DieHard Batteries Charge up Film Detective John McClane

Experienced chief financial officer Paul Liska has served several greater Chicago corporations, generally for the purpose of ushering in major changes. In the 2010s, Paul Liska was part of the management team of Sears Roebuck, maker of the iconic DieHard battery. Advance Auto, of which Liska has been a board member, now sells them through its Carquest outlets.

To publicize the new source, Advance tied the batteries’ name to the Die Hard thrillers that starred Bruce Willis as case-hardened detective John McClane. A 2-minute television ad made in the movie’s style appeared on the Fox Network broadcast of an NFL face-off between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Green Bay Packers.

The commercial reunited Willis with an old enemy, Theo (played by Clarence Gilyard Jr.) and limousine driver Argyle (De’voreaux White). It begins with Theo’s gang trying to stop McClane from going to Advance Auto for a new battery. Villains bite the dust as the action revolves around a chase between earthmovers that is capped by the requisite explosions.

Willis and company executive Jason McDonell both compared the celluloid hero’s toughness and endurance with the battery’s long-lasting power. Carquest planned to repeat the ad on its social media platforms as winter approached.

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Bushnell Partners with Folds of Honor to Support Military Families

Chicago resident Paul Liska has more than 40 years' experience in business management, which has culminated in him serving on several directorial boards. Paul Liska’s current affiliations include being on the board of directors of Bushnell, an American corporation that specializes in selling affordable sporting optics and related products.

Bushnell has partnered with Folds of Honor, an organization that empowers the families of fallen soldiers. The proceeds of charitable contributions go toward funding educational scholarships and support.

The effort was launched in 2007 by Major Dan Rooney, and Bushnell came aboard in 2011. It was launched in an effort to assist military families in the event a family member serving in combat is killed.

According to statistics provided by the organization, more than 1.4 million dependents have been adversely affected after losing parents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these dependents would not receive educational aid without the help of Folds of Honor.

Bushnell has played an important role in the support of this organization. Since partnering with the group almost nine years ago, it has donated more than $650,000, helping to fund the 5,400 scholarships the charity has given to dependent children of service members killed in action.

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The Proud Tower - Exploring Social Forces at Work Prior to WWI

Paul Liska is a longtime Chicago senior executive who has been instrumental in numerous corporate transformation and restructuring efforts. An avid reader of historical nonfiction, Paul Liska enjoys works such as Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914.

Extensively researched, Tuchman’s classic work is highly observational and does not proceed linearly. Rather, it provides a series of snapshots spanning nations and social and political movements. These together present a composite picture of the forces that led to World War I.

One focus is on Great Britain, which upheld citizens’ rights and freedoms, while nevertheless fostering an extreme wealth and standard of living gap between the upper classes and those who labored beneath them. Early in the 20th century, cogs were already in place for a politics spearheaded by labor movements that would define the UK after the war.

Other in-depth analysis centers on the anti-authoritarian anarchists, who promoted the revolutionary idea of a stateless society. Despite not accomplishing any of their aims, they shook the establishment to its core through high-profile assassinations that included Tsar Alexander II of Russia, U.S. president William McKinley, and King Umberto of Italy. While the tinderbox assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was by a nationalist, the destabilizing effect the anarchists had may have led countries into conflict that culminated in the Great War.

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The Guns of August Gives Lively Insights into the Causes of WWI

A leader in the financial industry based in the Chicago area, Paul Liska has worked with companies such as Bushnell Corporation, Hunter Fan, and several private equity firms in New York. In his leisure time, Paul Liska enjoys reading books such as The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I.

A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a title in the Great War Series by Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August traces the events leading up to the World War I in the summer of 1914. The book has also earned a place on the list of 100 Best Nonfiction Books from the Modern Library.

Unlike the work of academic historians, The Guns of August focuses less on dry facts and more on important figures, along with what they did, said, and felt. Beginning with important events such as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, it delves into the complicated factors that wove together alliances and long-held grudges to spark world-wide conflict.

The book covers the period up until the first days of the war. It concludes on the brink of the First Battle of the Marne, which took place in September of 1914.

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Wintrust - Committed to Local Communities

Paul Liska is a private investor who served in senior leadership roles with some of the biggest public companies in the United States. Paul Liska is also a member of the board of directors of 11 public companies, including Wintrust Financial Corporation.

Wintrust opened its first location in 1991 in a northern suburb of Chicago with an overarching goal of providing financial services (different from the big banks) to the community. Today, the Rosemont, Illinois-based company is in over 175 locations, providing commercial and personal banking services to communities across Chicago, northwestern Indiana, and southern Wisconsin.

The company organizes community events, provides financial education services, and hosts neighborhood cookouts. It also supports its communities by collaborating with local organizations, sponsoring local events, and sitting on local boards.

