David Hamilton Evaul's Bio

1. Born 1951: Detroit, Michigan

2. Local Poker Games 1965-1969: As a teenager, Mr. Evaul earned his spending money by participating in local poker games in Michigan. This was his first opportunity to create a simple strategy to solve a complex problem. As a general rule, Mr. Evaul just played good hands, folded bad hands, and let the math reward him.

3. Southfield High School 1967-69: Graduated second in a class of over 1,000. Varsity Track and Basketball. At no point prior to the practice of law did Mr. Evaul access any source of revenue except from his Poker playing.

4. Western Michigan 1969-73: BS in Paper Engineering with high honors (full academic scholarship and partial athletic scholarship). High Jump on Track team; earned four Varsity Letters, set school record in High Jump, second team All-Conference. Continued playing Poker for spending money.

5. Year off from academics 1973-74: Preparation to completely focus on law school and to establish Florida residency with his grandfather in Delray Beach, FL. This allowed Mr. Evaul to qualify for in-state tuition at the University of Florida law school in 1974 -- a simple solution to a difficult financial issue. Mr. Evaul continued to play Poker for spending money.

6. Russell Morrison and Owen Henderson 1974: The last stop before law school was a visit to Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay to visit Mr. Evaul's friends, Mr. Russell Morrison an Mr. Owen Henderson at their farm. Mr. Morrison and Mr. Henderson had completed successful careers at Standard and Poor's as President and Vice President, respectively, and by 1970 were full-time investors with real estate, agriculture, stock, and oil/gas investments. Although Mr. Evaul did not know it, Mr. Morrison and Mr. Henderson were his first investment mentors. They shared with Mr. Evaul that in their roles at Standard and Poor's they had been instrumental in completing the adoption of computerizing the CUSIP identification of each New York Stock Exchange publicly traded stock to increase dramatically the liquidity of the New York Stock Exchange -- a simple solution to a complex issue. Mr. Morrison also shared the time he had suggested to a company considering a complex acquisition that simply running the numbers made it clear that the company would be substantially better off if it just bought back its own shares with the money in was contemplating using in the acquisition. While it is standard fair today to look to buying back company stock, it was a less common practice in the 1960's. These were the two more examples of finding simple solutions to complex problems to which Mr. Evaul was exposed. In addition, today's VALAD PLUS® model portfolio includes two stocks that Mr. Morrison first recommended to Mr. Evaul in the early 2000's.

7. Law School University of Florida 1974-77: JD, Law Review, top 15% of Class. Quit Poker the day law school began to focus on Law School.

8. Law Clerk Meshon, Sawyer, et al. in Miami Spring 1976 and Troutman, Sanders, et al. in Atlanta, Summer 1976: First paid employments.

9. Law School, University of Florida 1977-78; LLM in Taxation; Top 15% of Class: Designed and co-chaired University of Florida JD Legal Writing Program, continued paid employment, while attending the Masters in Tax LLM program.

10. Law Clerk to the Tax Court Judge Irene F. Scott 1978-1980: Mr. Evaul was privileged to have opportunities to argue the merits of cases tried by Judge Scott and to prepare first draft opinions for review. Judge Scott had earned her way to being a Tax Court Judge by arguing cases on behalf of the IRS. This was an outstanding opportunity for Mr. Evaul to learn the value of vehement but well-reasoned debate.

11. Tax Associate at the Shank, Irwin, Conant, et al. Law Firm 1980-1984: Because of his background at the Tax Court, Mr. Evaul was able to use the then relatively new research tool (LexisNexis) to simplify legal research on Tax issues. As such he often was creating a simple solution to a complex problem. In one instance, Mr. Evaul was able to unlock a crucial research issue in a matter of minutes with a well-defined simple Lexus/Nexus search request that allowed a substantial portion of assets to be included in a multi-billion-dollar private reorganization. Prior to the research, it had been assumed that those assets would not be included in the transaction. Because of the law firm clients that included one of the most complex and wealthiest families in the United States, Mr. Evaul was exposed to the tax planning and other issues surrounding family wealth planning (including family private foundations) at a very high level. Responsible as lead tax Counsel for over 20 United States Tax Court cases for high profile clients of the firm.

12. Partner at the Shank, Irwin, Conant, et al Law Firm 1984: Upon seeing the operation of the law firm as a partner, Mr. Evaul came to the conclusion that his future in the practice of law might be best served in another law firm. Mr. Evaul began to look for alternative law firms to join.

13. Partner at Liddell, Sapp, et al Law Firm 1984-1989: Mr. Evaul joined the small Dallas office of a large Houston law firm where he felt he would be able to achieve success based on his ability and his own success or failure. Mr. Evaul created a strategy to take over a 1,000 entity (s corporations and partnerships), unduly complex business structure of his largest client and turn them into a single corporation. This was the most important simple solution to a complex client issue opportunity in Mr. Evaul's legal career. Mr. Evaul also solved a second mortgage deduction issue unique to the state of Texas by working with the US Senate Finance Committee, to create a solution by clarifying the law instead of amending it- another simple solution to complex problems. Once again because of who his clients were, Mr. Evaul was exposed to family wealth planning (including private foundations) at the very highest levels for another of the wealthiest families in the United States. It was in his time at time at Liddell, Sapp, et al law firm Mr. Evaul first met Mr. Adkisson, who at the time was primarily providing Real Estate Consulting Services for a list of substantial clients with complex real estate issues.

