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Richard C. Kang

Chief Investment Officer & Director of Research

Richard Kang has served as our Chief Investment Officer and Director of Research since September 1, 2008. He has been active in both institutional and individual asset\/risk management for over thirteen years with extensive experience in alternative asset classes, especially hedge funds and managed futures, as well as strategies applying the use of passively managed instruments. Mr. Kang began his career in 1995 at Guardian Timing Services, a Toronto based hedge fund, spending over six years with such boutique investment firm whose services for institutional investors focused on: 1) tactical asset allocation strategies using index derivatives, 2) Long-short US equity programs, and 3) Structured products with underlying hedge fund strategies. Many of these strategies employed the use of the earliest ETFs.In 2001, Mr. Kang was hired to build and manage the investment management subsidiary for Affinity Financial Group, a private wealth management firm. In late 2002, Mr. Kang co-founded Meridian Global Investors (“Meridian”), an investment counseling firm managing globally diversified portfolios including both traditional and alternative asset classes primarily through the use of passive instruments. For private investors, mandates were global long-only asset allocation mandates with option overlays. For institutional investors (multi-strategy hedge funds and FOFs), mandates were primarily short-only "beta filtering" overlay programs to offset unwanted market risk\/exposures but also to advise on areas of new or alternative beta exposures to consider based on statistical analysis. In addition to running Meridian, in the summer of 2003, Mr. Kang was retained by a Toronto based start up fund-of-hedge-funds, Quadrexx Asset Management, for two years to oversee its operations in the role of Chief Investment Officer.Having departed from Meridian at the end of 2006, Mr. Kang then focused on work outside of Canada, consulting for various asset allocators as well as fund managers in the areas of hedge funds and ETFs. From the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008, Mr. Kang helped start up and was the first CIO of ETFx Indexes LLC, a boutique index provider focused on alternative investments (alternative asset classes, alternative indexing methodologies, alternative themes and strategies).Mr. Kang is frequently engaged as a speaker on a broad array of topics ranging from instrument types (ETFs, hedge funds, derivatives), portfolio management (strategies involving asset allocation, use of alternative investments, Emerging Markets) as well as risk measurement\/management. He has been quoted in a number of publications including The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Investors Business Daily, SmartMoney, CBS MarketWatch and BusinessWeek. In addition to business television appearances and writing articles for various industry publications and journ als, Mr. Kang has served as a chairman, moderator, panelist and advisory board member at numerous industry conferences in the United States, Canada, and Europe as well as more recently in the Mideast and Far East Asian regions.