Wintrust has assets totaling over $36 billion. In April 2020, the company stated that its platform for the Paycheck Protection Program from the US Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration, to help businesses affected by the COVID 19 pandemic, received loan inquires from over 7,700 small business totaling over $3.1 billion. Wintrust proudly noted that over 50 percent of the PPP inquiries were so far for loans below $100,000, which indicates the loans would go to local small businesses as intended.

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The Walker Arts Center's Living Collections Catalogue

Holding a master's degree in management from Northwestern University, Paul Liska has executive-level experience with manufacturing companies near Chicago such as Kraft General Foods and Specialty Foods Corporation. Now working as a private investor, Paul Liska concurrently serves on the board of several corporations and civic organizations, including the Walker Arts Center in Minnesota.

Although the Walker Arts Center temporarily closed to the public on March 14 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it offers several online resources that should be of interest to art enthusiasts and academics, including its Living Collections Catalogue. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the third volume of the online catalog was published in 2020, while a fourth volume will be published in the summer. The first two volumes were published with support from the Getty Foundation's Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative.

The idea for the Living Collections Catalogue was conceived by the Walker Arts Center in 2009 after the Getty Foundation invited it and eight other museums to explore the possibility of developing innovative new models for scholarly collection catalogs. The three volumes of the Living Collections Catalogue feature essays rich in media integration and in-depth investigations of different artwork. The recently-released third volume, “Side by Side: Collaborative Artistic Practices in the United States, 1960s–1980,” features five cases studies of prominent practitioners during this time.

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The Strategic Importance of the Battle of Vicksburg

Chicago resident Paul Liska has decades of executive experience across multiple industries as a private investor. A former CFO, Paul Liska holds significant expertise in mergers and acquisitions in addition to corporate transformational change.

Outside his work, Mr. Liska enjoys strength training and reading books on historical topics that include World War I and Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was the 18th President of the United States, serving from 1869 to 1877, the period of reconstruction following the Civil War. Prior to this he served as the commander of the Union Army, during which time he claimed major victories over the Confederacy that included the Battle of Vicksburg.

Also known as the Siege of Vicksburg, the Battle of Vicksburg took place in the summer of 1863 in western Mississippi. It resulted in a Union Army victory over Confederate forces led by John Pemberton, with total casualties in excess of 37,000. Grant won the battle following a forty-day siege of the Confederate forces trapped inside the city.

The battle itself was critical, due to Vicksburg’s strategic position along the Mississippi River. In addition to the surrender of Pemberton’s army, the victory gave Union forces control of the entire Mississippi. This effectively cut the Confederacy in two, and also provided the Union army a supply route for moving soldiers and supplies.

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The Four Common Types of Merger and Acquisition Transactions

A private investor and managerial-level finance professional near Chicago, Illinois, Paul Liska has worked in dozens of different fields over a 40-year career. During that time, Paul Liska has become very familiar with merger and acquisition transactions.

Merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions occur when at least two companies settle on a buyout agreement that involves either mutually combining businesses or aggressively taking control of one of them. There are four main M&A types that differ depending on the relationship between the involved businesses. Each of these is briefly described below:

Horizontal merger/acquisition
When two companies that sell similar services or products come together, it is said that they are involved in a horizontal M&A transaction. These two businesses operate in the same industry, at the same stage of production, and are usually direct competitors.

Vertical merger/acquisition
Vertical transactions occur when two businesses operating at different stages of production within the same industry, such as an apparel company and a textile supplier, join forces. Such transactions minimize supply disruptions and increase market share and profit margins.

Concentric merger/acquisition
For a concentric M&A transaction to occur, the companies involved must serve the same customers in an industry, but offer different services or products. Rather, these products and services often complement one another and would benefit consumers when sold together.

Conglomerate merger/acquisition
Regardless of the stage of production that each company involved in a conglomerate M&A operates in, they both belong to different industries. Such transactions help businesses minimize risk.

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World’s Toughest Golf Courses - Bethpage Black

Golf hole and ball
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A Chicago-based private investor, Paul Liska has held senior positions at many notable companies. Paul Liska has worked for Kraft General Foods, Sears Roebuck, and St. Paul Companies, to name a few. In his free time, Mr. Liska is an avid golfer and favors the Club at Wynstone, Castle Pines Country Club, and Winged Foot Country Club. All these clubs offer difficult courses, but for an extraordinary challenge many golfers’ first choice is Bethpage Black.

Bethpage State Park on Long Island has five golf courses, and the Black is the only one that merits a warning. A sign by the first tee cautions golfers, "The Black Course Is An Extremely Difficult Course Which We Recommend Only For Highly Skilled Golfers."

It has twice been the location for the U.S. Open. At the 2002 U.S. Open, the only golfer to break par for the course was Tiger Woods, who also won the event. Designed by A. W. Tillinghast, the course has narrow fairways, plateau greens, and a series of intentionally challenging holes that aren’t for the faint of heart. It consistently ranks among the 100 greatest golf courses in America.