Mr. Balash has worked with and in successful growth companies for over twenty-five years, including his full-time involvement in eight start-ups and conducting business on five continents and twenty countries.

He was a managing director in corporate finance and mergers & acquisitions, both at Lehman Brothers (NYC: 1979-1985) and at Drexel Burnham Lambert (Beverly Hills: 1985-1990).

At Drexel, he founded and managed the Strategic Merger Group, which originated corporate development and acquisition ideas to accelerate growth for a broad range of clients, from Fortune 500 companies to private equity investment groups to successful entrepreneurs, as well as representing companies both in the sale process and for their corporate financing requirements.

In 1991, he co-founded Anthem Partners LLP, a joint venture with the Sanwa Bank of Japan (one of the world’s largest banks), to make private capital investments in operating companies and to provide financial advisory services.

Since Sanwa was unable to continue its involvement in Anthem because of the economic crisis in Japan, Mr. Balash founded Comstock Partners LLC in 1992 (www.comstockpartners.com). Comstock is a merchant bank that invested in and provided investment banking services for middle market companies and private equity sponsors in the $50 million to $750 million revenue range.

Mr. Balash has been involved in a variety of operating roles, including co-founding JL Furnishings (design, manufacture and marketing of upholstered furniture for the hospitality industry) and serving as CFO/Chief Strategic Officer for Telephony@Work (a leading software application for multimedia contact centers), taking it from five employees to the deployment of its software in the WorldCom network. The company was sold in June 2006 to Oracle.

Early in his career, as a director at Avon Products, he was responsible for its export operations (sales to distributors in the smaller European markets and emerging countries) and also for the establishment of new businesses in emerging markets, such as Nigeria and the Ivory Coast, Latin America and Asia. He also held operating positions in Avon’s domestic business.

He initially worked for the CEO of Louis Dreyfus & Cie., a privately held French multinational conglomerate, with operations in grain trading, shipping, manufacturing, real estate development and merchant banking. His focus was on mergers and acquisitions and the operations of selected subsidiaries.

Mr. Balash graduated from Princeton University (summa cum laude, AB Economics, 1970) and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship by the English Speaking Union to Oxford University and was admitted to Balliol College. However, he instead chose to attend the joint MBA/JD program at Harvard: Harvard Business School (Baker Scholar, 1974) and Harvard Law School (cum laude, 1974).

His community activities have included service on the boards of the Joffrey Ballet, the West Los Angeles Little League, the Harvard Business School Association of Southern California and the Harvard Business School Alumni Council. Other associations have involved the Harvard Business School-Major Gifts Committee: Class of 1973, Harvard Business School-25th Reunion Committee; Program Committee-Harvard Business School Conference: March, 1996: The Information Revolution-Bridging the Gap, Princeton University Class of 1970 25th Reunion Committee, Princeton University: Alumni Schools Committee and the Defense Orientation Conference Association.

His interests include travel (all seven continents, 30+ countries), wine (especially Burgundy and Rhone), food, music (jazz and ballet), sports, art, nature and animals, fitness, biking and learning. He is also a member of The Family Club in San Francisco. He is divorced and lives in Beverly Hills, California.