FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ladon Johnson Appointed Chief Financial Officer, Cibus And President, Cibus International
New European office opened in the Netherlands
San Diego, California (January 20, 2009) — Cibus, a leading plant trait development technology company, has named LaDon Johnson as its chief financial officer and also as president of the newly-launched Cibus International, headquartered in the Netherlands.
“Cibus is expanding its activities outside of the United States to fully leverage its proprietary RTDS™ technology and its benefits to the international agricultural community,” said Cibus president Keith Walker. “To do this, LaDon Johnson is establishing a presence in one of our key markets, Europe. We’re pleased to have LaDon on board to deliver sound financial strategy and grow our global presence around Cibus’ RTDS technology.”
Cibus’ proprietary gene conversion technology, RTDS, enables seed producers to develop plants that are quicker to market with less regulatory expense. RTDS technology is a non-transgenic approach for providing plant improvements as compared to classical genetic transformation, a process leading to GM products. Cibus partners include BASF, Valent U.S.A. Corporation and The National Sorghum Producers.
A veteran senior financial executive, Mr. Johnson has experience in corporate transactions, finance, international business, IT management and human resources. Prior to Cibus, Mr. Johnson established Johnson Consulting in the U.S. and Belgium, with recent projects including biofuels transactions, customer development work for a genetic specialty business and seeds business mergers. Mr. Johnson previously served as managing director and chief financial officer at Advanta, the fifth largest crop seed company in the world. He also served as chief financial officer for SeedWorks, Inc., a company that developed proprietary germplasm and produced commercial vegetable seeds in major global markets.
In addition, Mr. Johnson held a variety of executive level positions at Garst Seed Company—from financial planning manager to controller to chief financial officer—where he was responsible for leading the integration process of the AgriPro Seeds acquisition and achieving organic growth based on strategic plan development. Mr. Johnson also worked at Gaylord Container and McGladrey & Pullen in accounting roles.
Mr. Johnson received his B.A. from Iowa State University and is a Certified Public Accountant.
The Rosen Group
Shawna Seldon
212.255.7541
Notes to Editors:
About Cibus
Cibus is a privately held San Diego-based trait development company. Cibus produces environmentally friendly crop traits for the agricultural community that do not carry the market-resistance or regulatory burden of attributes engineered through the introduction of foreign genetic material. The Company accomplishes this through the application of a new and proprietary technology called the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS™), which has proven itself in the laboratory with several different crops, and in initial field trials of Cibus’ first commercial crop.
