Management Team
Benjamin Tran, PhD, President
Dr. Benjamin Tran specializes in cross-border IPO, M&A, private equity advisory, and merchant banking services. Prior to founding United System Capital, he served as president of an Asia-based JV with Brean Murray Carret & Co., a New York-based investment bank that has transacted over 100 IPOs/APOs/SPACs and raised over $4B for U.S. and Asian companies. Benjamin spearheaded the organization to formulate accelerated growth strategy for emerging growth companies via globalization strategies. Benjamin has been seasoned international consultant providing corporate development and interim senior management to SMEs in Silicon Valley and Asia Pacific region. He also served as Interim CEO, board director, CFO, corporate strategist, and sr. advisor for several distressed companies, both publicly traded and private, managing turn-around situations via entries to capital markets. As a Silicon Valley high-tech veteran, Benjamin brings over 30 years of diversified experience including mergers and acquisitions, venture management, strategic marketing and international business development. Prior to his investment and corporate advisory career, Benjamin worked for technology leaders including Micron Technology, Fujitsu Microelectronics, Mitsubishi Electric America, Philips Semiconductors, holding various senior technical and marketing management positions. Benjamin holds a PhD in Business Administration, an MBA from the University of Phoenix and an MS in Electrical Engineering from San Jose State University, California, USA.
Yang Baoguo, PhD, Managing Director
Dr. Yang Baoquo joined United System Capital as a managing director for the Greater China region, being responsible for cross-border M&A executions with a focus in taking US companies to list in the Chinese stock exchanges. Dr. Yang has over 20 years of experience in investment banking, post merger restructuring, real estate management and private equity investment. He is also managing partner of Zhongchi Capital, a 500 million RMB private equity fund based in Shanghai. He is an industry specialist in real estates, consumer electronics, media, tourism and environmental protection. Though his M&A career, Dr. Yang has designed and executed more than 100 domestic and international M&A transactions, having published over 200 research assignments covering major industries in China. He has served as senior executive for several investment companies in China including Hope Investment Management, Delong Industrial Investment Management, and CYTS, the second largest travel company in China listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange. Dr. Yang Baoguo holds a PhD and a Master of Science in Coastal Engineering from Nanjing University and has served as visiting scholar at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Frederick Cardin, PhD, Managing Director
Dr. Rick Cardin has been advising several emerging growth companies on building their businesses through M&A strategy, leveraged financing and global marketing in the areas of B2B, B2C, television, automotive, finance, healthcare, food, franchise, newspaper, agribusiness, environment, data storage, and ecommerce via Harvard Growth Strategies. As a specialist in the healthcare industry at Cambridge Research Institute, Dr. Cardin led a study of trends affecting the health care system leading to national series of seminars to implement healthcare process improvements, $500M financing portfolio evaluation of hospital operations for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Dr. Cardin brings expertise and experience in capital raising, strategic planning and investment analysis, CEO level business development leadership, marketing and franchising. He serves on the Board of Whitney Information Networks (RUSS: OTCBB), a seminar industry leader with market cap of over $200M, and on the Advisory Board of KESDEE, Arkeia, RPost and Xing Cultures. As former CEO of publicly traded food service franchiser O! Deli, he led the company to a national presence with over fifty franchises before selling out to Pacific Equities. Dr. Cardin earned his MBA with distinction and Doctorate in Finance from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He also earned a BA in Economics, summa cum laude, from Tufts University.
Isra Wattanasarn, MBA, Managing Director
Mr. Isra Wattanasarn has twenty years of experience in the financial services and information technology consulting fields. Isra has been a consultant/industry analyst for Fuji-Keizai, one of Japan 's top market research and technology consulting firms. At Fuji - Keizai Isra concentrates on helping clients with the strategy, market research, technology recommendations and information systems analysis. Clients are the world's largest and best known consumer electronics, computer and communication companies. Before Fuji-Keizai, Isra served as a Vice President of Client Services at iframe, an Internet and information technology professional services firm, where he built the strategy group and managed all billable consultants. Prior to that, Isra was a Vice President at Merrill Lynch, in its Private Client Group, where he made venture capital investments in several media companies. He served as a board observer for those companies in which Merrill made private equity investments. Mr. Wattanasarn holds an MBA in Finance from New York University and is a CPA.