Management
Jerry Gruenbaum - CEO
Attorney Jerry Gruenbaum who operates from the Westport, Connecticut office has been admitted to practice law since 1979 and is a licensed attorney in various states including the State of Connecticut. He currently serves as an officer and/or member of the board of directors of various publicly traded companies. A holder of securities licenses Series 4, 7, 24, 27 53, 63, and 65, he is the Chairman of the Board, and CEO of the Puritan Financial Group, a publicly traded financial company, and its NASD member, SEC licensed brokerage firms Puritan Securities, Inc. headquartered in Westport, Connecticut, with offices in New York City, New York and West Palm Beach, Florida. He is a former President and a Chairman of the Board of Directors of a multinational publicly traded company with operations in Hong Kong and the Netherlands. He worked for the tax departments for Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. (now KPMG Peat Marwick LLP) and Arthur Anderson & Co. He is the current securities Compliance Director for Puritan Securities, Inc. and previously served in that capacity for CIGNA Securities, a division of CIGNA Insurance. He has lectured and taught as a member of the faculty at various Colleges and Universities throughout the United States in the areas of Industrial and financial Accounting, taxation, business law, and investments. Attorney Gruenbaum graduated with a B.S. degree from Brooklyn College - C.U.N.Y. Brooklyn, New York; has a M.S. degree in Accounting from Northeastern University Graduate School of Professional Accounting, Boston, Massachusetts; has a J.D. degree from Western New England College School of Law, Springfield, Massachusetts; and an LL.M. in Tax Law from the University of Miami School of Law, Coral Gables, Florida.
Nathan Lapkin - CFO
Mr. Nathan Lapkin who operates from the Westport, Connecticut office serves as a legal assistant and as an advisor on matters relating to securities and finance. His ten-plus year career includes positions in corporate finance, institutional trading, institutional sales and investment banking. He currently serves as an officer and/or member of the board of directors of various publicly traded companies. A holder of securities licenses Series 7, 24, 63, and 65, he is the Chief Financial Officer and member of the board of the Puritan Financial Group, a publicly traded financial company, and of its two NASD member brokerage firms Puritan Securities, Inc. headquartered in Westport, Connecticut and Knightsbridge Securities, Inc. headquartered in Tampa, Florida. He previously worked for Thompson Financial in New York City, and sat on Morgan Stanley's domestic and international trading desks and HSBC's International trading desk. He worked in the domestic U.S. Institutional sales desk at UBS Warburg, where he was given direct responsibility and co-responsibility for large institutional accounts, including several hedge funds. He previously was employed in the corporate finance department of LensCrafters' Canadian headquarters in Toronto where he was involved in a CDN $20 million sales retail optical chain acquisition, in addition to the capital and operational budgeting. As a financial analyst, Mr. Lapkin wrote the monthly management discussion and analysis used for corporate reporting. Mr. Lapkin graduated with honors from Syracuse University with a Masters in Business Administration (concentrations in Finance and Statistics) and the University of Manitoba, with a Bachelor in Commerce with concentrations in finance and economics.
Lambert JCM Kassing - DIRECTOR EUROPE
Lambert Kassing began his career after completing his studies in business economics with a specialism in Tax Law at the Rotterdam Erasmus University in 1989. During the last few years at the University he worked as a personal assistant of the renowned professor Dr Jan H Christaanse and assisted him with his many activities among others as Secretary General of the International Fiscal Association and as the chairman of the Tax Committee in the first chamber of the Dutch parliament. In these years, a colleague student from Groningen and him founded the still existing monthly published magazine “Forfaitair” for all Dutch university students specialised in tax law (at that time 2.000 students) connected through the National Committee for Tax Students (Landelijk Overleg Fiscalisten, LOF).
Within an intense activity as a young tax consultant within Price Waterhouse Lambert Kassing concentrated his efforts in management of an international tax department, , the education of new tax assistants, the creation of a marketing database and the library services for international tax laws. During these years, he also graduated for the European Tax Law studies and was rewarded by his professors for presenting the best paper of his year. One of his final tasks was the setting up the merger and acquisition department for Price Waterhouse in Holland jointly with three other colleagues.
He, like many others, had come to the realisation that serving clients could not always be done on a time spent basis. This was the main reason for him to join a smaller accounting firm in the centre of Holland (Crop de Kleuver / Schram Konijnenberg). After two years he incorporated his own firm, which he left when it was set up and organised well (Cappa Accountants and Tax Consultants in Zoetermeer). In 1997, Lambert Kassing had some major artists as his clients. One of these was an opera production company, which he took over. As an opera producer, Lambert Kassing did create productions of AIDA, Carmen and Madamma Butterfly in Zurich, London, Helsinki, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Verona, Pretoria and Doha (Qatar) for at least two hundred thousand people in total. Aside from various famous singers various orchestras were involved in this multi-million productions, among others the famous ones of Arena di Verona and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In absence of local promoters who could present this type of shows on a world wide scale, Lambert supported the Operama artistic director, Giuseppe Raffa, in his activities as a composer of a new musical Gitana. In 2004, Gitana was launched in Madrid to various Media Companies.
After his active work as a tax consultant and in between the opera projects, Lambert Kassing was hired by various companies as interim manager. One of his latest project involved the incorporation of a tour operating business for disabled people -Care Travel. Lambert Kassing met David Havenaar in December 2004. They both agreed on the fact that merging both their expertise – being project management and hands on financial knowledge – would be an excellent combination for clients in major financial restructuring. Finally it took them until October 2006 to join their expertise into a joint venture company being Statenconsult BV, which company now is actively engaged in various projects bringing in the expertise in finance, business development and organisation.
