Jonathan Morrison

As an adviser, Jonathan has managed a broad range of domestic and international engagements, including corporate restructurings for debtors and creditors, mergers and acquisitions, and capital raisings. He has strong expertise in strategic planning, stakeholder negotiations, store and product rationalizations, asset dispositions, operational restructurings, and management of working capital. Jonathan is frequently engaged for his ability to strike a balance between financial modeling and real-world strategy and planning to move his clients through liquidity issues and other complex situations.

Prior to joining Ankura, Jonathan was a managing director with AEG Partners, a restructuring advisory and crisis management firm in Chicago. He served as an associate director in Macquarie’s corporate and asset finance group, where he was responsible for underwriting fixed income investments. He also served as a director with Giuliani Capital Advisors and its predecessor, Ernst & Young Corporate Finance, where he led teams that advised middle-market and large corporate clients with restructuring services.

Select project experience includes:

• Lender Advisory: Advisor to the ad hoc group of secured lenders of Libbey Inc., a $750 million designer, producer, and seller of glassware, tableware and other glass products. Libbey’s foodservice business and liquidity was severely impacted from the pandemic ultimately leading to bankruptcy filing. The Ankura team worked closely with the ad hoc group and management in advising the lenders through DIP sizing and negotiations, liquidity management, optimal plant restructuring, and a successful balance sheet restructuring including exit financing.
• Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF): Jonathan provides support and financial advisory services to the AAFAF team focusing on non-Title III entities including in and out-of-court debt restructuring and implementation of fiscal measures.
• Distress Sale: Served as company advisor to a distressed consumer services chain in the Pacific Northwest with a for-profit education business unit. Focused on improving profitability while retaining critical headcount and reviving a failed sale process.
• Crisis management: Serving as interim Chief Financial Officer for a distressed family-run manufacturer in the oil and gas industry, Jonathan was instrumental in shutting down a problem business unit and steering the company through a period of tight liquidity, ultimately leading to an extended forbearance agreement and settling vendor claims at a discount — all outside of bankruptcy. This work resulted in the Large Company Turnaround of the Year Award from the Turnaround Management Association Chicago/Midwest chapter.
• Corporate turnaround: Advised an international consumer products company through a period of tight liquidity and stakeholder negotiations. Redesigned cash management tools and identified areas for liquidity improvement, including realignment of foreign vendors and reduction in spending levels.
• Profitability realignment: Advised North America’s largest independently owned producer of specialty paper products relating to an operational and financial restructuring, ultimately leading to the sale of the company via bankruptcy proceeding.
• Distressed investing: In addition to advisory work, Jonathan was a lead analyst and founding member of Endeavour LLC, a $470 million actively managed distressed debt fund. Jonathan had portfolio responsibility from asset pricing to the workout and realization of distressed senior debt.