Management |
Steven T. Kargman | Founder and President

Steven T. Kargman is the Founder and President of KARGMAN ASSOCIATES, a New York City-based strategic advisory firm specializing in international restructurings. The firm provides strategic advice to clients involved in complex and challenging International restructuring, distressed debt and cross-border insolvency situations. He was formerly the senior restructuring lawyer with the Export-Import Bank of the United States in Washington, D.C.

At Ex-Im Bank, he specialized in restructuring and project finance transactions in the emerging markets and served as the Lead Attorney for the Bank’s Asset Management Division (the Bank’s Division responsible for restructurings and workouts). He has worked on major restructuring and project finance transactions throughout Latin America and Asia in such countries as Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, Turkey and Venezuela.

Among other major transactions, he worked on the $13.9 billion Asia Pulp & Paper restructuring as well as two of the most significant project finance restructurings in Indonesia, the Paiton and Jawa power project restructurings. He was also involved with the Dabhol power project restructuring in India, and he worked on some of the largest restructuring matters in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. [> go to Representative Transactions]

He has interacted with senior officials in the private and public sectors throughout Latin America and Asia. He has also worked closely with senior officers of other creditor institutions, both public and private, in the US and abroad and has played a leadership role on several creditor steering committees and export credit agency working groups.

He previously served as General Counsel of the New York State Financial Control Board, New York State’s chief financial oversight agency for New York City, practiced corporate finance with the international law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton in New York, and served as a law clerk to the Hon. Gilbert S. Merritt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

He has appeared on panels and lectured widely in the US and abroad on international restructuring and project finance topics. In August 2004, he served as a visiting lecturer for a course on international law in Rio de Janeiro sponsored by the Organization of American States. In addition, among other speaking engagements, he has lectured and appeared on panels before the American Bar Association, the Asian Institute of International Financial Law, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Committee on Project Finance), the Center for American and International Law (formerly known as the Southwestern Legal Foundation), The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the Forum on Asian Insolvency Reform, INSOL Europe, INSOL International, the International Bar Association, the International Insolvency Institute, the Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law, the International Law Association (American Branch), the International Project Finance Association, the National University of Singapore Centre for the Study of Commercial Law, the United States-Mexico Law Institute, the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on Private International Law, the Wharton Restructuring Conference, and the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law. [> go to Speaking Engagements]

He has published a number of articles on international finance topics in leading professional publications, including China Business Review, Financier Worldwide, The International Economy, International Financial Law Review, The Journal of Private Equity, The Journal of Structured and Project Finance, and Marine Money. His publications include a three-part series in International Financial Law Review on the major challenges of emerging market restructurings and an article in the Spring 2005 issue of The Journal of Private Equity—Special Turnaround Management Issue entitled “Opportunities and Pitfalls in Emerging Market Restructurings: A Strategic Perspective.” [> go to Publications]

He served as a member of the official United States delegation for the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) project on the development of a legislative guide for insolvency law and has been an adviser to the World Bank and the U.S. Department of State on international insolvency issues. He served from 2001-2004 as an adjunct faculty member at American University’s Washington College of Law for a course on international project finance.

He is a Founding Member and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Insolvency Institute, a leading international insolvency organization. He also serves as Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee on International Bankruptcy of the American Bar Association's Business Bankruptcy Committee. He is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, an honorary association of leading bankruptcy and insolvency professionals, and serves as a member of the advisory board of the Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law. In addition, he is a member of INSOL International, the International Bar Association (Section on Insolvency, Restructuring, and Creditors' Rights), the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the American Bankruptcy Institute.

He has also been a member of the American Indonesian Chamber of Commerce, the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, EMTA (Emerging Market Traders Association), and the United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce (Northeast chapter).

He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, chairman of the Yale Association of International Law, and chairman of Yale Legislative Services. A former Luce Scholar in Singapore, he received his B.A. with Honors from Swarthmore College (Phi Beta Kappa), where he was awarded the Flack Achievement Award and Sarah Kaighn Cooper Scholarship for academic distinction.

Mary Ellen Collins | Senior Advisor—Restructuring

Mary Ellen Collins, a senior restructuring professional with vast expertise in Central and Eastern Europe, has had many years of high-level banking and restructuring experience in the United States and Europe. She has held senior positions with major private and public sector financial institutions and formerly served as Director of Corporate Recovery for the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the multilateral development bank for Russia and the former Soviet Union.

At EBRD, Ms. Collins managed a team of senior restructuring professionals with responsibility for over forty high-risk investments and loans in Russia as well as in the Baltics, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Hungary, among other jurisdictions. During the turbulent period following the 1998 Russian default, she successfully restructured large corporate loans in Russia and in many other countries in the region.

She also managed a number of complex bankruptcy actions throughout Central and Eastern Europe and developed equity disposal strategies for investments in many jurisdictions, including Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Most of the projects involved troubled loans or investments to the private sector, generally with foreign investor involvement, and covered industries as diverse as automobile and truck manufacturing, hotel and leisure, consumer goods, energy and agribusiness.

Ms. Collins currently specializes in advising clients on strategy for projects in the emerging markets of Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the CIS. With a background in restructuring and bankruptcy, as well as management of distressed assets, she advises in such areas as turnarounds and exit strategies. She is currently advising clients in the emerging markets on managing corporate recovery and dealing with growing distressed portfolios, and she has recently provided advice for private equity investors on projects in Russia and the Ukraine, and worked on matters in Latvia and Georgia.

