Philippe Gastone has extensive experience in Corporate Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions and Corporate Development. He has acquired a strong cross-continent and cross-border experience in Europe, USA, South and Central America. He has led corporate development initiatives, acquisitions and divestitures in multiple industries (including food) while working in large corporations, strategy consulting and Investment Banking. He was a co-founder and Principal of Booz.Allen Acquisitions Services (BAAS). He advised and managed growth strategies and transactions for more than twenty years from strategic analysis through execution, negotiating and closing as well as on post-merger integration issues.

Before co-founding Cereus, he was CEO of Beacon Pharmaceuticals headquartered in South Florida. He was previously a Managing Director at Violy&Co, an Investment Banking Boutique focusing on South and Central America. Previously he was a Corporate Director, Development and Mergers & Acquisitions, at Votorantim in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Votorantim is a large private diversified industrial group involved in mining, steel, cement, energy, paper pulp and orange juice, present in South, North America and the Far East. Responsibilities included originating and executing transactions at the global level across the distinct sectors. He oversaw evaluations of potential transactions in the cement and mining spaces in the USA, South America and the Far East.

Previously, he was with CEMEX as Senior Vice President, Corporate Business Development, Europe and North/South America. Cemex is one of the largest cement and building materials manufacturers at the world level.

• Responsibilities included identifying and evaluating potential corporate development opportunities, cross-continents (including acquisitions and divestitures) and presenting results to the Executive Board. Evaluations also included assessment of strategic fit and analysis of potential turn-around opportunities and leading negotiations up to the closing of transactions.

• Led and participated in transactions with an overall value close to $10 billion dollars,

• Built a team of 10 professionals acting as an internal investment bank for Cemex.

Before Cemex, Philippe Gastone was at Merrill Lynch in London and Paris, as Director, French Investment Banking, with an emphasis on mergers and acquisitions transactions. He was previously at Union Bank of Switzerland in London as Executive Director, Mergers & Acquisitions Origination Group for Europe, where he built relationships with clients within mostly the consumer good and food industries, advising on potential cross border M&As and growth driven transaction opportunities. He built at UBS a team of a dozen of bankers in London and Zurich.

Prior to his corporate and investment banking experience, Philippe Gastone was a consultant, lately with Booz.Allen & Hamilton in Paris and Madrid, focusing on Strategy and Mergers and Acquisitions Advisory. At Booz.Allen, he was a Principal and Co-Founder of Booz.Allen Acquisitions Services (BAAS), the division of Booz.Allen which specialized on advising clients in their external growth strategy, deal execution as well as post-merger integration issues. In the early 90’s BAAS was a strong force in the M&A market in Continental Europe for cross-border transactions.

Prior to Booz.Allen, Philippe Gastone was a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group where he worked on numerous strategy projects in Spain, France and South America. Among others, he worked on a multiyear project in Spain participating in a major advisory capacity for the Spanish Government in various food clusters (milk and derivatives, soybean, meat). He also worked on a one-year project in Brazil for a major assignment in the aluminum industry.

Philippe Gastone received an M.B.A. from INSEAD and obtained his Master of Science at Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in France.

Mr. Gastone is a Director of ViZible, an emerging artificial intelligence company based in Denver, CO. He speaks fluently English and Spanish in addition to his native French.