14. Oil and Gas Investment in Louisiana 1993-Present: Pursuant to the advice of Messrs. Morrison and Henderson, Mr. Evaul began to invest in Oil and Gas properties. His simple solution to the Oil and Gas investment issues was simply to find Oil and Gas operating partners that you completely trust. Otherwise, there is little hope of success. Because Mr. Morrison and Mr. Henderson had used a trusted operator for over twenty years and recommended them without qualification, Mr. Evaul was successful in his Oil and Gas investments in Louisiana. Oil and Gas investment can be very complex, but the simple solution was to find an operator who Mr. Evaul could trust.

15. Partner in charge of Real Estate and Partnership Tax at the International Law Firm Jones, Day, et al., 1990-1994: At Jones, Day, Mr. Evaul continued to work on and ultimately implement the one entity simple solution for his client as mentioned above. While an elegantly simple solution to the problem, it did take over five years to finish. Mr. Evaul continued his work on Internal Revenue Code Section 469 (Passive Activity Losses), which had begun at Liddell, Sapp, et al.. Ultimately, Mr. Evaul co-authored (with his longtime friend Richard Lipton) the leading three volume treatise on Passive Activity Losses. The Treatise reorganized the Passive Loss Rules contained in IRC Code section 469 and the over 700 pages of explanatory regulations into a manageable one-page flow chart with one page of 34 listed exceptions -- another simple solution to a complex problem applied on a national level. In addition, Mr. Evaul continued his legal representation of wealthy families and their complex estate, family, and charitable issues. With the completion of his work on the one entity solution in 1994, Mr. Evaul began to look for business opportunities to pursue.

16. Shareholder in DeMarini Sports, Inc. 1995-2000: In the mid-1990's, Mr. Evaul designed a litigation strategy for DeMarini Sports, Inc., (DSI) a bat manufacturer owned by a friend of Mr. Evaul's -- Ray DeMarini. For several years, Mr. DeMarini had been making custom softball bats for his customers, one of whom was Mr. Evaul. In 1994, the American Softball Association (ASA) (the largest softball sanctioning body in the United States) banned the use of Titanium bats and the newly developed patent-protected DeMarini Double Wall bat, the Ultimate Weapon. The rationale for banning the bats was not stated, but it is safe to say that both the use of titanium instead of aluminum and use of the Double Wall aluminum bat improved the performance compared to the then standard for softball bats. There were at that time really no performance standards for softball bats other than simple bat length and bat diameter limitations. Mr. Evaul designed a litigation strategy, suing the ASA for $100,000,000 dollars in antitrust damages on the basis that the ASA had no standards upon which to ban the Double Wall bat. In negotiations, it became clear that ASA had banned the Double Wall bat because it sounded like the new Titanium bats. Titanium bats were thought to hit the ball off the bat at a higher velocity than previous aluminum bats and the Double Wall design also appeared to also improve the performance of softball bats. To resolve the dispute with ASA, Mr. Evaul proposed a simple and relatively straightforward solution whereby the ASA would set a speed limit on the speed of the ball off of a bat. ASA agreed. This was a near perfect solution for DSI. What no one realized at the time (except for those with DSI) was that the Double Wall did not increase the speed of the ball off of the bat. Instead, the improvement in performance offered by the Double Wall DSI bat increased the sweet spot of the bat by at least 5-fold. With a 5-fold increase in the sweet spot, a batter could hit his best hits five times as often as he/she could with the previous regime of softball bats. So DSI changed the sound and adhered to the newly invented speed limit. Since every other bat manufacturer was subject to the speed limit of the ASA, DSI had an enormous advantage in the softball bat market for the foreseeable future -- there being a speed limit for all and a sweet spot advantage for only DSI. As a result of his participation in the litigation with ASA, Mr. Evaul was rewarded with a minority interest in the stock of DSI and a position as Vice President of Corporate Affairs at DSI. To protect his rights as a minority shareholder, Mr. Evaul had Mr. DeMarini sign a one-page letter agreement -- a simple solution to a complex problem. Mr. Evaul left the full-time practice of law in 1995, while retaining an Of Counsel role in several law firms for the next few years to supplement his cash flow. In 2000, DeMarini was sold to Wilson Sporting Goods, Inc. and Mr. Evaul had liquid assets of a size that required his focus on how to invest in them. And as a result of the ASA settlement with DSI, today there are speed limit performance restrictions found in a number of other sports including but not limited to bats in baseball and even clubs in golf.

17. Devised the VPIA® SURIS® Approach 2000-2004: SIRUS® being the culmination of a career in which Mr. Evaul was consistently able to find simple solutions to complex problems.

18. Outside Activities 2005-Present: During this time Mr. Evaul provided legal services to certain legal clients (including a National Softball Sanctioning Body where Mr. Evaul first met Mr. Celuch). Mr. Evaul’s primary focus, however, became VPIA®. Mr. Evaul is currently Of Counsel to the Dallas Law firm of Elliott, Thomason, and Gibson, LLP. Beginning in 2018, Mr. Evaul limited his legal practice to VPIA® Clients or potential Clients with legal concerns related to their investments.

19. VPIA® Principal 2005-present: In 2005 Mr. Adkisson and Mr. Evaul founded VPIA®. There after applied and evolved the SIRUS® approach to reduce Risk and increase Investment Returns on Liquid Assets in a manner that was understandable to the Clients of VPIA®. Investment Advisory Services offered through Crescent Advisor Group, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor 


Investment Advisory Services offered through Crescent Advisor Group, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor