Who We Are

Rich Pastore is the founding member and chief executive of Pastore Houldsworth & Co.  He has approximately 20 years of experience in the energy industry covering a range of activities involving asset valuation, optimization, risk management, and trading.

Rich began his career on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange; and he has held various trading and executive positions with Kinder Morgan / KN Energy, Equitable Resources, TXU / Enserch, Louis Dreyfus Energy Corp, and Cooper Neff.

Prior to founding the consultancy, Rich’s professional activities included responsibility for portfolio profit and loss, management of fundamental research activities, valuation of structured transactions, consultation on marketing strategy and execution, development of risk management policies and practices, and the economic optimization of commodity assets such as storage and pipeline transportation.

Rich is a CFA charterholder, a member of the Houston Society of Financial Analysts, and a graduate of Dartmouth College.

Mark Houldsworth is the chief technologist for Pastore Houldsworth & Co.  He has over 25 years of experience in structuring, trading, and quantitative analysis. Throughout his career he has been active in building risk management, asset valuation and derivative tools and models.

He joined the consultancy after holding the position of SVP and Director of Quantitative Analysis in the Risk Group at BNP Paribas Energy Trading; and prior to that, he was Senior Vice President of Quantitative Analytics at Cinergy and Fortis Bank, where he scripted all of the derivative models for natural gas, power, and crude oil.

Mark has developed numerous exotic options for physical assets and successfully defended his valuations and techniques to auditors.  His career has covered a variety of activities ranging from sophisticated pattern recognition modeling to trading and origination, and even field work as a member of a pump-truck crew.

Mark earned his PhD in Econometrics from Michigan State University.