Ethan Hathaway

Richard holds a B.S. in International Business Administration from San Jose State University in California. His professional experience spans 19 years, 5 of which were spent with Wells Fargo Bank. Another 5 were spent honing his global banking skills, when Richard was intimately involved with International Trade Finance, Real Time Gross Settlement and Cross Border Banking. The past 9 years have been in the private and high-tech sectors providing high-level consulting services, business analysis, project management and training to a wide range of banking clientele across the globe. He has spent extensive time servicing a diversity of "financial institutional" clients, in South Africa, Poland, Sweden, Ireland, Netherlands, Greece, Bermuda, Malawi, United Kingdom and across North America. Clients that Richard and Citadel Advantage have dealt with such notable firms as AIB Bank, Eurobank, ABSA Bank, CitiBank, Swedbank, INDEbank, IBM, Montran and Fundtech, as well as many others. Richard has also filled the role of advisor to central banks on payment systems and technical payments issues. Furthermore, key staff from the Bank of England, South African Reserve Bank, Central Bank of Ireland and Bank of Portugal who have attended training sessions presented by Richard.

Steve Lesser is an industry and services consultant with over 35 years work experience. This includes strategic negotiating, consulting, development and implementation of organisational change, leadership, marketing, sales and credit programs and project management for multi-national and regional companies worldwide. He is the Regional Managing Director of a consultancy which he established in 1991, following a successful career in business and the financial services industry. Steve manages relationships throughout the Asia Pacific region. Major clients include Citigroup, DHL, HSBC, JP Morgan, Maxis Communications, Timex, UBS, Vodafone and many others. He has been actively consulting and training in Australia and New Zealand as well as the South East Asian Region (primarily in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippines) for over a decade. Client implementations include state-of-the-art development and implementation of sales and marketing programs for multi-national and regional companies as well as negotiating, project, leadership and other high-leverage competency strategies. Steve is also an accredited Insights (TM) profiling and personality system professional. As an adjunct university lecturer, he teaches in several market related programs at both graduate (MBA) and undergraduate level, specialising in negotiating, marketing, retailing, project management and finance disciplines. Steve has had many articles published relating to implementation of strategies, project management, marketing and sales. He has collaborated on a book and training outcomes related to the leading of organisations through the management of strategic ideas. He has also provided advice, articles and reviews for publishers in Australia. He is also a fellow, Associate, Director and Member of a number of industry-related bodies. Steve is also a frequent keynote speaker at local, regional & international management, financial and strategic conferences. Steve believes that real success comes from the development of long-term strategic retail & commercial business relationships.