Michael has worked with stressed and distressed businesses for over 35 years, taking board positions as CRO and Chairman in financial restructuring and complex operational turnaround and stakeholder situations and lead out-of-court and in-court solutions.
He has worked and advised across a wide range of industries in family, private and public companies and with a range of different financial sponsors and stakeholders including hedge funds, private equity, and commercial banks. In the last years Michael was asked to coordinate the restructuring and transformation in partnership with the management in complex stakeholder and ownership situations with conflicting interests and also in change of ownership situations after private equity or hedge funds invested in companies.
Given his operational and financial background and his business experiences in various cycles of transformation and restructuring developments in the last 30 years he was able to design creative and holistic solutions in crisis and change situations. As an executive board member of a special purpose vehicle and chairman of a leading European particle board producer he lead the restructuring of the company resulting in a high yield bond refinancing of EUR 350m and a reverse-take-over combined with an IPO at the Warsaw Stock Exchange to service bank debt of approx. EUR 1bn and establish a new ownership.
Prior to joining AlixPartners, he was a partner of THM Partners LLP, London, and self employed with his own restructuring advisory company for more than 10 years. He started his career as an audit manager and later as a project manager in the Corporate Recovery Department at a Big Four company.
Michael holds a doctorate in business administration of the University of Cologne, Germany, and is lecturer at the IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain, and an adjunct professor in the School of Church Programme, Vatican – both in crisis management.