Investment Banking Team
Jonathan Meyers
Managing Director: Head of Technology Investment Banking
Mr. Meyers joined Caris & Company from WR Hambrecht + Co, where he was the senior technology investment banker and primarily concentrated on the electronics sector -- from semiconductors to consumer electronics products. Prior to that, Jonathan was a Managing Director at SoundView Technology Group for over ten years and was responsible for establishing SoundView’s San Francisco office and its West Coast Investment Banking effort. Previously, Jonathan had been the Director of Global Technology Banking at PaineWebber and, subsequently, the co-founder of the Menlo Park office of Needham & Co. He began his career in investment banking with Loeb Rhoades & Co., where, after several mergers, he eventually became head of West Coast technology banking at Lehman Brothers.
Mr. Meyers has more than 30 years of experience as an investment banker, assisting scores of companies raise capital in public and private markets and complete M&A transactions . He received his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Mr. Meyers holds the Series 7, 24 and 63 designations. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and is an avid audio/videophile.
Jeff R. Swarz, Ph.D.
Managing Director: Head of Healthcare Investment Banking
Jeff R. Swarz Ph.D. has 22 years of experience in healthcare equity analysis, capital raising and investment banking. He joins Caris & Company from Friedman Billings Ramsey where he was a Managing Director in the Investment Banking Group, and responsible for biotechnology, medical device and specialty pharmaceutical companies. Prior to FBR Dr. Swarz was a Managing Director at Life Science Group. At LSG he was responsible for corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and private financing.
Dr. Swarz began his career as a biotechnology equity analyst at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse First Boston. He was rated among the top 10 biotechnology analysts on Wall Street from 1988-1999.
He holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Rochester, and a B.Sc. with Honors in Biological Sciences from the University of California at Irvine. He was a National Institutes of Health Research Fellow in Neurovirology, and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Dept. of Neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Grant E. Harshbarger
Managing Director: Investment Banking
Mr. Harshbarger brings over 20 years of healthcare investment banking experience to Caris & Company. Mr. Harshbarger has advised and financed companies in all sectors of healthcare (Biotech/Pharma, Devices, Services) and at all stages of development - from private companies seeking their first round of institutional capital, to small/mid-cap companies seeking IPOs, PIPES, public offerings, M&A and restructurings, to market leading companies seeking novel ideas for strategic acquisitions. He has well-established relationships in the venture community and has been structuring tailored financing solutions for public companies since the early 1990's when he was one of the few bankers developing new structures and interest in PIPES financings. This breadth of experience stems from his background with full service firms (e.g., Dean Witter Reynolds, Brenner/ Southcoast Capital) as well as product-focused institutional firms (e.g., Citadel Investment Group, Bentley Securities). Some noteworthy former clients have included Celgene Corp., Aetna, Luminex Corp., Gulf South Medical Supply, Medisense, Bentley Pharmaceutical, Genome Therapeutics (Oscient Pharmaceuticals), Alignis, The Company Doctor (Healthsouth), Physician's Specialty, Merrimac Industries, and Wedco Technologies, to name a few.
Mr. Harshbarger received a B.A. from Brown University and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Brian Miloski
Managing Director: Investment Banking-Energy & Technology
Mr. Miloski joined Caris in April 2007 with over ten years of Wall Street experience.
Prior to joining Caris, Mr. Miloski was an investment banker with BMO Capital Markets, a NYSE-listed bank with over $290 billion in assets. While at BMO, Mr. Miloski completed a wide variety of transactions including mergers, acquisitions, private placements, PIPEs, registered directs, income participating security offerings, public equity offerings, bond offerings and bank loans. His industry experience included technology, media, consumer, industrials and energy.
Prior to BMO, Mr. Miloski worked for Ladenburg Thalmann, one of Wall Street's oldest banks. With Ladenburg, Mr. Miloski completed separate tenures in the investment banking and equity research groups. As a banker, he worked on a variety of transactions in the technology, energy and gaming sectors. In the research group, Mr. Miloski worked with a WSJ All Star Equity Analyst and launched coverage on several unique companies in the energy sector.
Mr. Miloski received his Masters of Science in Finance from the University of Baltimore and his BS in Economics from the State University of New York at Cortland.
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Kenneth W. Rind, PhD
Senior Advisor: Investment Banking
Dr. Rind is an internationally recognized corporate financier, with over 40 years of experience as: Head of Technology Banking at Oppenheimer (now CIBC); a corporate development executive responsible for developing strategy and managing various acquisitions at Xerox, and a founder of eight venture funds.
