Eapen Chacko

Our founder, Eapen Chacko, has been the Chief Financial Officer of two public companies.  As CFO of Possis Medical, Inc. he turned around and restructured a money-losing business model into one which increased its enterprise value ten-fold over six years, to $700 million.  He took the company through Sarbanes-Oxley as an accelerated filer.

A native of New York City, Eapen earned his A.B in Economics at Columbia College in the City of New York.  He earned his M.A. in Economics from The Johns Hopkins University, where he specialized in operations research, international economics, and monetary economics.  Eapen spent his junior year abroad at the University of York, where he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics, specializing in international economics, public finance and European integration.  He has taken additional courses in finance at the Stern School of Business at NYU.  He has taught economics at The Johns Hopkins University, and at Towson State University.  He has been a guest lecturer in the evening MBA program at the University of St. Thomas.

He spent ten years as a senior officer of the United Nations in New York.  Eapen led a multicultural, multidisciplinary team of researchers which helped formulate an economic regime for developing subsea mineral deposits on the outer continental shelf beyond the territorial limit.  This regime became enshrined in international law in the Third Law of the Sea Treaty.  His unit also provided technical assistance to mineral development projects in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Eapen was able to foster a constructive dialogue between the biggest multinational mineral companies, international organizations and funding sources, both private and multilateral.  This early and extensive international experience gives us a unique ability to understand the importance of cultural nuance and sensitivity in achieving strategic, business, or policy goals in a global environment.

Shifting to a career on Wall Street, Eapen joined the consulting arm of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, where he provided twenty-five Fortune 250 companies with strategic planning, industry and financial forecasting services leveraging a dedicated research team. His client companies were global leaders in the energy, chemicals, basic materials, and precision manufacturing industries. 

Working as a buy side analyst and as a sell side analyst for a number of firms, Eapen established a reputation as an independent, astute researcher with a unique approach to uncovering value not recognized in the market place. Eapen covered retailing, restaurant, consumer products, distribution, building and materials and specialty chemical companies. He was always able to distinguish between a good company and a good investment, for the benefit of his customers. He earned a Wall Street Journal All Star Analyst rating for his stock picking abilities. Eapen has extensive experience with capital raising, mergers and acquisitions, and with initial public offerings. He has been widely quoted in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, and the Wall Street Transcript. 

He currently serves as a director of Hawkins, Inc. (NASDAQ: HWKN), where he is the audit committee Chair and serves on the governance committee; the company is a $200 million distributor and compounder of bulk and specialty chemicals.  He is an “audit committee financial expert,” under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  Eapen also serves on the board of an emerging biopharmaceutical  company with an innovative product to treat heart failure. 

Eapen earned his first degree black belt in Karate under Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura, he has a personal interest in conservation, climate change and new energy technologies, and he uses this expertise in his role as Chair of Conservation Commission of the City of Eden Prairie, Minnesota.  He has been a volunteer mathematics tutor in inner city schools since his undergraduate days to the present, because of his belief that math skills are vital to developing confident and capable citizens of tomorrow.  He is widely travelled internationally, and he earned his Certificat d’Aptitude Linguistique in French from the United Nations Language Service.  He is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, Financial Executives International, and the National Investor Relations Institute.