Management...

 

Craig T. Bouchard

Craig is Vice-Chairman of the Board of Esmark, Inc. Together with his brother, Jim, they founded Esmark in 2003 with the acquisition of a steel company in East Chicago, Indiana, for $2.4 million

 

Over the next five years, Esmark acquired 10 steel companies across the Midwest, including the successful hostile takeover of legendary steelmaker Wheeling Pittsburgh Corporation, which made Esmark a publicly traded stock on the NASDAQ. Esmark accomplished the first hostile takeover/ reverse tender merger in Wall Street history and became the 4th largest American steel company. During this time, its revenues grew from $4 million to $3 billion and its employee base grew from 22 to 3,600.

 

In August of 2008, Esmark was sold to Severstal, Russia’s second-largest steel company, for $1.3 billion.

 

In 2009, Esmark was taken private and recapitalized by the Bouchard brothers and their strategic partners. The company now owns oil companies in Oklahoma and Nebraska under the Esmark Energy, LLC subsidiary. Esmark also has subsidiary companies engaged in the in aviation, real estate, sports management, and technology industries.

 

The story of Esmark is being told in the book, "America for Sale: How the Foreign Pack Circled and Devoured Esmark." (www.esmarkquantitative.com) The book is co-authored by Craig T. Bouchard and James V. Koch. (Greenwood Publishing Group, Praeger, September 30, 2009).

 

From 1998-2003, Craig was the President and Chief Executive Officer of New York-based NumeriX, a software company known as the risk management gold-standard to many of Wall Street's global trading institutions.

 

Prior to helping found NumeriX, Craig was a Senior Vice President at the First National Bank of Chicago, (now JPMorgan/Chase). During his 19-year career at the bank, Craig was the Global Head of Derivatives Trading, Head of the Fixed Income Sales Force, Head of Institutional Research, and Head of Asia Pacific, residing in Hong Kong and Tokyo. In 1990-1993, Craig was the Managing Director of CCIC Finance, a joint venture merchant bank in Beijing, which was a partnership of First Chicago, Industrial Bank of Japan, and the Bank of China. In the 150-year history of the bank, with 40,000 employees at the date he retired, Craig was the 2nd youngest individual ever to rise to the level of Senior Vice President at the First National Bank of Chicago.

 

Craig holds a Bachelors degree in Social Sciences from Illinois State University (1975), a Masters Degree in Economics from Illinois State University (1977), and an MBA from the University of Chicago (1981). He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Boston University and the Foundation of the University of Montana. He is an alumnus of Leadership Greater Chicago.

 

Craig was elected to the Hall of Fame of the Illinois State University College of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and is a member of the Hinsdale Central High School Hall of Fame in Hinsdale, Illinois. He holds United States Patent 4,212,168, Power Producing Dry-Type Cooling Systems, which he obtained in his first year out of school when he was an employee of Chicago Bridge and Iron Company.

 

Craig resides in Naples, Florida, is married to Melissa N. Bouchard, and is the proud father of six children; Kai, Justin, Patrick, Shale, Cambelle, and Braidy.