility serving certain areas of the Cayman Islands.
He received his B.S. in Building Construction from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1985.
Mr. Whittaker has served as a director of the Company since 1988. Mr. Whittaker was the Managing Director of TransOcean Bank & Trust, Ltd., a bank and trust company located in the Cayman Islands and a subsidiary of Johnson International, Inc., a bank holding company located in Racine, Wisconsin from 1984 to December 2000.
He is now the principal of his own company and management firm, FCM Ltd.
Ms. Beidler-D’Aguilar is an attorney and has lived and worked in The Bahamas since 1991. Since July 2015, she has been a partner and head of the financial services practice at Glinton Sweeting O’Brien, a full-service boutique law firm located in Nassau, Bahamas, which specializes in financial services, corporate advisory services, securitization, real estate and resort development and commercial litigation.
From January 2005 to July 2015, Ms. Beidler-D’Aguilar was a partner at Graham Thompson, a law firm located in The Bahamas and Turks & Caicos specializing in trust and estate planning, commercial matters, civil litigation, family law, securitization, employment and immigration matters. Prior to joining Graham Thompson, Ms. Beidler-D’Aguilar worked briefly at another local law firm, before which she served as Vice President – Legal & Trademark, overseeing global intellectual property and domestic legal matters, at Bacardi & Company Limited for almost 9 years. Previously she was employed by two major trust companies in The Bahamas. Before moving to The Bahamas, Ms. Beidler-D’Aguilar practiced law in the United States.
She was a Director of the Bahamas Financial Services Board from 2010 to 2014 and continues to be active in the Bahamas Financial Services Board’s regulatory, legislative and product development initiatives. She holds various awards from the Bahamas Financial Services Board for services to the financial industry and speaks regularly at financial services conferences worldwide. Currently, Mrs. Beidler-D’Aguilar serves as a non-executive member of the Board of Directors of Clairmont Trust Company Limited.
She is also actively involved in scholarship programs that assist talented Bahamian students to get the best possible post-secondary education and training. Ms. Beidler-D’Aguilar received a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1984 and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1988.
Mr. Ebanks became the Cayman Islands government nominated director of the Company in May of 2001. Mr. Ebanks was the Director of Planning for the Cayman Islands from 1991 – 1997. Since 1997, he has served the Cayman Islands Government as a Chief Officer, currently for the Ministry of Community Services, Works and Infrastructure.
Mr. Ebanks is a Justice of the Peace, a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, a member of the American Planning Association and a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies (Hons. Urban and Regional Planning – Peace and Conflict Studies Minor) from the University of Waterloo, and a Master of Arts – Planning in Community and Regional Planning from the University of British Columbia.
He is a trustee of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. Mr. Ebanks has served on the Boards of the Trustees for the Cayman Islands Museum, the Cayman Islands Civil Service Co-operative Credit Union, the Housing Development Corporation, the Water Authority-Cayman, the National Roads Authority, and is the Secretary General of the Cayman Islands Olympic Committee.
Mr. Finlay has served as a director of the Company since 1995. Mr. Finlay is an attorney and notary public, and has practiced law in the Cayman Islands since 1992. Prior to that, Mr. Finlay served as Director of Legal Studies of the Cayman Islands Government from 1989 to 1992. Mr. Finlay was a partner with a Canadian law firm located in Regina, Canada, from 1983 to 1989.
Mr. Finlay has served as the Cayman Islands’ representative to the International Company and Commercial Law Review and is a former editor of the Cayman Islands Law Bulletin.
Mr.Flowers has been a director of the Company since 1991. Mr. Flowers is, and has been since 1985, the principal of Orchid Development Company, a real estate developer in the Cayman Islands. Mr. Flowers also serves as a director of C.L. Flowers & Son, which is the largest manufacturer of wall systems in the Cayman Islands, and Cayman National Bank, a retail bank.
Mr. Pergande has been a director of the Company since 1978. Mr. Pergande is the principal of WF Pergande Consulting LLC currently providing consulting engineering services in the areas of desalination and fluid dynamics technologies. He retired in 2005 as the Global Leader for Desalination and Process Equipment for GE Infrastructure, Water and Process Technologies, a water desalination and treatment division of GE, a position he held since 2002.
Mr. Pergande previously held the position of Vice-President of Special Projects, and CEO of a subsidiary, of Osmonics, Inc., a publicly-traded water treatment and purification company, until its acquisition by General Electric Co. Before joining Osmonics, Mr. Pergande was the Chief Executive Officer of Licon International, Inc., a publicly traded manufacturer of liquid separation and processing equipment.
Previously, Mr. Pergande was the President of Mechanical Equipment Company, Inc., and held executive managerial positions with AquaChem Inc., both companies being manufacturers of seawater desalination equipment. In 2007, he was elected a Director of the International Desalination Association and also serves as its Secretary.