Management

Sam Balabon, age 47 is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. He has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur building companies. For the last 12 years, Mr. Balabon has focused his efforts within the financial services industry immersing himself in market structure and equity trading. He is the driving force behind our innovative trading platform. He is the inventor and product designer of our technologies. He is an advocate of shareholders’ rights, fiduciary responsibility of pension funds and asset managers and promotes market integrity between institutional firms and broker-dealers. He currently serves as the chief compliance officer of our broker dealer subsidiary and holds all the appropriate FINRA licenses. 

Frederick A. Gahl, age 60, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Gahl is a Wall Street veteran, having served as Managing Director and Partner at Bear, Wagner Specialists, LLC in charge of Strategic Electronic Market Development including growth through acquisitions totaling over $500M, and managing the strategic relationship with Bear Stearns Prime Brokerage related to Global Sales, Execution, Trading, Internalization and Clearing. His efforts contributed to Bear Wagner evolving to one of the top three specialist firms on the NYSE making markets in over 350 listed stocks generating over 250,000 transactions/day.  Earlier in his career Mr. Gahl was involved in the development of the electronic trading operations at the CME, CBOT and CBOE. He also took a small Wall Street Company from a $4 million dollar valuation to a $200 million dollar acquisition to a major bulge bracket firm.   

Board of Directors 

Joseph Nikolson, age 42, is an independent board member. He is president of Bonds.com Inc. and executive vice president of Bonds.com Group Inc. Prior to joining the Bonds.com Inc.; Mr. Nikolson served as chief growth officer of TradeStation Group Inc. and as President of TradeStation Securities Inc. 

Prakash Patel, age 50, is major shareholder and lender to the Company. He is currently the President/CEO of M&R Enterprise of NY Inc., as well as Vice President of Hemisphere Management, an asset management and ownership company with a portfolio of hotels, restaurants and investment properties. Additionally, Mr. Patel serves on the Chairman of the Board of directors of Hanover Community Bank in Garden City Park, NY, a position appointed since the bank’s inception.

Strategic Advisors 

Joe Rosen is an electronic trading industry veteran with 25 years experience as an exchange executive, adviser, Chief Information Officer & Quant, author, lecturer, as well as developer and marketer of electronic trading systems. Prior to incorporating RKA Inc. in 2006, he was Managing Director, Trading Technology/Head of Technology Marketing at the New York Stock Exchange, where he developed, coordinated and executed Exchange-wide initiatives - targeted at major sources of order flow and connectivity - to promote NYSE’s trading/technology products. 

Richard Holway is one of the pioneers/inventors of dark pool block trading. He is a leader and innovator in institutional trading technology development, sales and marketing. 

Jeffrey Beamer is a 25 year veteran of the trading/financial services industry and is co-founder and Partner of Lacerte Capital Partners L.P. and Lacerte Capital Advisors LLC., a Registered Investment Advisor servicing the Hedge Fund and Mutual Fund industry. Jeffrey currently serves as Portfolio Manager and Director of Trading and Research for the firm.