Dr. Rind was appointed by the U.S. government and currently serves on the Boards of the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), chartered by Congress to grant cooperative funding to scientists and engineers in the former Soviet Union and beyond; and the U.S Israel Science and Technology Foundation (USISTF), jointly funded by the U.S. and Israeli governments to further technology collaborations. He previously served as an advisor to the U.N. and the U.S.T.R. Countries that have invited Dr. Rind to speak on fostering technology commercialization include: Holland, Belgium, Singapore, Japan, Russia, Ukraine and Israel.
Dr. Rind was a founding Director of the National Venture Capital Association; President of the Connecticut Venture Group and a Director of a Scottish Trust (mutual fund), the first to invest in technology companies world-wide (Baillie Gifford). He has served on the Boards of numerous corporations including 15 that were public and over 25 more that he assisted in finding strategic investors/merger partners. He is currently a Director of the Venture Investors Association of New York (formerly the NYVCF).
In 1981, Dr.Rind co-founded Oxford Partners, an independent venture capital company which managed funds provided by over 25 corporate (strategic) and 20 financially-oriented investors and was the predecessor of Oxford Bioscience. He also co-founded the Nitzanim-AVX/Kyocera Venture Fund in 1993 and the Israel Infinity Venture Capital Fund in 1998, whose successor has formed the first on-shore venture fund in China.
Notable investees from Dr. Rind’s venture history include: Intel, Apple, Human Genome Sciences, Genetic Therapy, Geron, Martek, ESC Medical, XTL Biopharmaceuticals, Galileo, Shopping.com and Applied Data Research (the first company to sell software).
Dr.Rind received his PhD from Columbia University in Nuclear Chemistry and his B.A from Cornell. He is an avid tennis player.
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Enrique Mayer, ASA
Managing Director: Valuations & Corporate Advisory
With close to 20 years experience, Mr. Mayer is a highly experienced investment banker and valuation professional. At Caris & Company, he specializes in performing business and securities valuations, rendering fairness and solvency opinions, and advising corporate buyers and sellers on mergers and acquisitions across a range of industries.
Mr. Mayer was a Managing Director at Caris & Company from 2002 to 2007. Prior to rejoining Caris & Company in 2010, he was at the investment banking boutique, Mayer Patton, for 2 ½ years. Prior to Caris & Company, he held the positions of Manager of Valuation Services for CBIZ Valuation (formerly NSHD), and Vice President for a leveraged buyout firm where he performed hundreds of valuations and was part of a deal team that closed buy-side and sell-side transactions ranging in value from $10 million to over $300 million. Mr. Mayer also served as CFO at a large, privately-held food distributor, and Sr. Financial Analyst at Qualcomm. He also founded, managed and sold his own business in the early 1990’s.
Mr. Mayer is an Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA) as designated by the American Society of Appraisers. He is a graduate of Arizona State University where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance and has completed several advanced courses on mergers and acquisitions, business valuations, and fairness and solvency opinions. Mr. Mayer completed levels I and II of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program and is a member of the National Center for Employee-Ownership (NCEO).
In his spare time, Mr. Mayer likes to play golf, relax at the beach with family and friends, and manage an elite travel baseball team that achieved a number one national ranking in 2009.
Cynthia J. Stiles, CFA
Vice President: Health Care Investment Banking
Mrs. Stiles, who rejoined Caris & Company in July 2007, has several years of experience in investment banking, equity research and consulting with a background in economics and finance. She began her career as an Investment Banking Analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston in London, England. In this position, she worked in the company's Healthcare Group, advising pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies on corporate structure as well as potential mergers and acquisitions. She also worked on a number of sell-side transactions in various industries. Mrs. Stiles also previously worked at Caris & Company as an equity research analyst developing research reports on biotechnology and healthcare companies. She was responsible for initiating coverage, writing and publishing on several biotechnology companies. Most recently, Mrs. Stiles worked with The Aequitas Group, Inc. as the Director of Valuation & Pricing Services. In this capacity, she developed financial projections and valuations for corporate clients based on assessments of disease epidemiology, competitive market positioning and potential reimbursement and pricing for both developmental and marketed pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic or biotechnology products.
Mrs. Stiles graduated from Huron College at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) with an honors bachelor degree in Economics. She passed the Level III CFA exam in June 2001 and is currently a CFA charterholder. She holds the Series 7 registrations.