MARK S. VAN HORNE, MBA, BA, is a respected international consultant. His business expertise is focused on finance, real estate and technology. He is the Managing Partner of a US investment partnership with real estate interests in Texas, Minnesota, California and Mexico. Mr. van Horne was Vice President of Finance for seven years with one of the largest investment firms in Saudi Arabia, with total assets in excess of $3 billion. In this capacity, he was in the Middle East for five years developing and supervising projects in eight countries, with a value of over $800 million. He then headed its Asian office in Hong Kong for two years, where he developed major real estate projects in Hong Kong, Macau, China and Malaysia with a total value of $300 million. These projects included urban resort hotel properties, residential developments, and agricultural enterprises. Responsibility for these projects required a wide range of property investment and management skills from identifying, evaluating and financing investments to planning, costing, site location, contracting, financing and construction management. As an investment banker, Mr. van Horne has worked with many clients in the start up and venture capital phase. These have included business ventures in the areas of automation, video technology and Computer Aided Design (CAD) software development. He has established companies developing medical equipment and computer controlled laser manufacturing techniques, based on technology developed by research laboratories at the University of Texas. These research and development efforts have produced several important commercial applications including an eximer laser used for eye surgery, a non-invasive portable lead paint detector, a selective laser sintering device for the machine and manufacturing industries. He has been closely involved in early phase energy projects, including the licensing of new alternate fuel systems for automobiles, methods to increase pipeline efficiency, and techniques of liquefying and transporting natural gas at low pressures and normal temperatures. In his energy projects, Mr. van Horne has worked in cooperation with the Energy Research Center at the University of Oklahoma. This experience has allowed him to see a wide range of opportunities in technology and energy from the prospective of manager, financial professional and investor.
Mr. van Horne has extensive prior international experience, having lived and worked throughout the Middle East and Far East for nearly ten years. He has been responsible for projects with Admiralty in Sierra Leone, Bulgaria, Armenia and the Republic of Moldova. Mr. Van Horne has a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business Administration with emphasis on finance and real estate and a Bachelor of Art (BA) degree in Economics from Stanford University. He is a US citizen.