Prior to joining EBRD, Ms. Collins worked in distressed investments, researching and acquiring bankruptcy claims as investments for clients and for her own account. An officer of Security Pacific National Bank from 1980 to 1992, she was Senior Vice President in London and set up and headed the problem asset group in Security Pacific’s Merchant Bank. She handled high-profile distressed cases such as Eurotunnel, as well as leisure and hotel projects in the Caribbean and many real estate development projects in the UK. Prior to her posting in London, she worked with Security Pacific in Paris, Los Angeles and New York. She began her banking career in the international division of Chase Manhattan Bank.

Ms. Collins received a B.S. from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton Graduate Division of the University of Pennsylvania. She divides her time between London and New York.

Lisa Klein | Senior Advisor—Operational Restructuring

Lisa Klein, formerly a long-time executive with Ford Motor Company, has held senior management positions in the areas of operations, business development, and business strategy. Ms. Klein has also had extensive international experience and has held executive roles in North America, Europe and Asia across multiple business functions, including global purchasing, product development, and manufacturing. She has proven expertise in working with businesses and divisions on turnaround and business performance improvement through product and process re-engineering, operating improvements, revenue and cash improvements, global cost management, supply chain performance, and business restructuring.

She had a successful career of over two decades with Ford Motor Company where she most recently served as executive director of Asia and Africa purchasing for Ford. In this role, she was Ford’s senior purchasing executive in Asia and was responsible for managing Ford’s $10 billion of Asian purchases. She was responsible for developing and administering Ford’s Asian purchasing strategies spanning eleven countries and three joint venture partners.

Previously, Ms. Klein held many other executive positions with Ford, and she had responsibility for globalizing the procurement function and driving strategies that supported regional and business unit performance while leveraging global scale. At Ford, she served as executive director, global commodities purchasing; director, value engineering—product development; director-- manufacturing business office (where she was responsible for planning $36 billion in assets across 22 facilities); and executive director, vehicle procurement operations.

Ms. Klein has also led the development, approval and implementation of corporate level strategy in key areas, such as the manufacturing asset base, product development structure, and supply chain. She was instrumental in developing policy for Ford’s emerging market and Asia strategy. She also developed strategies for managing Ford’s corporate facilities and manufacturing plants, which involved decisions and planning on “make versus buy,” product import plans, global footprint development, labor efficiency, labor strategy, government incentives, capacity planning, and product and manufacturing cycle planning.

Ms. Klein’s experience also includes integrating acquisitions. Specifically, on behalf of Ford, she successfully led the procurement integration of Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover to achieve the desired synergy benefits. Furthermore, over her career, she has interacted with senior government officials in the US and overseas in state, local and provincial governments, and she has also interfaced with labor and other key corporate constituencies.

In addition to her extensive experience in the automotive industry, Ms. Klein has also had valuable experience outside of Ford in industrial manufacturing and retail distribution. In the industrial sector, she held operating P&L responsibility for nine plants worldwide generating $330 million in revenue in seven countries, in addition to being responsible for total supply chain performance and Asian operations. Ms. Klein is also a co-founder and partner in Accelerator Capital Partners, a firm which advises strategic clients on managing investments in the technology and industrial sectors.

Ms. Klein has served on the Boards of two technology start-up companies in the transportation and travel services sectors. While at Ford, she also served as the company’s Executive Sponsor for the University of Washington and was responsible, among other things, for advising faculty members on certain business-related curriculum issues and leading Ford’s corporate recruiting efforts on campus.

Ms. Klein holds a B.A. and M.B.A. from Michigan State University and has completed the Accelerated Program in Mergers and Acquisitions at Oxford University.

Alisa V. Schwartz | Advisor—Restructuring

Alisa V. Schwartz has had valuable restructuring and financial advisory experience across a broad range of industries. She has assisted clients in successfully resolving many complex distressed situations involving bankruptcy proceedings and out-of-court restructurings. She has handled challenging restructuring transactions involving asset sales under Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, debt-for-equity swaps, earn-out arrangements, royalty transactions, debt exchanges and bank loan restructurings.

Her industry expertise encompasses a wide range of sectors, including energy, healthcare, insurance, financial services, automotive, real estate and consumer products. In her restructuring work, she has had considerable experience developing financial models and pro forma scenarios, formulating and negotiating plans of reorganization, performing valuations, planning and managing transaction progress, and creating offering materials.

She has also had responsibility for organizing physical and virtual data rooms, overseeing due diligence, coaching clients in investor presentations, and marketing transactions to potential financial and strategic investors. In addition, she has coordinated restructuring transactions with outside counsel and assisted clients in addressing various requirements arising in connection with bankruptcy proceedings.

Ms. Schwartz has also been involved in distressed debt research, fairness and solvency opinion assignments across many industries, and performed financial analysis underpinning expert witness testimony in pending lawsuits. She has worked on complex valuations of tangible and intangible assets (e.g., brands and trademarks), structured securities, public and private companies, and business divisions. She has conducted valuations on behalf of Fortune 500 companies with cross-border operations.

In addition to her transactional work, Ms. Schwartz has been active in the training and development of other financial advisory professionals. She has designed and conducted numerous training sessions on subjects ranging from distressed situation analysis methodologies to corporate bankruptcy legal framework overviews to industry-specific topics, such as intellectual property issues applicable to the healthcare industry.

Ms. Schwartz formerly served as a senior associate in investment banking with the Gordian Group, LLC and as a senior associate in economic and valuation services with KPMG LLP.

Ms. Schwartz holds an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (cum laude) from Lehigh University. While at Wharton, she organized and completed a cross-disciplinary independent study project that focused on healthcare venture capital. Prior to Wharton, she spent several years working in the water treatment industry in technical, business development, and project finance roles.

Ms. Schwartz was born and raised in Moscow and moved to the United States with her family as a teenager. She is fluent in Russian. She has traveled extensively around the world spending time in countries in South America, the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia.