Jason Woodruff Galanis, (born 1970) at New York Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, is an investor in financial technology companies and trademark inventions since 1988 and is currently a principal of Holmby Companies, which makes private equity investments in growing and middle-market companies.

Contents 1 History 2 Financial and Investment Career 2.1 Triage Information Systems 2.2 Service One International 2.3 The Credit Store 2.4 Vianden Capital Management, LLC and Thesseus International Asset Fund 2.5 General Media, Penthouse International, and Vector Partners 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] History

Galanis is an investor who concentrates on intellectual properties and debt obligation adviser services. Many of his investments are primarily focused on start-up companies with financing or capital structure challenges. He attended the Brunswick School in Greenwich and majored in history at UC Santa Barbara.[3] He completed the Advanced Management Programme at Templeton College, Oxford University. He is married and lives in New York and Los Angeles.

[edit] Financial and Investment Career

[edit] Triage Information Systems

Galanis began his career while still in college by acquiring delinquent loans from banks. He developed a distinctive credit-scoring algorithm used to apply a credit ranking and “collectibility” index to non-performing debt. To sell the technology, Galanis co-founded Triage Information Systems, a purchaser of consumer debt. It closed transactions worth over $2 billion in loans. One third of Triage was owned by Electronic Data Systems, and was financed by a $200 million line of credit provided by Cargill Financial Services, a unit of the grain giant of the same name.

[edit] Service One International

Galanis led the leveraged buy-out of Service One International, in Sioux Falls,^[1] South Dakota established in 1982, to issue VISA credit cards to consumers unable to obtain credit elsewhere. In 1996, he led the refinancing and discounted payoff of the $200 million Cargill loan with Morgans Waterfall Vintiadis, a $2 billion hedge fund that Cargill introduced.

[edit] The Credit Store

Triage and Service One, along with its associated registered trademarks, The Credit Store, and the patent-pending financial algorithm Galanis invented, were collectively sold in 1996^[2] to a New York based investment group.

[edit] Vianden Capital Management, LLC and Thesseus International Asset Fund

In 1997 Galanis was a principal of Vianden Capital Management, L.L.C.^[3], the investment advisor to Thesseus International Asset Fund, a closed-end, split income venture capital fund that he founded to invest in early-stage financial services companies in North America and the UK, which he founded in December 1997.^[4] He was a managing director of KnightVianden, Oxford, UK^[5] - a financial services company - which he co-founded with Dr. Knight and Kevin Washington in October 1998.

Incubator Capital, Emergent Financial, and XTRAN In 1999, Washington and Galanis found funding for a public entity, Shanecy, and renamed it Incubator Capital. Incubator entered a transaction to acquire Themeware,^[6][7] an Internet business that used older media technology to sell websites and provide lease lines of credit to small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). ThemeWare was chaired by Gil Amelio. He and the board implemented Galanis’ plan to cross-sell VISA credit cards through ThemeWare’s distribution channels,^[8] including direct response television of The Internet Tool Box with spokesperson Richard Karn from the ABC sitcom, “Home Improvement”.

After the market fell in 2000, equity and debt financing for dotcom companies was unavailable, Galanis stepped down as president^[9] and Incubator investments were terminated with little fanfare.

Galanis restructured Incubator as Emergent Financial and then acquired a start-up financial technology business called XTRAN,^[10] which was a money payment and transmittal company similar to Western Union. XTRAN developed proprietary technology that utilized accessible banking infrastructure to electronically transmit money throughout the world, and with a focus on Mexico. It used credit card point-of-sale (POS) terminals found in retail stores. Instead the standard paperwork of this type of business, XTRAN was a fully automated technology.

After September 11, 2001, the U.S. Congress passed the U.S. Patriot Act, which, among other things, significantly altered the regulatory requirements for all financial transactions. This rendered XTRAN technology inadaptable to new stringent regulations, and the company disbanded.^[11]

[edit] General Media, Penthouse International, and Vector Partners

In 2002 Galanis acquired select Internet licensing rights and trademarks, including the original rights filed in the U.K. where founder Robert Guccione’s first began the company named General Media, a subsidiary of Penthouse International Inc. (publisher of Penthouse Magazine). Galanis and Guccione reached agreement for the acquisition of the rights to Penthouse’s brand for use on the Internet and Galanis agreed to finance Guccione’s magazine publishing business.^[12]

In October 2002, a public company of which Galanis beneficially owned 73% acquired 99.5% of General Media, the parent company of Penthouse.^[13][14] Galanis was the first outside equity shareholder of Penthouse since its founding, and he continued to invest in Penthouse through 2003, when Guccione ordered the company placed into voluntary bankruptcy protection.^[15] Galanis then lead the investment group that invested $68 million in capital with the bankruptcy court to restructure General Media through chapter 11. Galanis and his financial partner, Luis Enrique Fernando Molina (of the Molina family that owned PepsiCo on Mexico) from Mexico City, led the refinancing group, which was participated in by Post Advisory Group, a $9 billion division of Principal Financial Group, the life insurance company.^[16]

In January 2004, Galanis was the principal equity financier of the acquisition of the Manhattan mansion at 14-16 67th Street that Bob Guccione bought and restored in 1975. The mansion is built of two smaller buildings, first constructed in 1879 and 1905, and merged into a 48-foot wide mansion in 1920 for Jeremiah Milbank. For eight years, Guccione had unsuccessfully sought financing for his home. The mortgage holders then foreclosed on it. Galanis, along with his company, Vector Partners, successfully created, negotiated and closed a financing structure, and the property was acquired for $26.5 million from the lenders. Vector invested the equity down-payment on the house purchase. Molina had become the control shareholder of Penthouse International in November 2003, and he granted Guccione a lifetime lease at one dollar per year. Galanis had been made the co-trustee to the Molina/Vector investment trust, which not only held multiple Molina assets, but was also a major shareholder of Penthouse. Galanias was made responsible for North American investments for part of the Molina/Vector portfolio.

In 2004, Galanis also organized the leveraged buy-out of Internet Billing Company (iBill), a former division of PHSL Worldwide, Inc. iBill had been acquired in 2002 for $112 million in cash and was the largest Internet ecommerce company in the U.S. It maintained the most extensive database in the nation, with over 29 million unique records, on consumer transactions for adult content. Advised by Galanis, Molina consented to the acquisition of iBill by Penthouse International in March 2004. The iBill database and the iBill proprietary financial technology were to be combined with the Penthouse intellectual property to create a fully integrated "new media" company on the Internet. The plan was part of the efforts of General Media to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Galanis' Blog site
• Jason Galanis website
• Jason W Galanis website
• Jason Galanis MSN Blog
• Jason Galanis Yahoo Blog
• Jason Galanis Ecommerce Times
• Jason Galanis Linked-In
• Jason Galanis Zoom Info
• Jason Galanis Naymz Profile