Mark V. Santo, founder of MVS Counsel, is an accomplished senior executive with extensive international business, law, finance and managerial experience. Mark began his international legal career following his graduation from Georgetown University Law Center with a post graduate law degree in International and Comparative Law. Over a twenty year career in the international business field, and travelling the world many times over, Mark has acquired an extensive network of international associates and colleagues at the highest levels of law, business, academia, and world affairs.

Early in his career, Mark joined the Finmeccanica Group of Rome, Italy. (www.finmeccanica.it). Finmeccanica is one of the world’s largest aerospace groups engaged in the development, design and manufacture of aircraft, helicopters, satellites, missile systems and other equipment for the defense, aeronautics, transportation, helicopter, energy, space, information technology and microelectronic industries.

Mark played a key senior executive role in transforming Finmeccanica’s industrial process automation group, Elsag Bailey Process Automation N.V., into the then most important investment in the U.S. by an Italian company. Specifically, Mark served as Group Vice President and General Counsel with respect to the management of over $3+ billion dollars of cross border mergers and acquisitions. This consolidation program within the industrial process automation sector resulted in Elsag Bailey revenue growing from $300 million to $2 billion within a seven year period, and culminated in a workforce of 12,000 employees and 40 operating units in 25+ countries. Upon its consolidation program, the Elsag Bailey Group became the second largest process automation group in the world, with its shares listed upon the New York Stock Exchange. Mark played a major role in the subsequent divestiture of the Elsag Bailey Group in a sale to Asea Brown Boveri (“ABB”) at a 100% increase in share value (www.abb.com).
Following the sale of Elsag Bailey, Mark pursued management opportunities in the technology sector. He has represented technology enterprises in the raising of private equity as well as serving in senior executive management roles. In 2003, Mark acquired Parvus Corporation, an aerospace electronics group based in Salt Lake City on behalf of a European based multinational, the Eurotech Group of Udine, Italy (www.eurotech.com). Following this acquisition, Mark served as President of Parvus Corporation and successfully led the restructuring of Parvus and grew its revenue and profitability (www.parvus.com).
 
The senior legal and executive management experience afforded Mark during his career has instilled in him a deep knowledge and understanding of  the difficulty and challenges with respect to crafting a compelling business strategy, the communication of same throughout the workforce, the  challenge of meshing together diverse cultures, management styles, and product and system platforms on a post acquisition basis, and a keen understanding of the markets served and their respective competitive landscapes. He has participated in large securities offerings upon public exchanges in the US and Europe and managed the difficult challenge and fragility of the process involved in divesting a large enterprise at a significant mark-up to its share trading price.
Mark has also recently served as an Adjunct Professor at Duquesne University’s John F. Donahue Graduate School of Business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he taught Strategic Formation and Implementation. He was also elected to serve as President and CEO of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, an eighty-three year old Cleveland based institution.