TEAM
Mr. Lamphere has nearly 40 years of experience as a principal investor and financier in rail industry and other private equity transactions. Mr. Lamphere has headed four private equity firms and has extensive operational experience as a Chairman and/or board member for a wide range of publicly traded and private companies.
Mr. Lamphere is the former Chairman of the Illinois Central Railway, Co-Founder of MidSouth Rail Corporation and former board member of Canadian National Railway (Chair of the Finance Committee and a member of the Compensation, Investment, and Audit committees), CSX (Operations, Finance, Compensation, and Public Affairs committees), and Florida East Coast Railway. Mr. Lamphere led teams and boards that bought, managed, and changed operations at Illinois Central, MidSouth, Canadian National, Florida East Coast and Southern Pacific, with alumni leading Canadian Pacific, creating gains for investors in excess of $2 billion.
Subsequently, Mr. Lamphere was a leading director at CN and FLE where rail operating executives from Mr. Lamphere's senior leadership teams at Illinois Central and MidSouth were instrumental in changing operations and optimizing CN and Florida East Coast, creating multi-billion-dollar value creation for shareholders. In addition, members of the team were also successful in turning around Southern Pacific Transportation Company (prior to its merger with Union Pacific Railroad), and Canadian Pacific Railway.
Mr. Lamphere also served as Chairman and CEO of the Prospect Group (NASDAQ:PROS), the first ever publicly traded leveraged buyout fund. Mr. Lamphere was a Managing Director and member of the Board of Directors of the Fremont Group, a diversified investment company with over $9 billion of assets under management. Mr. Lamphere also co-headed the raising and management of Fremont Partners' $605 million private equity fund, his fourth fund. Prior to his private equity firms, Mr. Lamphere was a Vice President at Morgan Stanley & Co.
Mr. Lamphere graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Economics with Honors and from Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar and a recipient of the Loeb Rhoades Fellow finance prize.
MORELESS
Mr. Gupta has more than 30 years of experience as an infrastructure and private equity investor and developer/entrepreneur for private equity-funded transactions. Along with Mr. Lamphere, Mr. Gupta has been deeply immersed in the rail industry for ten years as the co-founder of MidRail LLC, where he has analyzed and negotiated over 25 rail transactions (exceeding $4 billion in TEV), including Dow Rail, which he conceptualized, the acquisition of Patriot Rail Holdings and developing a new railroad company from scratch to run Shortlines railroad track spun-off from a Class I railroad.
His prior experience includes serving as the Founder/Managing Partner of FlatWorld Capital, CEO of FlatWorld Acquisition Corp. (a publicly traded SPAC), and Founder/CEO of a wireless technology company, YadaYada Inc. (created a device similar to the current iPhone) which became the third-largest independent wireless ISP in the U.S in 2000.
Mr. Gupta has significant private equity and investment banking experience with FlatWorld Capital, CIBC Oppenheimer, and JP Morgan Chase. Mr. Gupta graduated from Trinity College with a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering and Economics.