MLV Announces Formation of Advisory Board and Appointment of Dr. Rahul Singhvi as its Founding Director

NEW YORK, June 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- McNicoll, Lewis & Vlak LLC (MLV), a boutique investment bank focused on providing independent financial advice and unique capital markets expertise to corporate and institutional clients in capital intensive industries announced today the formation of an MLV Advisory Board comprised of industry leaders with expertise and experience in a range of businesses relevant to MLV's goal of providing unique and efficient capital raising and growth solutions for its clients.  At the same time, it announced the appointment of Dr. Rahul Singhvi, former President & CEO of Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX), a development stage vaccine company, as MLV Advisory Board's founding director.

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In making the announcement, Patrice McNicoll, CEO of MLV noted, "MLV's mission is to create a new paradigm on Wall Street.  As a leader in At-the-Market (ATM) issuance, we are already delivering to clients the most efficient and cost-effective means of raising equity capital in the public markets.  We are creating our Advisory Board to bring together innovative business leaders to help us continue to develop new and unique growth and capital solutions for both public and private companies in capital intensive sectors."

"We are extremely pleased to have attracted someone of Dr. Singhvi's stature to spearhead our Advisory Board efforts," added Dean Colucci, President of MLV.  "Dr. Singhvi has been a visionary and a business leader in the vaccine and pharmaceutical industry.  During his tenure as CEO of Novavax, he transformed Novavax from a distressed specialty pharmaceutical Company into a premier vaccine development company.  Under his leadership, Novavax rapidly advanced a robust pipeline of technologically innovative and important clinical and preclinical stage vaccine candidates.  With Dr. Singhvi's assistance, MLV will seek to expand the MLV Advisory Board to include other executives with a similar track record of growth, success, and innovation."

Dr. Singhvi commented that, "I was drawn to MLV because of its ability to think outside of the box in advising public companies and in keeping their best interests in mind.   Patrice has assembled a diverse and creative team of professionals to build MLV.  I am delighted to have the opportunity to join them and work together to develop MLV's strategic direction and future product offerings."

Prior to joining Novavax in 2005, Dr. Singhvi served in a number of positions at Merck & Co., where he helped develop several vaccines, including Zostavax®, the only vaccine on the market to prevent shingles.

In 2010, The Daily Record in Maryland recognized Dr. Singhvi as one of the most influential Marylanders in the healthcare field.  In that same year, during Dr. Singhvi's tenure as CEO, Novavax was named as one of the ten most innovative companies in the biotechnology industry by Fast Company magazine.  Dr. Singhvi has participated in the Clinton Global Initiative and serves on the Board of Directors of Immunocellular Therapeutics, a US public company working on cancer vaccines.

Dr. Singhvi graduated with a chemical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, India, where he was top-ranked chemical engineer in his class.  He received both his M.S. and Sc.D degrees in chemical engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar.

ABOUT MLV:

MLV is a boutique investment bank and institutional broker-dealer focused on providing independent financial advice and unique capital markets expertise to corporate and institutional clients in capital intensive industries.  With a focus on raising money efficiently for clients, MLV has rapidly become a leader in the At-the-Market (ATM) transaction market.  Please visit our website:  www.mlvco.com.

For further information please contact:
Randy Billhardt: (212) 542-5882 ([email protected])
Member FINRA, SIPC.

SOURCE McNicoll, Lewis & Vlak LLC