Steven Theede joined Yukos as Chief Operating Officer in 2003 and was President of Yukos-Moscow, the Yukos Executive Management Company. He served as President and the Chief Executive Officer as well as Chairman of the Management Board for Yukos Oil Company between 2004 and 2006. Between June 2005 and August 2006, he was a member of the Yukos Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the Board.

Steven earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Kansas State University in 1974 and turned it into an impressive and extensive career lasting more than 40 years in the oil industry. He has garnered extensive operational, corporate and executive leadership experience around the world, mostly while building his career at Conoco – later ConocoPhililps.

His experience and expertise spans a range of integrated oil company business activities, including Marketing, Refining, Corporate Strategy, Business Development, Pipeline, Rail and Trucking, Corporate Mergers and Exploration and Production.

In the mid 1990s, he served as CEO and Managing Director of Conoco’s UK refining marketing company, Conoco Limited working out of Warwick, England. While there he also studied International Energy at Oxford University. Upon returning to the US he took over as General Manager of Conoco’s Lower 48 Exploration and Production activities in the US. He was subsequently promoted to Vice President of Human Resources for Conoco Inc and was one of the seven members of the Corporate Management Committee.

A further promotion in 2000 led to his living and working back in England, this time in London as President of Exploration-Production for Conoco’s European, Russian and Caspian businesses, a role that he filled until August 2003 when he accepted an offer from Michael Khordokovsky to move across to Yukos as Chief Operating Officer. While in his Conoco position he also led for Conoco the merger of the Conoco and Philips Exploration and Production Companies as part of that overall corporate merger.

Steven is a past non-executive director of Serica Energy PLC, a role he held from 2007 until 2016. He is involved in a number of outside activities. He was awarded the DuPont Marketing Excellence Award and has been inducted into the Kansas State Engineering Hall of Fame.  He currently serves as a director of the Kansas State University Foundation and he and his wife Kay are major contributor to the University. He is also a business owner in his home state of Kansas.

David Godfrey graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, summa cum laude, in 1987, with a B.A. in Political Science. He received a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law in 1993.

Godfrey went on to a successful career as an attorney, practicing law with a number of prominent international law firms, including Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, Chadbourne & Parke, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and White & Case. He also spent two years at the International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank.

Godfrey was hired as Special Counsel by Yukos Oil Company in April 2002; he was promoted to Vice President and General Counsel of Yukos Oil Company in January 2005.

Marc Fleischman is an advisor to global corporations, investment funds and foundations.

Fleischman spent 25 years in finance working in London, New York, Frankfurt, Mexico City and San Francisco. He held senior roles within the fixed income businesses at RBC, Citibank, Bear Sterns, Morgan Stanley and Dresdner Bank.

He was a Visiting Scholar at New York University in the International Relations program where he examined the connections and interplay between international relations and international business.

In addition to his roles at the Yukos Foundations, he currently serves on the board of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR), a non-profit, non-governmental think tank based in London whose mission is to analyse and promote the understanding of political violence and radicalisation.

He earned his BA in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Michel de Guillenchmidt is the former Dean and Professor Emeritus at Paris Descartes University who now works as an attorney in both Paris and Brussels. He is an honorary member of the Conseil d’Etat, which acts as both legal adviser to the executive branch of the French State and as the Supreme Court for administrative justice.

de Guillenchmidt was appointed to the Conseil d’Etat after graduating from Ecole Nationale d’Administration in 1967. He served as deputy director at the French Department of Labour before moving to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. He was appointed as Director of the Ministry of Industry and Research in 1978 before becoming a partner at the law firm Gide Loyrette Nouël in 1979. He returned to Conseil d’Etat two more times, in 1984 and in 1989. Between February 1987 and May 1988, he served as Director of the Ministry of Universities and High Education.

With a rapidly recognized speciality in the field of legal reform, de Guillenchmidt was appointed a member of the European Community’s Taskforce for legal reforms in the States of the CIS between 1992 and 1993.

He has developed an impressive international reputation as an expert in law, leading to his employment as a Professor at the Paris Descartes University in their Faculty of Law. He became Dean of that Faculty in 2003. In 2006, he acted as an adviser to the Algerian Finance Ministry for their reform of tax litigation.

He is a Professor in Abu Dhabi Sorbonne University, teaching a Master course on international arbitration and has a good experience, as an Arbitrator. Guillenchmidt speaks French, English and Russian.

Outside his career in law, de Guillenchmidt has served as an elected representative for the Blois district, and was a deputy member of Parliament for Paris between 1981 and 1986. He is the author of numerous publications across Europe on the subjects of taxation, administrative law, environment and international arbitration.