Cristal Baron
Chief Financial Officer - Rice Financial Products Company

As Chief Financial Officer of Rice Financial Products since July 2002, Ms. Baron is responsible for the overall financial management and integrity of the firm.  Prior to joining Rice, she was a Vice President at the JPMorgan Private Bank from April 2000 to June 2002, where she worked with high net worth individuals and their families primarily in the areas of investment management (including publicly traded securities, hedge funds and private equity investments), managing concentrated stock positions utilizing derivative products and other strategies, and trust and estate planning.

Her prior experience includes seven years (1993-2000) as a banker at Merrill Lynch, where she most recently served as a Director in the Municipal Markets division, responsible for (i) marketing, structuring and executing various types of derivative structures and (ii) designing, establishing and maintaining swap programs to assist clients in actively managing liability portfolios. She served as primary banker on more than 50 derivative product transactions totaling over $2 billion and managed the legal, quantitative and administrative details on more than 70 derivative product transactions totaling more than $1.4 billion.

During her municipal derivatives career, Ms. Baron utilized the following products, or combination of products, to create the optimal financing strategy for existing or potential clients: tax-exempt, taxable and hybrid interest rate swap and option products; tax-exempt and taxable fixed, floating and inverse floating rate debt instruments; interest rate hedges vs. a specified bond index or an anticipated debt issuance by a specified credit; inflation-indexed swap and bond products; and equity swaps.

Ms. Baron received her BA from Howard University and her MBA from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

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