We invest in businesses with stable cash flow and successful management teams. We serve as active directors or advisers in our individual investments not as business operators.

National Signs
National Signs is a custom manufacturer and installer of high-quality exterior and interior signage. National Signs specializes in unique signage that enhances an organization’s brand and effectively communicates their message. From Houston, Texas to Taipei, Taiwan, NS has designed, manufactured, installed, and maintained quality indoor and outdoor signs that have helped clients increase visibility, improve sales, and heighten customer experiences.

Investment Status: Active, Equity – Control

Address: 2611 El Camino Street • Houston, TX 77054

Telephone: (713) 863-0600

Web Site: www.nationalsigns.com

Dyson Corporation
Founded in 1886 in Cleveland Ohio, Dyson is a niche domestic manufacturer of large diameter, short run, customized fasteners (bolts, screws, studs, nuts, rods) and custom forgings for use in domestic manufacturing and large infrastructure projects including wind energy farms, bridges, dams and tunnels. Dyson has earned three patents and twelve trademarks on its products sold to its top customers including General Electric Company (Wind Energy Fasteners), D.H. Blattner & Sons, Inc. (Foundation Rods), Harris Rebar (Construction), Vistas Wind Systems (Wind Energy Fasteners) and General Dynamics (Military Forgings and Fasteners). 

Headquartered in Painesville Ohio, Dyson operates from an ISO-9002 compliant 130,000 square foot facility equipped with heavy machinery including metal benders, hot parts formers, presses and threaders.

Investment Status: Active, Equity – Control

Address: 53 Freedom Road • Painesville, Ohio 44077

Telephone: (800) 680-3600

Web Site: www.dysoncorp.com

Texas Bolt & Nut
Texas Bolt & Nut (“TBN”) based in Houston, Texas has served the industrial fastener market since 1943 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dyson Corporation. The company stocks raw material, nuts, pins, rivets, screws, studs, and washers. Shipping globally TBN's in house capabilities include custom cutting & chamfering, drilling, lathe designs, threads, milling, and tapping.

Investment Status: Active, Equity – Control

Address: 421 Blueberry Street • Houston, TX 77018

Telephone: (713) 869-7111

Web Site: www.texasbolt.com

Equisales Associates
Based in Houston Texas, Equisales Associates, Inc. (“ESA”) was founded by Mr. John A. Johnson and Mr. James R. Moody in September 1992 to provide both domestic and international power plants, refineries and process plants with time critical High Voltage >35KV (“HV”) transformer substation products, systems and services.  Transformer substation products (approximately 80% of ESA’s historical revenue) include the sale and rental of HV; transformers, breakers and disconnect switches.  Services (approximately 20% of ESA’s historical revenue) include HV emergency electrical engineering, erection, vacuum filling, oil processing and load testing. 

ESA’s products and services are deemed “critical” for when a power transformer substation fails, the result impacts not only the power facility, but often the power grid causing significant financial losses and penalties to the power producer.  Significant financial losses make power producers sensitive to quick response times and in the case of emergency situations, power producers are time sensitive.  Substation equipment is generally made to order and Original Equipment Manufactures (“OEM’s” such as GE Prolec, ABB, and Siemens) require long lead times (approximately 38 to 52 weeks or greater), so timely solutions can greatly reduce financial losses by allowing the power producer to quickly resume the production of electricity.  Additional timely solutions are often required for fast track (< 52 week delivery) power developments including; wind, natural gas and coal fired powered plants.  ESA’s customers are independent power producers and developers including; Calpine, Dynegy, Texas GenCo. and small independent municipalities, whom lack the infrastructure and support of a mature utility.  Additionally, other customers include petrochemical, industrial and pulp / paper producers such as; Exxon, BP, Shell, Goodyear and DuPont.

Investment Status: Active, Equity – Control

Address: 13811 Cullen Blvd. • Houston, Texas 77047

Telephone: (713) 733-3999

Web Site: www.Equisales.com

Carter Control Systems
Carter Control Systems, Inc. ("CCS"), founded in 1981, is a leading designer, manufacturer, integrator and installer of highly engineered material handling systems and their operating controls for high volume mail handlers and mailers. CCS specializes in postal automation, mail processing, in-motion scales and conveyor systems for industrial customers, government agencies, the United States Postal Service and mass mailers nationwide. Customers utilize Carter's solutions to increase the speed, through-put and accuracy of mail processing operations. CCS possesses complete engineering, implementation and support capabilities for project control from initial concept and evaluation through design, installation, testing, acceptance, training and maintenance. Carter is ISO 9001:2000 certified.

Investment Status: Active, Equity – Control

Address: 7618 Hayward Road • Frederick, Maryland 21702

Telephone: (301) 698-9660

Web Site: www.CarterControls.com

Pye & Hogan
Pye & Hogan, located in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, is a leading manufacturer of machine and fabricated precision components for gas turbine engines used in military, commercial and industrial applications, including aircraft, helicopters and tanks. Pye & Hogan produces components for nearly all of the significant military and commercial gas turbine engines manufactured in the United States. The Company also produces components for jet engines used in regional commuter aircraft, executive jets and helicopters. In addition, Pye & Hogan sells spare parts to manufacturers and has rapidly expanded the direct sales to the military of spares, replacement parts and assemblies.

