The Team

As Managing Director of TMC Communications, LLC, Tom provides a broad range of financial and corporate media and public relations services to U.S. and international clients. He is a more than 20-year veteran in media and public relations, from both the agency and corporate perspectives. Tom has particular expertise in mergers and acquisitions/restructuring - and crisis communications, along with a very extensive knowledge of the financial services industry. He is also adept at linking ongoing media relations programs to clients' overarching investor relations strategies, taking the global perspective into account.

His approach is to link an exhaustive understanding of his clients' lines of business with a variety of positive media and thought leadership opportunities in both the U.S. and non-U.S. press. Superlative client service is the ultimate objective of the programs which he conducts, pivoting off an extensive knowledge of media outlets around the world and that focus on various industries.

Tom's corporate roles include positions at Price Waterhouse LLP, as the Director of Communications of its Financial Services Industry Practice responsible for public relations, advertising and thought leadership initiatives for the Practice's Capital Markets and Treasury; Banking; Insurance; Investment Companies and Real Estate areas.

Earlier, Tom was Director of Public Relations at Shearson Lehman Brothers International in London, as well as Vice President in Public Relations working for the firm's Corporate and Public Finance Divisions in New York. While at Shearson Lehman, he helped to raise the firm's overall institutional profile, and was appointed as the first in-house PR advisor for Shearson Lehman in the UK and Europe. Tom also orchestrated a major press outreach effort aimed at launching the firm's presence in Japan.

On the agency side, he has held positions at Siegel & Gale, as its Senior Vice President of Public Relations. There, he focused extensively on the new media. At Gavin Anderson & Company, as Senior Vice President of Media Relations, he was responsible for such clients as Bankers Trust, Rockefeller Center Properties, Inc., and OM Systems International. At Robinson, Lake, Lerer & Montgomery, he worked as a Vice President in its mergers and acquisitions and crisis communications teams, advising on a number of significant transactions.

Tom received an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. and Bologna, Italy. He was awarded a summa cum laude B.A. from Union College. He is fluent in German and Italian, and speaks French, Spanish, and Turkish.

Nazan Clohesy is a Partner of TMC Communications. She works with clients on their investor relations outreach efforts, assists with their capital raising activities and provides a range of capital markets and corporate finance counsel.

Nazan is an investment banker with 17 years experience on Wall Street and has held senior positions in the Debt Capital Markets Divisions of Lazard Freres, Salomon Smith Barney, and Chase (and its predecessors Chemical Bank and Manufacturers Hanover Trust).

Nazan's expertise is in leveraged finance, and throughout her career has financed US Corporations of virtually all industries and sizes, varying from $50 million to $25 billion per issue. She also has been actively involved in emerging market transactions. Nazan has intimate knowledge of the market, its players and dynamics as well as portfolio management. She has coached the senior managements of issuers for their road shows, and has addressed investor concerns, issues and questions on her client corporations. Nazan has worked on transactions for a significant number of financial institutions, commercial and investment banks, insurance companies and mutual funds.

Ms. Clohesy has an LL.M. in Corporate Law from New York University Law School, an M.A.in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (Bologna, Italy and Washington, D.C.), and a Law Degree from Istanbul Law School. She also has attended the Institute des Hautes Etudes Internationales of Geneva University in Switzerland. In addition to English and Turkish, she speaks Italian, Spanish, and French. Nazan is also an alumnus of Uskudar American Academy in Istanbul and is a member of the Istanbul Bar Association.

During his 22 years with IBM, Steve helped companies identify marketing and technology applications that would improve their business performance. Moving through successive technology, sales and marketing assignments, Steve led IBM's Account Marketing organization. Inside IBM, he championed IBM's Business Systems Planning, End User and Work Group Computing and advanced interactive projects that later became known as "multimedia."

After leaving IBM, Steve founded Tokeneke Group, a consulting firm focused on applying interactive technologies to marketing processes. Steve has helped companies leverage their technologies for market expansion, identify new markets enabled by technology, and use new technology to accomplish traditional business goals. In 2000, Forbes included his previously-owned company in the top 100 B2B developers. A frequent guest lecturer and speaker on "Identifying Innovation Opportunities," his current focus is on helping companies capitalize on Web technologies.

