President, CEO
Dennis Wright Michaud, Ph.D. is President and Chief Executive Officer of Southampton Development Company, LLC. He has extensive experience in strategic management, corporate finance, real estate development, and is a noted economist. Dr. Michaud also leads an economic consultancy (Providence Consulting Group, PCG) comprised of current and former members of the faculty of Brown University, Yale University, and the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business. Dr. Michaud has advised an affiliate of the US Department of State to develop a board of director training and enhance corporate governance in the Kingdom of Bahrain. He currently advises boards of several Saudi Arabian and UAE companies. Dr. Michaud is also a director and CEO of U.S. Shipbuilding International that markets and builds maritime Naval Vessels in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He is CEO of TECHNE Properties LLC that develops and builds large-scale residential housing in collaboration with Saudi Companies that are funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
Dr. Michaud has over 25 years of experience in corporate and merchant banking including Nations Bank (now Bank of America) and Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase). While at Chase he facilitated several billion dollars in acquisition and project financing. He also founded and was CEO of a Palm Beach, Florida mortgage bank that focused on financing luxury residential housing acquisitions and a leveraged leasing company in Birmingham Michigan that financed material handling and industrial processing equipment for large corporations and SME’s. Dr. Michaud was a licensed general contractor in Florida who designed, developed, and constructed numerous large residential housing projects in Palm Beach County Florida, and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Dr. Michaud held an academic appointment as an economics professor at Brown University and the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business where he taught courses on international business strategy, economics, and political economy. Previously, he was the director of the Brown University Corporate Governance Research program. He has also been a Professor of Management Practice in the MBA program at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.
Leading a team of seven researchers, Dr. Michaud completed the most extensive study undertaken on CEO compensation and firm performance, with the guidance of Dr. Paul W. McAvoy the former dean of the Yale School of Management and a past member of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors. The Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at Yale University and the Aspen Institute held a joint conference in June of 2010 to discuss the findings and implications of Dr. Michaud’s research.
He has written several working papers and journal articles that address corporate governance and strategy for notable journals and papers. He is also a contributor to the Providence Journal, where he has written opinion pieces on public policy and corporate governance issues. Dr. Michaud has also been a guest commentator on MSNBC, FOX News 25 (Boston), NBC 10 (Providence), and ABC 6 (Providence) speaking on economic policy issues.
Dr. Michaud holds a B.S. Degree from Washington and Lee University, an M.B.A. degree from Emory University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Brown University.