Pye & Hogan's aerospace jet engine components consist primarily of complex engine cases, rings, flanges, ducts, vanes, frames, housings, gearboxes, covers and seals. They are sold to leading engine builders such as Rolls Royce Corporation, Allied Signal Fluid Power Systems, Honeywell and to a lesser extent Snecma. These components are included in such major engines as the Rolls Royce AE 1107/2100/3700 (used on Embraer, Cessna Citation, Northrup Grumman regional and executive jets), the Avco Lycoming T 55 (used on the Boeing CH-47 "Chinook" and 234 helicopters), the Rolls Royce Model 250 / T 800 (used on the Bell 407, 206 and Augusta A119 helicopters). Pye & Hogan's military tank engine components consist primarily of enclosures, gearbox accessories, seals and bearing housings used in Avco Lycoming AGT 1500 engine to power the M-1 tank program.

Investment Status: Active, Equity – Non-Control

Address: 167-1 Elm St • Old Saybrook, Connecticut 06475

Telephone: (860) 388-0831

Web Site: www.pyeandhogan.com

Rawson & Co.
Rawson & Co., Inc. ("Rawson") is a manufacturers' stocking representative serving the flow control instrumentation and specialty product needs of its customers in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida. Rawson provides sales, services, and inventory from 22 local stocking branch operations and ten sales offices. Rawson's offices are strategically located to meet the special needs of its customers.

Rawson serves the refining, petrochemical, chemical, oil and gas production, and pipeline industries, as well as the power generation and the pulp and paper industries. Rawson has recently diversified in order to serve the emerging food processing, semiconductor, and high technology industries of the region.

Investment Status: Divested, Equity – Control

Address: 2010 McAllister • Houston, Texas 77092

Telephone: (713) 684-1400

Web Site: www.rawsonlp.com

Vector ESP
Based in Houston, Texas, Vector ESP delivers information technology (IT) services through customer care centers nationwide. Vector provides professional, managed and infrastructure services that help customers create and execute on their strategic IT focus. With the expertise and resources to develop and implement IT projects quickly, effectively and cost-efficiently, Vector creates long-term partnerships that guarantee measurable results and minimize business risk. The IP hosted computing model, referred to by Vector as net-centric or server-based computing model, will allow for the profitable scaling of a centralized platform to many different customers, and therefore, the establishment of a brand presence for a large supplier in the Small and Medium Enterprise space.

Vector was founded in March 2000 by Wayne Patterson, Louis Girard and Shawn Patterson with substantial investments from affiliates of The Centennial Funds and Nassau Capital. Since inception, Vector has acquired 5 regional systems integrators with a focus on sever based computing and operations in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, Texas; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri; and Chicago, Illinois.

Investment Status: Divested, Equity – Joint Control

Address: 5847 San Felipe, Suite 4200 • Houston, TX 77057

Telephone: (713) 933-8820

Website: www.vector.com

IGI/Earth Color
In February 1999, Integrated Graphics, Inc. ("IGI") was founded by Wayne Patterson, Peter Faucetta and Louis Girard to consolidate the printing industry through the acquisition of seven digital prepress and sheet-fed printing companies, five of which are located in the metropolitan New York City area. In March 2000 IGI merged with Earth Color Group, a rapidly growing full-service provider of prepress, sheet-fed, web-fed printing and bindery/finishing services, with operations in New York City, northern New Jersey and Florida. Today IGI/Earth Color's full range of services, reputation for quality and responsiveness, and state-of-the-art technology have enabled it to become the leading provider of high-quality graphic prepress and printing services in the metropolitan New York City region, the largest market for such services in the world.

Investment Status: Divested, Equity – Joint Control

Address: 527 West 34th Street • New York, NY 10001-1300

Telephone: (212) 967-9720

Web Site: www.earthcolor.com

Acorn Systems
Acorn was started as a "turn-around" company, leveraging the knowledge and experience of Acorn's founder, Steve Anderson, from his studies and services at Harvard Business School and McKinsey. The company operated as a consulting company for some time before realizing that a big issue with many companies trying to focus on profit improvement is the difficulty in accurately measuring cost and profit across customers, products, suppliers, etc. The company evaluated several off-the-shelf Activity-Based Costing (ABC) systems available at the time but found all of them lacking in the critical functionality needed to deliver sustainable profit improvement at an accurate, root-cause, and enterprise scalable level. Today Acorn Systems is the leading provider of profit analysis and activities-based software. The company's Enterprise Profit System™ helps clients to measure, analyze, predict, and uncover sustainable opportunities to increase profits.

Investment Status: Active, Equity – Joint Control

Address: 3050 Post Oak Blvd., Suite 800 • Houston, Texas 77056

Telephone: (713) 963-9000

Web Site: www.acornsys.com

Harris Webb & Garrison
Harris Webb & Garrison, Inc. ("HWG"). Co-founded by Titus H. Harris, Jr., Richard C. Webb and Robert E. Garrison II in February 1994, HWG was formed to fill the void created by consolidation of local financial and brokerage firms into larger national counterparts. HWG is a full service regional retail brokerage, investment banking and financial services firm servicing a diverse group of individual, institutional and corporate clients. HWG's primary activities are investment banking services and retail securities brokerage within the southwest region of the United States. Other significant activities include: underwriting, merchant banking, trading, research and institutional distribution. In January 2000 HWG was merged with Sanders Morris Mundy and Pinnacle Management & Trust (an HWG affiliate) to create Sanders Morris Harris (NASDQ: SMHG).

Investment Status: Divested, Equity – Joint Control

Address: 600 Travis Street, Suite 3100 • Houston, TX 77002

Telephone: (713) 250-4200

Web Site: www.smhgroup.com