Throughout his career, Steve has worked with clients in the manufacturing, process, financial services, professional services, distribution, publishing and government sectors. His client list looks like the Global 2000 with quite a few start-ups mixed in. As an example, he has worked with: IBM, Caterpillar, Cummins Engine, Hewlett Packard, Alcoa Aluminum, Reynolds Aluminum, Union Carbide, Ernst & Young, American Express, Merrill Lynch, Northern Trust, KPMG, Cushman & Wakefield, Tremont Advisers, Credit Suisse First Boston, Citigroup, HedgeWorld, Wolters Kluwer, Barnett Banks, and others.

He received his B.A. degree in Marketing from Indiana State University and his M.S. in Systems Management from George Washington University. Steve is the recipient of numerous awards from IBM, including the prestigious President's Award. He is listed in Who's Who In Technology and has been a frequent lecturer at the IBM Executive Customer Center and industry conferences.

Lisa Ellis is a senior financial communicator with a rare combination of skills -- equal fluency in the practice of investor relations and financial public relations. At the same time, her career spans positions on both the corporate and agency sides.

On the corporate side, Lisa has worked at Madge Networks, the UK-based provider of managed network services and wireless networking products. Serving as Madge's US Director of Investor and Public Relations, Lisa sold Wall Street on the Nasdaq-listed company's makeover and intricate corporate structure. At Corroon & Black Corporation, she worked as the Investor Relations Manager for this Big Board-listed insurance broker.

On the agency side, her positions include most recently Executive Vice President and member of the management committee at the New York firm of GS Schwartz. In that capacity, Lisa headed the Corporate Communications and Investor Relations Practice at this mid-size, full-service PR firm. Prior to that, Lisa was Managing Director at New York's Anreder and Company, and a Vice President at Robinson, Lake, Lerer and Montgomery, where she counseled Fortune 500 clients on corporate communications and crisis management assignments.

She counts the following among clients to whom she has provided a wide range of financial and corporate communications counsel: Hanson Industries; SunAmerica; ConAgra; Quantum Chemical; Pfizer; Six Flags/Time Warner; Scotts; and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.

A graduate of Yale University, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in History, Lisa co-authored the Money books "Living Well In Retirement" (1999), and "Money Adviser 2000."

Nadine Robbins's specialty is creating innovative graphic design. Since 1986, she has worked with companies of all sizes in many different industries on a variety of strategically important projects, including annual reports, marketing brochures, Web sites, fund-raising campaigns and corporate ID development and implementation. Nadine's creative direction has earned multiple design awards and a long list of repeat clients such as Canon, Citigroup, Fuel-Tech N.V., LaBranche & Co, Inc., National Equity Fund, PriceWaterhouse, Quick & Reilly, and Securities Training Corporation, among others.

With over 18 years of graphic design experience, Nadine's eye-catching designs deliver proven results for customers by enhancing their image, which in return creates recognition and encourages strong sales. Her expertise is in both delivering unique, conceptual and visually beautiful designs and by using her certified knowledge of computer graphics technology to maximize productivity, efficiency, accuracy and quality. Nadine has forged strong, lasting relationships with large and small companies in a broad range of profit and non-profit industries, including financial services, professional services, business services, consumer technology products, healthcare, education, charitable organizations and fund-raising.

Prior to launching her own business, Nadine was a graphic designer in the award-winning internal design departments at Citicorp and Chase Manhattan Bank. She also consulted for a variety of clients such as Prudential, The Equitable, Lanalysis, and Scholastic, among others.

Nadine was raised both on the east coast and in Southern France. She received her BFA degree cum laude from SUNY New Paltz at the age of 20, where she graduated at the head of her design program for creative achievement and won scholarships to participate in a conference on British design in Aspen, Colorado and to attend Middlesex Polytechnic in London, England for one year. She is an active participant in the arts community and is a member of the Women in Communications, The National Association of PhotoShop Professionals, the Type Directors Club and the National Investor Relations Institute.

Richard Sasanow is a senior marketing/sales communications professional with a strong global orientation. He specializes in turning service and industry strategies into speeches, articles, white papers, books, brochures, web sites, videos and other communications that reach target audiences for the financial and professional services sectors.

Richard recently served as Global Editorial Director of ey.com, the website of Ernst & Young, creating a monthly online magazine highlighting the firm's global thought leadership. He has developed publications of all kinds for such clients as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, AT Kearney, KPMG, Kroll Associates and Citigate Global Investigative Services, among many others.

The author of The 401(k) Book (Henry Holt & Co.), Richard has written investment and retirement planning publications for OppenheimerFunds, PaineWebber, and Janus Funds. He has also produced a variety of communications for clients including Citibank, American Express, The Equitable, NationsBank, State Street Bank, Kidder, Peabody, Citibank, the Harvard Business School, the U.S. Department of Commerce, American Express and Mobil.

