Robert Newman

I am a native of Woodford and Marshall Counties and graduate of Lowpoint Washburn High School. I earned Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Illinois, an MBA in Finance and Marketing from Indiana University and a JD from St. Louis University. I am a member of the Illinois State Bar Association. While attending school and between undergraduate and graduate schools I worked in several manufacturing plants including Caterpillar. I joined a local insurance agency for 5 years prior to attending graduate business school. From there I started in the training program of a large Dallas bank beginning a 40 year career in finance. Migrating to St. Louis enabled me to learn new skills in financing collaterally secured leveraged manufacturing and distribution. I also began the night law school program at St Louis University. After many years in St. Louis I accepted a new challenge as a marketing manager for a finance company’s regional office in Charlotte, NC. After several years this evolved into opening a new loan production office for a large Midwest bank. As markets had changed for leveraged financing my primary sources for financial transactions changed to hedge funds and private equity. I subsequently returned to the Peoria area for family reasons and worked for two local banks in a more traditional role prior to retirement. My wife and I currently live in a farmhouse in Marshall County, IL which we fully restored, completing a majority of the work ourselves.