Main Principal
Mr. Babounakis has a BA with honors from Brooklyn College, and an MBA from Baruch College.
He has over 40 years of business experience at all levels of management primarily in finance, marketing, and product development. Currently Mr. Babounakis is the President of Aviex Group, a financial consultancy and boutique investment bank involved in the senior life settlement asset class. Aviex Group was created to develop life settlement transactions in which Aviex Group will acquire, model, structure and manage the life settlement asset. During the last 10 years Aviex Group has been involved in life settlement transactions valued in excess of $2.5 billion.
Prior to creating Aviex Group Mr. Babounakis was a partner and shareholder in some boutique investment banks focused on financial services working with funds and start up, nascent companies.
Before working in the boutique investment banking space, Mr. Babounakis was a Vice President, Analyst at Oppenheimer and a consultant to Drexel Burnham on numerous transactions.
Mr. Babounakis also has significant corporate management experience. He was a Senior executive for Continental Airlines in Marketing and Planning reporting to the President.
Prior to Continental Mr. Babounakis moved up the management ranks at American Airlines. He held director level positions in both Finance and Marketing. During this period some of his accomplishments were: Developing and managing the airline’s capital expenditure budget; serving as chairman of the facilities planning committee; and perhaps most significantly creating, developing, implementing, and managing the AAvantage Program, the first and most successful airline frequent flyer program.
Mr. Babounakis in addition to his domestic experience gained considerable international emerging market venture capital and investment banking experience while working in Russia and China during the 1980s and 1990s. In Russia his group was awarded a US government consulting contract to assist Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersberg to determine the needs and develop plans for expansion of the Pulkovo freight facilities. As a result of this work Mr. Babounakis put together a team that included the Chairman of Fuller International Development and the President of Clipper Cargo, Pan Am’s freight division, to develop, construct and manage the facility. While in in Russia, Mr. Babounakis’ JV company, Spassis was awarded the first direct satellite communications license between the US and St. Petersburg. In conjunction with this license a Russian company, of which Mr. Babounakis was a shareholder and start up funder was awarded rights to VOIP, voice over internet protocol, in Russia.
While in China Mr. Babounakis worked with CIBC and was their investment banker in regards to acquiring a US public company with banking software technology. He also worked on two transactions involving reverse mergers of Chinese operating companies to US public companies.
James Valentino – Senior Adviser
James Valentino retired from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company as an Executive Vice President after forty years of service. For over six years he served as the Chief Marketing Officer and chaired the Market Strategy Committee. For more than 15 years he served in the Information Technology arm of the company culminating in his role as Chief Information Officer. He has led the 20,000 man dedicated MetLife sales force and has been the internal project leader for several MetLife initiatives for senior citizens and “mature marketing”. He directed the Retirement and Savings operations and served as Chairman of the Board of MetLife Bank. He is Co-founder and Chairman of the American Institute of Financial Gerontology. He is a board member for numerous companies, is a Registered Financial Gerontologist, and a founder of Global Longevity Solutions, an international group focused on the development of new financial instruments to provide risk mitigation against increased longevity. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from City College of New York and attended Baruch College Graduate School. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Senior Executive Program and served as a member of the MIT Senior Executive Board of Governors. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, The American Chemical Society, the World Future Society, and the Financial Planning Association.
Chris Schwartz – V.P. West Coast
In the past ten years Mr. Schwartz has been principally involved in the financial services industry advising clients on private equity placements and innovative financing methods. Previously Mr. Schwartz has served on 15 Board of Directors (7 of which were Public companies) and has been COO or CEO of 9 companies during a span of 30+ years. He is the recent past Vice Chairman of Miller Zell, a privately held industry leader in the field of retail store development, Past President and CEO of General Textiles, a $350M sales volume general merchandise retailer, past owner and Chairman/CEO of Apex Automotive, a prominent Midwest auto parts distribution network, President and CEO of MC Sports, a $150M sales volume sporting goods retailing chain, and served as President of Bata Shoe, the world’s largest shoe manufacturing company with 95,000 employees in 90 countries and annual sales in excess of $2B. He served as Chairman of the Eighth World Conference on Retailing and was a founding member of the UPC committee that developed the retail bar code system still in use today. Mr. Schwartz has completed three Initial Public Offerings in the US for companies he has headed over $1 Billion in M&A transactions. He has completed multiple turnaround operations for companies in bankruptcy of which 2 emerged to become public owned companies. He has been active in R& D for advanced financial instruments for the past ten years and has concentrated since July 2000 on the emerging use of Senior Life Settlements in complex financial transactions. He holds a BSc degree in Business and an MBA in International Finance. He has been a frequent guest speaker for IBM, Bell Telephone, the American Management Association, The Management Centre-Europe, the American Banking Assoc., several universities, Price Waterhouse, Peat Marwick and Mitchell, the Retail Federation, the International Association of Department Stores, and YPO.