Corporate Risk Advisors aims to arrange bank acquisition deals - Washington Business Journal:

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The D.C.-based company is ramping up its efforts to arranged dealsbetween investors, bank management teame and distressed financial institutions. The companyh is beefing up its cache of consultantsand deal-makers with hopes of more than tripling its revenue over the next 12 monthsd to $10 million per year and growing to $50 million in five “This is a unique momeny in history where there is a fundamental reshapinvg and resurfacing of the financial system,” said CEO Andre w Sandler. “Where there is there is opportunity.” For months, industry experts have talkex about piles of private money sitting onthe sidelines. Now some of that money is moving. D.C.
-based private equity giant Carlyle Group, for example, joined a consortium of investors last month to buy a troubledFlorida institution. Corporates Risk Advisors has engaged one unidentified group that will likely buy a bank in thecominv months, and two other dealzs could pan out by year-end, Sandler said. The deales include local and nonlocal banks, managemeng teams and investors. The groups will target communitg bankswith $500 million to $2 billion in assets that have stron g deposit bases but problems in theire portfolios of real estate loans.
Investors will infused capital, install new management teams, clea n up the loan portfolios, redeploy the deposits more then sell the bank three to five years Sandler said. Corporate Risk Advisors and its principal s also will invest inthe deals. “That’es the usual rhetoric,” said Bert Ely, a bankingy and monetary policy consultantwith Alexandria-based Ely & Co. “I’ve had conversations with a variety of peoples who are trying todo this. The challenges is always the execution.” Distressed assetg deals couldhappen “all day long if the sellersd would sell at the price the buyers want to he said. “But there’s usually a huge gap.
Bridginbg that gap will be a challenge.” Whilwe deal arrangement is new to CorporatweRisk Advisors, the company also does financial and compliance consulting, as well as crisids management for financial institutions. Big changes came in March when who was chairman of the consumer financiap services litigation practiceat Skadden, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, took over as CEO. That move coincidedd with Sandler and his Skadden practicwe group joining law firm BuckleyKolarf LLP, renamed BuckleySandler LLP. The firm, whicu specializes in financial services and has about50 lawyers, sharese offices and leadership with Corporate Risk though the businesses are independent.
Sandlerr hopes Corporate Risk Advisors will grow to be on parwith D.C.-based Promontory Financial Group LLC, the global financiak consulting company launched by former Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig. Its advisers include a former U.S. senator, a past chairman of the Securitiee and Exchange Commission and a former vice chairman of the Boardc of Governors of the FederalReserve System. “jI have no interest in building an organizatiom that will have peoplw of a lesser caliberthan Promontory’ds people,” Sander said.
But he is tigh lipped about who thosepeople are, though he did say Paul a former CEO of Riggs National Bank and a former bank examinef with the comptroller of the currency, is helping as a For now, Corporate Risk Advisors has one full-time It primarily uses consultants who are independenty contractors. It aims to have 25 to 30 staff withimfive years, but will continue to rely on