Ron F. Richards

Viking Asset Management LLC is an independent hedge fund manager headquartered in Burlingame, California. The firm was founded by Peter Benz and Stephen Rudolph in 2001. They provide investment advice to high net-worth clients.

Biopure Corp. developed, manufactured and marketed oxygen therapeutics, a new class of pharmaceuticals that are administered intravenously to increase oxygen transport to the body's tissues. The company used patented and proprietary technology to develop and manufacture two products: Hemopure for human use, and Oxyglobin for veterinary use. It has developed Hemopure for the treatment of patients with cardiovascular ischemia. Oxyglobin, its veterinary product treated anemia in dogs, is the only oxygen therapeutic approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Commission. Biopure was founded in 1984 and was headquartered in Cambridge, MA.

Wells Fargo Securities LLC is the investment bank asset management and brokerage arm of Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC). The firm is headquartered San Francisco. Their services include fixed-income sales and trading, equities sales and trading, market analysis and research and investment banking and advisory services.

The State Bar of California operates as an official attorney licensing agency. The non-profit company is based in San Francisco, CA. Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker has been the CEO of the company since 2015.

Founded in 1986, Merriman Capital, Inc. is an SEC-registered broker/dealer and investment banking firm headquartered in San Francisco. The firm is a subsidiary of Merriman Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MERR), a financial services firm that focuses on fast-growing companies and their institutional investors. Merriman provides advisory and investment banking, equity research, institutional services, corporate services and venture services primarily to corporate clients. Merriman Capital provides research, brokerage and trading services primarily to institutional clients. The firm offers a full range of specialized and integrated services including: equity research, specialized trade execution, equity capital markets, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, sales and trading, market making, corporate and venture services, restructurings and strategic advisory services. Merriman Capital employs bottom-up, fundamental analysis of small-cap companies in select industries including clean technology, healthcare, technology and consumer/Internet/media. The firm also has expertise in emerging markets, with emphasis on emerging markets in China. Merriman Capital is known to engage in shareholder activist investment strategies. Merriman Capital is a member of the NASD, the SIPC and FINRA. The firm serves as an introducing broker/dealer for Pershing LLC. They do not hold or maintain funds or securities or provide clearing services for other broker/dealers.

Part of Sileas Corp., Optex Systems, Inc. (Delaware) is a holding American company with interests in manufacturing optical sightings. Optex Systems, Inc. (Delaware was acquired by Sileas Corp. from Viking Asset Management LLC on February 20, 2009.