Scott Eisenberg is well known to TMA members as both a co-founder of Amherst Partners and having served the Chapter as both Board Member and a past Chapter President. He was born in Chicago, married a Michigan girl and chose to make his home and career in Detroit. Like many restructuring professionals, he started his career in public accounting, later moving into lending and financial advisory.  

 

Scott grew up in suburban Chicago. A focused student, he chose the University of Illinois due to their strong public accounting program. Upon graduating, he went directly into Indiana University's MBA program , focusing on finance, but it is also where he met his future wife.

 

Out of grad school, Scott's professional life started back in Chicago as an auditor with Deloitte. Two years later he and his fiancé got married and Scott was able to arrange a transfer to Detroit. After five years with Deloitte, an opportunity arose to shift to M&A advisory and he took it.

 

After gaining experience advising clients, Scott was interested in the lending business and joined Onset BIDCO in 1991. At the time, there were a number of BIDCOs (Business Investment Development Companies) in Michigan, each with slightly different mandates. Broadly speaking, BIDCOs made subordinated debt loans and were funded by a combination of public and private investors. According to Scott, the BIDCO business model was flawed. In retrospect, there should have been fewer BIDCOs, each lending more, gaining important economies of scale. Onset BIDCO, the largest of the BIDCO's, had built a very successful portfolio which was sold off in 1993. One key take away however, was an important career connection, Bud Aspatore.

 

Bud had been CEO of Onset-BIDCO and while they were each considering career options, they would connect for coffee and started thinking "we ought to do something together". Ultimately, they decided to co-found an M&A advisory firm, now known as Amherst Partners. Scott characterizes those early months as a "crawling start" due to the time and effort it took to get those first few clients.

 

After a couple years, Scott and Bud had enough work that they began hiring analytical support and junior staff. M&A is cyclical, however, and as the economy softened they developed and grew a restructuring advisory side of Amherst. Scott says the biggest difference between the Amherst of today vs. those early days, is bench strength. Today, it isn't just about the partners at the firm. The firm is chock-full of quality professionals that they wouldn't have had the opportunity to hire in the early days.

 

Scott's work shifts back-and-forth between M&A and restructuring advisory, mostly depending on where we are in the economic cycle. In the past few years he has been spending more time on distressed M&A engagements but has seen restructuring picking up in the past year.

 

Regarding interesting restructuring assignments, several years ago Scott was engaged as CRO for a company based in St. Louis selling fraudulent automotive extended warranties. One of the challenges in this case was dealing with 42 state attorneys general, the Department of Justice and complex legal issues. After two years, the company was successfully wound down and in 2014 featured on an episode of CNBC's American Greed television show.

 

Scott actively gives back to his profession and his community. He has been on the local Detroit and national TMA Boards, Detroit Chapter President as well as active roles in other professional associations. TMA was a great help to his early career in restructuring, facilitating development of professional relationships on which he has built his practice. He is also on several non-profit boards, with the Jewish Federation of Metro Detroit and Yoga Moves MS  being particularly close to his heart.

 

Regarding Scott's personal life, his two children are successful young-adults and he and his wife are avid yoga practitioners. She got him into it 16 years ago and he was hooked. He very much enjoys working with middle-market companies, either helping entrepreneurs realize the benefits of years of hard work by selling or helping them to restructure, saving jobs and enterprises in the process. Scott looks forward to many more years of active involvement in our community.