EconoMonitor : Daniel Alpert

Dan Alpert is a founding Managing Partner of Westwood Capital, LLC and its affiliates (www.westwoodcapital.com). He is also a Fellow of The Century Foundation, one of the oldest think tanks in the United States (www.tcf.org). He has more than 30 years of international merchant banking and investment banking experience, including a wide variety of work-out and bankruptcy related restructuring experience. Throughout his career, Dan has been the senior banker responsible for client relationships and execution of debt and equity offerings that were the first of their kind at the time. He was the investment banker who led the first ever rated commercial mortgage backed security issue backed by a pool of mortgage loans acquired from a distressed lender, the first rated commercial mortgage backed security issue backed by a pool of mortgage loans secured by properties owned by a single borrower, the only REIT IPO involving the simultaneous public offering of common stock and the acquisition of a portfolio of properties out of a Chapter 11 proceeding, and the first securitization of gaming revenues. He has additional expertise in evaluating and maximizing the recoveries from failed financing vehicles affiliated with a common borrower/issuer. All of these activities involve a common element – thinking “outside the box” to provide novel and workable solutions to unique financial challenges.

Dan’s experience in providing financial advisory services and structured finance execution has extended Westwood’s reach beyond the U.S. domestic corporate finance market to East Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In addition to his structured finance expertise, Dan has extensive experience advising on mergers, acquisitions and private equity financings.

Over the past 15 years, Dan has provided and/or arranged for financing for, and advised both debtors and creditors of, a number of distressed companies – both inside and outside of bankruptcy. He has provided expert testimony in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in cases involving debtors involved in structured finance transactions.

Dan has written extensive research and opinion on the housing and credit bubbles and the resulting economic crisis, and is widely quoted in print outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Reuters, AP and Bloomberg wires, Forbes, Fortune and many other periodicals. He is a frequent guest commentator on all of the principal business news networks – Bloomberg, CNBC and Fox Business News – and also appears on CNNI and the BBC. Dan’s concise explanations of complicated financial matters – together with his willingness to express his opinions and forecasts – has earned him the confidence of those in the media for whom he has been a reliable source of analysis.

Dan was also featured in the 2010 winner of the Academy Award for Best documentary, "Inside Job" (www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob).

Prior to forming Westwood Capital in 1995, