Michael Waks
Prior to founding CST Consulting in 2012, Mike Waks was Vice President of Global External Development at Kraft Foods. Mike helped lead the transformation of Kraft from a predominately North American company reliant on traditional grocery categories to a firm with significant presence in developing countries which has the largest global confectionery portfolio. His team executed over 40 transactions valued in the aggregate at $40 billion.
Before joining Kraft in 2005. Mike held Corporate Development and Strategy positions at Altria, WorkNet, AT&T, Unilever, United Brands, and Air Products & Chemicals. He has also worked in Strategic Market Research at Unilever.
Mike graduated with a BA from Northwestern University and received his MBA from Northwestern’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. While at Northwestern he received the Rosenfeld scholarship in Economics, and was an econometrics research assistant.
James D. Treco
Mr. Treco is an investment banker with more than thirty-five years of experience, principally with Salomon Brothers and its successor, Citigroup. Based in both the United States and the United Kingdom, he has worked on a variety of projects for clients around the globe, including in the Americas (North, South and Central), in Europe (Western and Eastern as well as Russia), in Africa (principally South Africa), in greater Asia (China and India), and in Australia. In the past, he has worked in various capacities with First Chicago Advisors.
Mr. Treco worked to raise capital for a nanotechnology company, worked to sell the Asian rights of New Hampshire water purification company to a publicly held water infrastructure company in China, worked on acquiring an incontinence business, and approached prospective acquisition targets for a large public packaging company based in the EU. He has served on the board of several emerging companies.
From 1996 to 2008, Mr. Treco was based in London. He co-founded the Salomon Brothers Industrial Group in Europe, which generated peak revenues of $242MM. Mr. Treco built relationships with industrial clients and advised them on strategy, capital raising, and mergers and acquisitions.
From 1984 to 1996, Mr. Treco was based in New York City, where he gained exposure in a variety of groups at Salomon Brothers as his career developed. He worked in the Large Capitalization Group with Fortune 500 companies, in the Technology and Health Care Group with emerging companies, and in the Industrial Group with a variety of mid- and large-capitalization industrial companies ranging in size from $10mm in EBITDA to $1bn in EBITDA. He assisted clients with the full range of investment banking products and also completed a successful restructuring of a Fortune 500 company.
Mr. Treco received a BA from Yale University in 1977 and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University in 1984.