Robert serves as Managing Director and Principal at Commerce Capital Group, LLC. He leads the development of CCG’s strategic focus on advising and investing in infrastructure operating companies serving the end-markets of energy, water/wastewater, telecom, and other basic infrastructure sectors. His Wall Street career commenced with equity sales at Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. in 1982. From 1991 through 1998, he was a Managing Director at The Private Merchant Banking Company (PMB) where he was responsible for the successful takeover by proxy contest of the world-renowned Boca Raton Resort & Club. Through a successful tender offer financed by George Soros Realty, an affiliate of PMB, purchased a publicly traded mortgage partnership, an asset of which became the Ocean Club at Key Biscayne, a highly successful luxury condominium development in Key Biscayne, Florida. Until co-founding PMB, Mr. Hughes served as Vice President-Investments at Prudential-Bache Securities. There he was instrumental in completing numerous private placements of equity securities including initial capitalization for early stage operating companies, real estate and leveraged equipment equity syndications and blind-pool venture and leveraged buyout funds. He serves as Executive Chairman of t4 Spatial LLC. Among others, he has served on the boards of United States Infrastructure Corporation, Osmose Utility Services and, in the non-profit world, the United States Army War College Foundation. Mr. Hughes was educated at The New School for Social Research and the Washington Square College of Art and Science at New York University. Robert moved to Santa Barbara, CA in 1973 where he continues to reside with his wife Susan.