Carsten Brzeski Global Head of Macro ING Research

Carsten Brzeski is the Global Head of Macro for ING Research. Previously, he worked at ABN Amro, the Dutch Ministry of Finance and the European Commission. He is a 2019 JFK Memorial Policy Fellow at Harvard University and member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs for the Dutch government and Parliament. Carsten has studied at the Free University of Berlin, Northeastern University in Boston and Harvard University in Cambridge, USA.

Oliver Kehren Managing Director Morgan Stanley

Oliver Kehren is a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley in London and Head of EMEA SSG.  Activities include acquisitions/trading of distressed debt as part of portfolio and single name transactions and the restructuring/-financing  of distressed corporate and sovereign situations.  Oliver has extensive experience in export-/project-financing, corporate finance and financial restructurings.  He is Co-Chairman of the board of Gesellschaft für Restrukturierung TMA Deutschland e.V., an author of several publications on financial restructurings and a guest lecturer at several Universities.

Frank Grell Partner Latham & Watkins

Frank Grell helps clients navigate distressed situations related to restructuring or insolvency. He chairs the German Restructuring & Special Situations Practice and served as Local Department Chair of the German Finance Department. Mr. Grell has earned a strong reputation from clients and leading publications for his empathetic approach and ability to craft pragmatic and commercial solutions in high-pressure or crisis situations.

Mr. Grell advises: 

• Companies, management, and shareholders in a financial or operational crisis 
• Creditors in all phases of financial restructurings, including debt-equity swaps, share pledge enforcements, and insolvency plan proceedings 
• Investors on the acquisition of distressed companies and on restructuring, rescue financing, or refinancing transactions, including debt-equity swaps 
• Insolvency administrators on M&A, restructurings, or disputes
• Complementing his transactional work, he also represents parties in claw-back and liability cases

Mr. Grell is a board member of TMA Germany e.V. and of Norddeutsches Insolvenzforum e.V. (Insolvency Forum of Northern Germany).

He regularly speaks and writes about insolvency and restructuring matters.

Alexander Hug Partner PwC

Alexander joined PwC in 2008 and is a Director in the German Business Recovery Services team. He focuses on complex financial restructuring and refinancing situations. Alexander has ten years of restructuring experience and was involved in leading numerous restructuring projects with a dedicated focus on financial restructuring and leveraged finance, preparation of business reviews, and validation and implementation of restructuring concepts. His expertise includes complex refinancing projects and financial restructuring of listed companies.

Thomas Pöhler Head of Germany KARTESIA

Thomas is a senior member of Kartesia’s Investment Team with 15 years of experience in leveraged finance and private equity, sourcing, executing and monitoring investments across Europe, with a specific focus on the DACH region, where he is also heading the Munich office. 

Since joining in 2013 from Commerzbank, where he started his career in leveraged finance, he helped building Kartesia’s franchise in the German-speaking countries, raised the firm’s first fund financings and also established the first hedging programme for funds raised. 

Thomas holds a M.Sc. degree in Finance from Frankfurt School.

He lives with his family in Munich and London.

Alexandra Hagelueken Partner Latham & Watkins LLP

Alexandra Hagelüken advises creditors and borrowers on complex national and cross-border financings, drawing on more than two decades of experience with German and English law transactions. Ms. Hagelüken formerly served as Co-Vice Chair of Latham’s Global Finance Department.

Ms. Hagelüken regularly advises on:

• Acquisition financing transactions
• Infrastructure financings
• Financial restructurings
• General corporate lending

She excels at establishing long-term relationships with clients who value her pragmatic and unflappable approach. With a keen knowledge of both the products and the players in the German market, she has become a trusted advisor for clients pursuing landmark and innovative deals.

Ms. Hagelüken has earned widespread recognition for her practice work. Financial News lists her among the Fifty Most Influential Lawyers 2022. Handelsblatt Best Lawyers named her Lawyer of the year for Banking & Finance 2019. She is ranked Band 1 by Chambers Europe Germany 2022, and has been recognized by JUVE 2022/2023, IFLR1000 2022, Who's Who Legal Germany 2021, and The Legal 500 Deutschland 2022.

Hauke Burkhardt Managing Director | Global Head of Lending Deutsche Bank

Head of Trade Finance & Lending DACH und Global Co-Head of Lending, Deutsche Bank AG

Based in Frankfurt, Hauke Burkhardt is leading the global corporate lending business of the Corporate Bank since October 2019. Since June 2022 he is also Head of Trade Finance & Lending DACH. At the same time he is a member of the Corporate Bank Germany Executive Committee, the Global Trade Finance & Lending Executive Committee as well as different Supervisory and Investor Boards.

Hauke Burkhardt joined Deutsche Bank in 2007 and held leadership positions in various Trade Finance and Lending areas.

Mr. Burkhardt holds a Diploma degree from the University of Cooperative Education in Stuttgart, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany and is an alumnus of the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius.

Chrysanth Herr Partner, Debt Opportunities Triton Partners

Chrysanth Herr is a partner in Triton’s Debt Opportunities strategy. He focuses on secondary investments in first lien debt of fundamentally sound business across Northern and Western Europe. Prior to joining Triton in 2012, Chrysanth was in Goldman Sachs’ European Special Situations Group. He holds a Diplom-Kaufmann degree from the European Business School (EBS) in Oestrich-Winkel.

