Interview with: Donald F. Mardak, Chairman, President and CEO - featuring: their Continental Trade Exchange, one of the world's largest barter systems, which permits companies and individuals to exchange goods and services utilizing an electronic currency known as "trade dollars" (T$), which are used in lieu of cash to purchase the various offerings of other members of the barter network. |
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This is a printer friendly page! Global Wataire does more
than just provide funds to the companies that they invest in, they bring an experienced,
diverse management team to the table with a great network to support a growing company BIO:
Mr. Gorman:
“Our goal is to find promising young companies to work with them and assist them to
meet their potential. When we find a strong candidate, we will do a detailed due-diligence
on them to determine key operational issues, strengths, weaknesses and the value of their
potential for financial success. If they are selected through the due-diligence and
exchange process with them, we create a concrete step-by-step action plan to help that
company achieve their goals. In terms of market, we do not limit ourselves to one
industry. One of the strong attributes of our advisory team is that we have extensive
backgrounds in a wide variety of industries. To take advantage of their expertise, we cast
a wide net searching for candidate companies. Generally, we seek companies in high-growth
multi-million dollars industries with the potential to secure sizeable market share. In
addition, we look for companies with good leadership that are selling products, services
and technologies that make sense. We are not looking for companies in the R&D stage.
For example, we are currently working with a promising company called DigiTar that has
developed proprietary internet and eTraffic management technology that is superior to
anything that we have been able to look at and much more cost-effective. DigiTar has a
solid customer base and it is expanding. Incredibly, the internet security industry is
growing at about a 16%, per year rate and is expected to reach around almost 60 billion by
2010. Therefore, this is the kind of industry we want to be in. DigiTar has everything we
are looking for in a candidate company; it has high growth, huge market, great management,
and great product. At the present, we are in the process of completing due diligence on a
company in the resource sector that we believe has only one way to go and that is to
continue to grow and develop. This company has gold properties that have yielded some very
exciting results and they are in need of financing for development and expansion. We are
also looking at some interesting opportunities in commercial real estate and some small
power producers in the small energy market and by small; by small I mean less than ten
megawatts.” CEOCFO: With
so many possibilities, how do you come upon the companies that you consider? Mr. Gorman:
“When we are seeking companies, we do not get them from just anywhere. What we do is
use our board of directors’ networks and shareholder networks and some of the
networks of our advisors to help us. By networking, we are trying to identify companies
that meet initial criteria. Once they pass the first test: they are in the right market
with good product and management, then we look at them more closely with a due diligence
process that is targeted or a reason to say no. We do not want to get mired down looking
at too many companies. We are selective in the companies we look at and if they have the
right market and growth potential, we move quickly, if the chemistry is right. If it is
not, we go on to look for another. So far, we have found no shortage of companies to
evaluate and more often than not, we quickly determine they do not meet our profile.” CEOCFO: Why
has your group decided to come together now and pursue your goals? Mr. Gorman:
“The company was historically in the water purification and water distribution
business. Mr. Sydney A. Harland, the president and CEO of Global Wataire, and I started a
couple different companies over the last 10 or 12 years. We started one company that we
took public and sold. We were pretty much doing this on an ad-hock basis going from one
opportunity to another. We finally concluded that we liked doing this and we were having
some success, why not start an incubator company and go do what we have been doing all
these years, but more directed. When we saw what we were doing in the water purification
business, we decided to expand our horizons and seek prospects in other industries and
capitalize on the organization development we were doing in the past.” CEOCFO: Why
should companies want to work with Global Wataire? Mr. Gorman:
“The principle thing we feel we bring to a potential client company is that we have
an extensive network and a track record of success in our team. Once we make the
commitment to them, then we will define what our mutual goals are and then we will go
hand-in-hand as a team. The way we do this business is that when we take on a company and
enter into an agreement with them, we mutually determine the criteria and steps to success
for them. Once they are on track, we act as advisors and serve on their board of
governance. In addition, we provide specialty services of all types needed by a developing
company. At the end of the day, we want to be equity partners with our clients. As they
grow, we grow.” CEOCFO: Do
you have a target number of companies that you would like to have in your group? Mr. Gorman:
“We do. We would like to have about around 12 companies by 2009; and we think that is
realistic. However, our goal is not to get spread too thinly. We seek companies where both
the target company and we are confident that we can succeed. If it is not the case, no one
will win. If they have confidence and we have confidence we can be successful, then our
chances of doing just that are that much higher.” CEOCFO:
Getting new companies up and running is expensive; what is the financial picture for
Global Wataire today? Mr. Gorman:
“We are a start-up company, actually a turnaround company. At present, we are
floating a Reg S offering on the Berlin Stock Exchange, which just started marketing a
couple of weeks ago. We are raising money on the Berlin Exchange for our internal
development and to a certain extent for our client companies. When a client company needs
access to more capital than we can access through our capital market, then we have
investment funds and investors who are willing to step in and help us provide financing
for our carefully selected clients.” CEOCFO: Are
all the pieces needed to achieve your long-term goals in place? Mr. Gorman:
“I think we have all the ingredients to make the pie. Our goal right now is to get
our stock price up to trading where we think it should be, particularly over the next six
to nine months when we will be getting the word out to the financial community about what
we are doing. We have a multiple full phase multi-media marketing plan in-place that we
are going to execute on over the six or nine months and we think that the market will be
looking at us. We think there is good upside potential in our stock, and it has low float.
Our goal is to get the word out so that everyone in the investment community knows that we
have the right plan, the right people and the right strategy. We will regularly report on
our progress. That is our goal in the short-term and the other goal is, of course, to find
more exciting new companies that we can target, bring into the stable and get them going;
if they are successful, then we are successful.” CEOCFO: In
closing, what might potential investors miss about Global Wataire that they should know?
Mr. Gorman: “One of our greatest strengths is that we have carefully put together an experienced management team and advisory team in an effort to hedge our bets. Unlike some other advisory companies that charge into one industry such as high tech or whatever happens to be in vogue at the time. We are not doing that, we are using our wide experience among various industries to spread the risk. We deal with whatever market trends may come and ride the waves, because we are not dedicated to one group of companies or one industry sector. Our other strength is that we have a very supportive and active board that were carefully selected for their backgrounds. For example, one of our board members, Mark Hollingworth, M.Eng, MBA, vice president of strategic planning, actually founded and runs his own management consulting company. In fact, he wrote the book of what we do called Growing People and Growing Companies. What we are looking to do is be extremely focused, bring a very strong, diverse management team, with a great amount of experience and with a great network to support a growing client company. People who are starting and growing companies have to be focused on short-term operational issues. What we bring to them are the resources, both intellectual and financial, to succeed. We will be hands-on with them, help them, and relieve them from some of the distractions they face running a start-up company, so we can be successful.”
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“The principle thing we feel we bring to a potential client company is that we have an extensive network and a track record of success in our team. Once we make the commitment to them, then we will define what our mutual goals are and then we will go hand-in-hand as a team. The way we do this business is that when we take on a company and enter into an agreement with them, we mutually determine the criteria and steps to success for them. Once they are on track, we act as advisors and serve on their board of governance. In addition, we provide specialty services of all types needed by a developing company. At the end of the day, we want to be equity partners with our clients. As they grow, we grow.” - Edmund Gorman |
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