Richard has worked on both the corporate and agency sides, having held communications and marketing positions at Brouillard Communications and Rogers & Cowan Public Relations, and Fortune.

A graduate of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques at the Sorbonne, Richard received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Writing from Brooklyn College.

He speaks French, Italian and Spanish.

Bill Shepherd is an award-winning financial writer and editor with as broad a range of experience in both U.S. and international securities markets and corporate finance as can be found today. His knowledge, accumulated over the past three decades, spans both the buy and sell sides of corporate fund raising and M&A, from both the corporate and money manager perspectives as well as those of commercial and investment banks.

As a magazine editor, Bill has prepared innumerable cover stories and managed large, special-issue projects involving 20 or more reporters and correspondents all over the world, as well as art direction and layout design. As a writer, he reports and writes major articles ranging from profiles of financial leaders, corporate CEOs, entrepreneurs and portfolio managers to stories elucidating accounting issues, arcane derivatives tactics, risk models, economic trends, and monetary policy.

Bill has worked with many Wall Street, corporate, and other clients. He has consulted on strategic planning, media positioning, and image management — including writing of reports, speeches, op-ed articles and film scripts — for American Express, McDonalds, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Dillon Read, and a major global bank. Bill has also done projects for Merrill Lynch, the New York Stock Exchange, the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and Babson College. For a number of years he produced a twice-monthly investment letter for the Hirsch Organization on small companies and new technologies. And he prepared the landmark 1980 report to the White House and the U.S. Congress for the White House Commission on Small Business, chaired by Arthur Levitt Jr.

Bill helped develop the Wall Street coverage at Business Week (BW) years ago and also headed BW's investigative teams. In 2000 he served at BW as a temporary editor for a year, handling investment, lifestyle, finance, and information technology articles. He gained his international experience in the 1990s as executive editor of Global Finance, where he introduced the Mideast and Latin American coverage and handled major pieces on Japan, China, India, the former Soviet republics, and Eastern Europe. He has also freelanced many articles for The New York Times, Time, Money, Forbes, PC World, CFO, and Investment Dealers' Digest, for which he did the May 13, 2002, cover story on the near collapse of the U.S. government securities and repo markets following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has won two Gerald M. Loeb awards, a Jesse H. Neal award, and a Neal runner-up award.

Bill holds a cum laude AB in English Literature from Princeton. He has a basic knowledge of French, Arabic, and Turkish.

Emel Değirmenci is the Chairwoman and CEO of TMC’s partner firm Formel Consulting and TMC’s senior representative in Turkey. Established in 2004, and based in Istanbul, Formel renders organization and project management services for strategic international investments in and outside of Turkey, mainly in Europe and MEA. These services on behalf of the investor include:

• Identification and selection of potential companies, partners and sources of capital for investment
• Full fledged analysis of potential or identified investment targets: financial, legal, operational, management, et al.
• Post investment assistance: advice and support from the initiation of investment to its completion: financial and tax planning, staffing, production, accounting, finance systems, etc. of the invested business.
• Post Investment management support to ensure optimal ongoing operation of the entity – legal, tax, accounting, finance and human resources, acclimation of investors/management to the local business environment

Formel thus far has performed services for international companies and investors in the energy, real estate, hospitality and chemical industries in the private sector and for government bids. LG Turkey, Silka Silicon, a provider for white goods company Arcelik and Yesilyurt Clinic are among its clients.

Emel also serves as a technical expert witness at commercial and white-collar criminal court cases. In addition, her firm renders compliance services for companies regarding the Turkish Commercial, Tax and Accounting codes.

After completing graduate studies at Istanbul Commerce University, Emel started her career as a CPA in 2000 and established her financial advisory and accounting practice. Between 2000 and 2002, she also served as the Chairwoman of the Istanbul Chamber of Certified Public Accountants Advisory Council and subsequently participated at a senior level in many studies and research the Council has performed on relevant legislative and career issues on behalf of the Chamber.

She has a BA in Economics from the University of Anatolia and speaks English.

TMC Communications, LLC
USA: 757 Third Avenue, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10017
TURKEY: Akatlar Mah. Zeytinoglu Cad. No 4/30 34335 Etiler/Istanbul/Turkey

Telephone: (212) 376-5844 | Facsimile: (212) 376-5843 | E-mail: Thomas.Clohesy@TMCCommunications.com