Mike Turner, the Allied Minds executive vice president and general counsel has stepped up as permanent co-chief executive with Joseph Pignato, executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Aggressive pursuit

The news out of Boston-based Allied Minds, the intellectual property commercialization company, came from a filing in the London Stock Exchange. Jill Smith, who served as ceo since March 2014, retired Monday to serve on the board of directors at different companies. Mr Turner will continue to serve as general counsel and Pignato will continue to serve as chief financial officer in addition to their new responsibilities. In a joint statement in the filing, Pignato and Turner said their sole focus is to maximize the value for shareholders. The stated, “We will continue to aggressively pursue all monetisation options, balancing the requirement to deliver cash to our shareholders, against the overarching objective to maximise shareholder returns from a portfolio that includes some extremely promising assets.” Turner began working as the general counsel at Allied Minds in May 2014. He has also worked as a partner at DLA Piper and Goodwin Procter. He graduated from the Albany Law School in 1998.

Complementary skill-sets

Peter R Dolan, chairman of the Allied Minds' board, said the board is “delighted.” Mr Dolan explained, “They have driven the transformative fundraisings at Federated Wireless, Spin Memory, HawkEye 360 and BridgeSat and have strong relationships with the CEOs of these companies and their co-investors and commercial partners.  Their combination of transactional expertise, understanding of our portfolio, key relationships, growth experience and track record of generating portfolio liquidity events, as well their complementary legal and financial skill-sets, make them the ideal pairing to execute on the monetisation strategy.”