Ed Gallagher Email and Phone Number

We strive to be the preferred strategic advisor and thought partner to the senior management, boards of directors and founders of middle market private and public as well as emerging-growth companies.By leveraging our team’s strong relationships and decades of experience in all matters related to investment banking, First Liberties has earned an enviable reputation for providing discreet and high-quality banking services to our clients, investors and referral sources. We look forward to working with you.

Criterion Capital Advisors is a merchant banking firm dedicated to providing quality advisory services to founders, Boards, and senior management of middle market and early stage companies. CCA serves as strategic advisors and guides companies to financial success through developing revenue growth strategies, brand marketing and management, mergers and acquisitions, recapitalizations, private placement of growth capital, fairness opinions, and complex valuations.CCA strives to build long term relationships with our clients by providing innovative solutions that meet both their present and future needs.

Offering strategic turnaround and growth advisory services with an emphasis on increasing revenues and profitability by re-energizing sales and marketing activity. TLGA has unique and extensive experience with turnarounds, correspondent clearing and self-clearing broker dealer best practices including front, middle and back office expertise, Enterprise Data Management, change management, due diligence, channel sales, deal and vendor contract negotiation. TLGA served as strategic advisor to the CEO of a broker dealer specializing in OTC derivatives where we introduced the firm to potential strategic partners, redesigned the firm's website and marketing materials, performed alpha-generating trade analysis, and recruited sales staff to re-energize the firm's growth. We serve as a business development partner to a firm who's growth is driven by M&A activity where we identify acquisition targets and perform due diligence relating to the deals.

Provided strategic advisory services focused on simple or complex financings, restructuring and turnaround plans, mergers and acquisitions, finding senior management or board members, and forming strategic alliances domestically or abroad.

Hedge Funds Best Practices ConsultantBPB Associates was founded 15 years to assist and advise hedge funds from start up through their various stages of growth. Numerous assignments focused on hedge fund best practices with an emphasis on insuring that the funds' middle and back office operations were right-sized for market conditions and optimizing their risk management infrastructure. BPB is also an important partner to the prime brokers, soft dollar brokers, and executing brokers that service the hedge fund industry.

Recruited to lead the Americas Region of this global enterprise data management (EDM) software solutions provider which represented approximately 50% of the firm’s revenues and client relationships. Reported directly to CEO. Developed a strategy which included extensive re-engineering, training, and coaching the new sales and existing client sales teams and resulted in the Americas region delivering 1st quarter and 1st half of 2008 results that exceeded targets. A qualified pipeline of potential clients totaling 370% of the 2nd half FY 2008 target was in place when I left the firm at the end of July.

Recruited by the majority investor to lead this global quantitative model based independent research provider through a 36 month restructuring designed to reorganize the firm to allow the investor to capitalize its stake in the company. Clients included institutional investment managers, broker dealers, investment banks, private banks, insurance companies, individual public and private firms, and retail investors. The firm's clients were primarily located throughout the Pacific Rim and RR had little success penetrating the US and UK markets. RR required annual capital injections from its majority investor to meet operating expenses.Created a strategy which established a US legal entity and set up global headquarters in New Jersey and restructured the UK office. Lead successful re-engineering of the product offering away from one-off financial health reports to one focused on providing 10 years of unique RR data to quant investment managers and hedge fund managers as a tool to generate additional alpha for their portfolios. Also developed a corporate culture focused on generating increased portfolio returns rather than individual security ratings. This strategic realignment and its acceptance in the marketplace resulted in RR being acquired by a US based merchant banking organization in January of 2007. The sale occurred 24 months ahead of my mandate and at a 200% increase on the value of the equity originally granted to me in the firm.

DB was not historically focused on the correspondent clearing business but became a mid-tier player in that space when it acquired Banker’s Trust. I developed a new strategy to exit the high cost retail clearing business and build a lower cost but more profitable purely institutional clearing business. The focal point of this effort was to generate substantial cross selling opportunities for other Deutsche Bank products such as; Prime Brokerage, Transition Management Program Trading, and substantial order flow capture through institutional trading relationships. This strategy required a cultural realignment which emphasized attracting new clients, aggressively establishing proper internal controls and creating accountability within the firm while implementing cost-cutting and a re-alignment of the business to compliment DB’s core strengths.This resulted in our exceeding P&L targets by turning the business from several million in annual losses to break even under 23 months.Also achieved substantial additional annual savings to Deutsche Bank by leading a project to outsource Alex Brown’s retail brokerage business to Pershing. This strategy, while groundbreaking at the time, allowed AB brokers to receive best of breed technology 3 years ahead of the firm’s original delivery plans.HEAD OF PRIME BROKERAGE PLATINUM CLIENT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT Designed and implemented a program to increase new business revenues and address falling customer satisfaction ratings in the Global Custodian survey by introducing our most significant hedge fund clients to seasoned, senior relationship managers. This allowed the Prime Brokerage sales force to devote more time to prospecting for new clients and less time to client service related issues. Management and clients deemed this pilot program a success and it has since become an integral component of the PB division’s infrastructure.

Lead revenue growth strategy which separated sales from customer service and created three categories of client facing professionals: salespeople- who were pure hunters, relationship managers- who would be assigned named existing client accounts for which they would be responsible for net new revenue growth and client service reps- who would tend to a client’s daily operational needs and minor system enhancement requests.Was promoted to the role of Managing Director, National Sales Manager BPS, and in the first 12 months successfully managed a team of sales professionals who closed deals worth over $500 million in revenue. This exceeded planned budget for growth by 15% YOY. As a result of exceeding of our sales target I received the maximum bonus possible and earned President’s Club Honors.Was then promoted to the position of Global Head of Sales for ADP’s OMR Division where I was responsible for a global sales team focused on software and ASP-based solutions for global banks and central banks trading in: FX, futures, equities, money markets, and derivatives; as well as a hedge fund administration group providing outsourced back office and performance reporting for US based and offshore Hedge Funds. Brought in $40 million dollars in new revenue through 8 new deals and built sales pipeline to approximately $180 million in estimated revenue.

NATIONAL SALES MANAGER, DIRECT BROKERAGE SERVICES GROUP - 12/95-9/97Exceeded new business goals by redefining the group’s target market. In conjunction with team of four, successfully attracted larger, more profitable relationships to the firm. MANAGER, RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT GROUP – 11/94-12/95Promoted to provide direction to this under-performing group. Managed a team of 9 relationship managers. Developed business plan to completely reorganize the delivery of customer service for the group, which specialized in providing clearance and trading services to middle-market and start-up broker dealers. Responsible for the implementation and success of plan. INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT SUPPORT GROUPSENIOR MARKETING OFFICER – 3/93-11/94First person hired for start-up business focused on providing prime brokerage services to RIA’s and Hedge Funds. Based on individual sales success, was given increased responsibility to train and motivate additional team members.

Created start up fee-based asset management firm. Utilized educational approach and public seminars to build a successful firm focused on managing retail investor assets.

Consistently recognized as top sales manager in mutual funds, corporate/tax-free bonds, CMOs and UITs. Cross-trained brokers in product knowledge, sales techniques and analysis of competitors.

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE – 9/85-6/88ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT, MANAGER – FUTURES NEW ACCOUNTS DEPT, AND ASSISTANT FUTURES CREDIT OFFICER – 3/81-6/88