Management

Thomas Butler is Chairman and CEO of PayNet, Inc. Mr. Butler brings more than 15 years of new venture and business operating experience to PayNet.

Before joining PayNet, Inc. Tom was President and COO of Discover Card from 1986 until 1998. During that same period, Mr. Butler was also Chairman of the Board for Discover Bank. Prior to 1986, he was Director of New Ventures and Corporate Planning for Sears, Roebuck & Co. Sears' strategy for Discover Card and its business plan were part of his responsibilities. In his 12 years as president, he took Discover Card from start-up losses of over $100 million per year to net profit of $550 million in 1998. In this period the Discover Card grew to 38 million consumer accounts, $33.0 billion in outstanding receivables and 3.6 million accepting U.S. merchant outlets. Gross revenues exceeded $4.0 billion with more than 10,000 U.S. employees.

Tom is a 1964 graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts and of Northwestern University in 1966 with an MBA.

William Phelan is President and Co-Founder of PayNet, Inc.

As President, Mr. Phelan has grown PayNet into a firm with the largest collection of commercial loans and leases, encompassing more than 17 million contracts worth $740 billion. Under his strategic direction, PayNet has become the premier provider of risk management tools and market insight to the commercial credit industry. In his role managing the day-to-day activities of the company, Mr. Phelan oversees the sales, marketing, analytics and information technology functions of the business.

Prior to co-founding PayNet, Mr. Phelan managed an investment portfolio of fixed income securities for Trustmark Insurance Company in Lake Forest, Ill. In this fiduciary role at Trustmark, Mr. Phelan managed asset and mortgage backed securities and corporate bonds to achieve policy holder goals of total return and safety of principal. From 1993 to 1995 Mr. Phelan worked at Dain Rauscher Securities helping pension funds, banks and asset managers meet their client's investment needs. As a consultant at Ernst & Young from 1988 to 1993, Mr. Phelan advised privately-held companies on acquisitions and valuations to help them expand their business and conduct estate planning. Prior to that time, Mr. Phelan worked for International Business Machines Corp. and started his career in 1982 as an operations director in the retail industry.

In 1992 Mr. Phelan became a Chartered Financial Analyst from the CFA Institute. He completed a Masters in Business Administration in 1987 from Loyola University Graduate School of Business where he was a member of the Dean's List and received the MBA designation with a concentration in Finance. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton College in Northfield, MN.

Mr. Phelan regularly speaks throughout the nation on the latest trends at national industry events including: Equipment Leasing and Finance Association Annual Conferences, Synovus Business Banking C&I Forum, and Consortium on Bank Regulation.

National articles Phelan authored include:
Business Loan Delinquency Rates Continue to Edge Up, October 2006
Banks' Small-Business Lending Practices at Odds with Growth Aspirations, July 2006
Leasing and the Economy... Benchmarks Show Varied, but Improving, Credit Trends, May 2004
Technology & Credit: Pooling Lease Payment History, November 2000

Thomas Ware, Senior Vice President, Analytics and Product Development, has 20 years experience in banking and equipment finance, including as Senior Vice President, Operations & Chief Credit Officer of American Express Equipment Finance.

Tom became acquainted with PayNet as a potential customer, while serving as Vice President & General Manager of a billion-dollar business unit at CNH (Case) Capital Corporation. In 1987 he founded Sequa Credit Corporation, which is today a subsidiary of Hypercom. His experience includes independent, bank and captive lenders/lessors and covers equipment types ranging from office equipment, telecom, computer and medical to transportation, construction and agricultural. He also has extensive experience with securitization, structuring transactions with rating agencies and surety providers. As Managing Director of PayNet Analytical Services, he is also responsible for PayNet's Portfolio Benchmarking services.

Tom received a BA with Distinction in Mathematical Economics from Dartmouth College and began his career as a modeler with a consulting firm now part of Mercer Management Consulting. He subsequently earned an MBA from Harvard.

Greg Jaros is Chief Information Officer of PayNet, Inc.

Mr. Jaros has over 20 years of diversified experience in application development, database design and business operations across a variety of industries including commercial credit, financial services, insurance and consumer products. As CIO, Mr. Jaros manages PayNet’s Infrastructure, Development, Data Integration, Internal Operations, Customer Support, Security and Quality functions, as well as being a member of PayNet’s senior management team. He has grown PayNet’s proprietary database of leases, loans and lines of credit to over 17 million contracts representing over $700 billion in borrowings and 2 terabytes of raw information.

Prior to joining PayNet in 2002, Gregory was a co-founder of Diamond Technology Partners (now Diamond Management & Technology Consultants) where he served clients across the country managing system implementation and business information projects from 1994 through 2001. From 1987 through 1994 Mr. Jaros worked at Andersen Consulting and Technology Solutions Company serving clients throughout the United States.

Mr. Jaros has been quoted in various industry publications including Monitor, World Leasing News, ELFA Industry News, and The Lessors Network. He was presenter at the Information Quality Conference at MIT's Sloan School of Management in 1996, in addition to providing a guest lecture at DePaul University discussing The Value of Information.

Jaros’ focus, passion and expertise is in the areas of data warehousing, data & information modeling, information quality and the visual display of quantitative information. He received a BS in Computer Science from DePaul University in 1986 and an MBA from University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business with a dual concentration in Entrepreneurship and Marketing in 1998.