Bernd Papenstein Partner PwC

Bernd is leading the Finance & Economic Promotion practice in PwC Germany. He is a renowned expert on finance advising public authorities regarding the conception, implementation and optimization in the area of economic promotion. He leads the team that is mandated by the federal government and various states to act as mandataries in guarantee matters. 

Bernd joined PwC more than 20 years ago and previously worked in banking.

Daniel Judenhahn Partner PwC

Daniel runs our restructuring office in Frankfurt, Germany and leads the debt & capital advisory business within PwC's transaction and restructuring practice. He advises corporates, shareholders, creditors, and investors in raising, refinancing, and restructuring capital in takeover and special situations. Previously, Daniel spent more than 11 years working for Dresdner Kleinwort and Commerzbank where he focused on leverage buyouts, takeovers and turnarounds across Europe.

Daniel holds an MBA from London Business School.

Britta Huebner Huebner Management

Britta Huebner has been managing restructuring cases for 15 years.. She leads the restructuring process

in the role as Chief Restructuring or Transformation Officer, always acting out of a board position.

Britta Huebner successfully managed her cases going concern as well as through insolvency

proceedings. She gained her extensive experience either in large international family or PE owned

companies as well as in listed corporations.

In addition to her role as CRO, Britta Huebner is a member of several supervisory and advisory

boards.

Jasper Zimbehl Director, Strategic Value Credit Cheyne SVC LLP

Jasper Zimbehl is a Director at Cheyne Strategic Value Credit. Cheyne SVC employs a bottom-up, value-centric, and solution-oriented investment approach providing flexible and bespoke “all weather” capital to European mid-market companies. Prior to joining Cheyne SVC, Jasper was a portfolio manager at Robus Capital engaged in sourcing, structuring, and executing complex capital solutions in both public and private markets and investing across the capital structure. Previously, he worked in Leveraged Finance at ING and in M&A at Jefferies. Jasper graduated from the University of Hamburg with an Economics Diploma.

Paul Hauschild Director, Recapitalisation & Restructuring PJT Partners

Paul is Director at PJT Partners in the Restructuring & Special Situations team, having previously covered roles at Lazard, AlixPartners and Macquarie.

Marcus Bruening Partner, CRO Alix Partners

Marcus has 25+ years of experience as a senior executive (e.g. CRO, CTO, CFO) and advisor in special situations. He has successfully advised and worked with corporates, investors, creditors, and banks in financial and operational restructuring situations, performance improvement initiatives, and cross-border reorganization across a wide range of industries (e.g. Retail, Consumer Products, Food Industry, Manufacturing). Marcus earned a master's degree in business administration (Diplom-Kaufmann) from the University of Passau.

Dr. Jörn Kowalewski Partner Latham & Watkins

Dr. Jörn Kowalewski has long-standing experience advising stakeholders within complex corporate restructurings, both out of court and within insolvency proceedings, as well as handling distressed M&A transactions.

Dr. Kowalewski advises distressed investors, lenders, lender groups, and steering committees, as well as the debtors, shareholders, and management in:

• Out-of-court (financial and operational) restructurings
• Distressed M&A transactions
• Debt-to-equity transactions

Dr. Kowalewski enhances his legal advice with an entrepreneurial and pragmatic approach, drawing on his prior experiences running a midsized international trading company and serving as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law.

Willibald Kofler Managing Director & Partner PwC Strategy&

Willibald is a Partner with PwC Strategy&, heading Strategy&’s business in Austria and being part of the European Retail & Consumer practice leadership team. With over 16 years of strategy consulting experience, leading, and advising executives and businesses across a broad portfolio of strategy and transformation programs in the retail & consumer goods industry.

His focus lies on digital and omnichannel transformation and its strategic challenges for multinational corporations: from strategy development and target operating model design to cost transformation, category excellence and customer experience transformation.
In addition, Willibald advises clients with defining competitive ESG strategies and building the required capabilities to differentiate and win in their markets.

In his additional role as People Partner for the European Retail & Consumer practice, Willibald finds and develop the best talents to join and grow diverse teams.

Tobias Wens Managing Director & Partner, Frankfurt BCG

Tobias Wens joined Boston Consulting Group in November 2010. He is a core member of the Restructuring & Turnaround Task Force and BCG's Transform practice. His client work focuses on restructuring and turnarounds in various industries and he has led a large number of complex operational turnarounds and financial restructurings, especially for mid-sized companies. His work includes independent business reviews (IBRs), holistic turnaround concepts, going-concern prognoses, cash release and net working capital management, and insolvency support.

Tobias delivers short-term impact for companies facing challenges from concept development to implementation.

Before joining BCG, Tobias worked for over two years at Roland Berger.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

• Business Transformation
• Business Turnaround
• Corporate Finance and Strategy

EDUCATION

Degree in Industrial Engineering, Hamburg University of Technology

Henrik Munte Managing Director Deutsche Invest Mittelstand, DIM

Henrik Munte serves as Managing Director of Deutsche Invest Mittelstand (DIM). In this role, Henrik leads the team of senior M&A experts and is responsible for all buy- and sell-side activities of DIM. He further supports portfolio companies – as the case might be – as a board member, advisor and / or investor.

Prior to joining DIM, Henrik spent over 6 years with Quantum Capital Partners, where he was responsible for various buy- and sell-side transactions, especially in the industrials and business services sectors. Previously, Henrik worked in the M&A advisory field with Doertenbach & Co and Merrill Lynch & Co. where he accompanied numerous sell- and buy-side transactions. Henrik worked on both distressed and regular M&A transactions in various industries.

Henrik studied business administration at the University of Mannheim.