Press Release

January 4, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Brian Powers
Caxton Growth Partners
216.867.9779

Caxton Growth Partners Launches After Management Buyout of BakerER
New partnership creates area’s only comprehensive growth consulting firm.

Cleveland (January 4, 2005) – The management team of the former BakerER consulting firm today announced the formation of Caxton Growth Partners LLC. The new firm is the result of a management buyout of BakerER by strategic growth professionals Tim Gregory and Brian Powers.

Caxton Growth Partners opened its doors January 3 with more than 100 customers across 32 states, served by more than a dozen fulltime employees and a network of affiliated professionals. Powers and Gregory were integrally involved in managing BakerER since its formation in 2001 as a strategic employee relations consulting affiliate of Baker & Hostetler.

“We are excited to build on the strong foundation started at BakerER,” said Caxton Growth President Tim Gregory. “Our elite team of highly qualified veteran consultants will continue to make Caxton Growth one of the country’s premier providers of strategic marketplace and workplace growth advisory services.”

Gregory and Powers said Caxton Growth will help emerging companies face complex issues related to top and bottom line growth. Caxton Growth will offer local and national customers marketplace and workplace counseling, with a focus on attracting and retaining new customers and new employees. Its lead offerings will be outsourced sales management and outsourced recruiting.

“We are uniquely positioned to help solve these challenges through comprehensive marketplace and workplace solutions,” said CEO Brian Powers. “Our promise is a simple one: we help companies become the best choice for customers in the marketplace and employees in the workplace.”

Both Powers and Gregory are veteran strategic growth professionals.

Gregory has more than 20 years of diverse business experience successfully developing and executing growth strategies. He has first-hand executive- and board-level expertise in the management of issues around rapid growth, start-up, turnaround, merger, acquisition and strategic technology implementation.

Before joining BakerER, Gregory for 10 years held various roles with Ernst & Young LLP, most recently as director of national marketing. He served as the senior marketing executive for E&Y Consulting during its five greatest years of double-digit, double-market growth. He also previously served as Chief Marketing Officer for a 3000-person publicly-traded high tech services company, where he led global sales, marketing, and strategy efforts, as well as managing the company’s consulting business. Just prior to joining BakerER, he served as vice president of a respected high-tech market strategy firm, where he provided board- and officer-level counsel for major technology companies in North America and Asia. He holds an MBA from Case Western Reserve University and a BBA from Ohio State University.

Powers has centered his career around managing and advising firms facing rapid growth, employment turmoil and significant change. He began his career as an employment and labor lawyer with Baker & Hostetler, counseling companies facing workplace-sensitive events such as reorganizations, corporate downsizings, acquisitions and major lawsuits. He later joined the management team of Small Business News, Inc., eventually rising to the position of president. He subsequently served as COO of Vantage One Communications, where he spearheaded the turnaround of that firm into a nationally-recognized e-commerce integrator. Vantage One was eventually acquired by FutureNext Consulting, where he served as vice president of operations, supervising the hiring, training, development and utilization of 350 consultants in 12 offices nationwide.

Both Small Business News and Vantage One were ranked in the top five of the Weatherhead 100, Case Western Reserve University's annual list of the 100 fastest-growing companies in Northeast Ohio. Powers is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Bowling Green State University.

About Caxton Growth Partners LLC
Caxton Growth Partners offers growing companies professional external resources to help solve problems, leverage relationships, and achieve strategic goals. The promise of Caxton Growth is a simple one: to help companies become the “best choice” for customers in the marketplace and employees in the workplace. Caxton Growth fulfills this promise by offering services in the areas of strategic growth, outsourced sales, sales management, marketing strategy, technology implementation, human resources, outsourced recruiting and regulatory compliance.

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