Mr. McCormick founded a private investment banking firm that focused on the mining sector, which he managed for over 20 years. Headwaters MB offers expert financial advisory services to companies in the specialized areas of mining, encompassing industrial minerals, coal, base and precious metals, energy and other natural resources. Specific services the company offers are financial advisory, merger and acquisitions/divestitures and debt/equity arrangement.

Mr. McCormick's rich, diverse professional background gives him an unusual blend of financial, marketing and technical skills. He has proven expertise in project financings, gold loans, equipment leasing, private placements, acquisition financings, production payment financings and mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Mr. McCormick has also testified as an expert witness in federal court on behalf of various mining companies.

For ten years immediately preceding his investment banking activities, Mr. McCormick was employed in the Global Corporate Banking Department of Mellon Bank and served as Vice President and Manager of the mining section. Under his stewardship, Mellon Bank transformed its mining group's $100 million regional loan portfolio (essentially Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia) into a $1.0 billion diversified international mining loan portfolio, while experiencing no loan losses. To accomplish this, Mr. McCormick expanded lending activities to energy, industrial minerals, coal, and base and precious metals mining companies and projects in Australia, Canada, Europe, South America and the United States. During this period Mellon experienced dramatic profitability improvement in the mining group and consistently had the highest return on assets in the lending department.

Prior to banking, Mr. McCormick was a consulting mining and geological engineer with the John T. Boyd Company, where he supervised economic property valuations and feasibility studies for mining companies with reserve holdings and operations in the United States and Canada. At Boyd, Mr. McCormick also determined project development alternatives for various utilities and mining companies, assisted clients in establishing coal supply agreements, and prepared certified mineral reserve estimates and feasibility studies for banks and various resource related companies, several in support of SEC filings.

In the late 1970's before joining Boyd, Ray gained valuable mine development experience as a project engineer and mineral economist for Consolidation Coal Company in both the Western and Eastern United States. There Mr. McCormick prepared economic ranking and feasibility studies of reserves to identify projects with the greatest profit potential for future mine development. He also conducted several exploration drilling programs and designed mine plans for underground mines.

A certified professional geologist, Mr. McCormick holds a Bachelor's Degree in mineral economics with a geology minor from the Pennsylvania State University and a Master's Degree from the Department of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also taken postgraduate courses at the Colorado School of Mines, and has served on the Board of Directors for the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania, the Society of Mining Engineers, and the Pittsburgh Coal Conference.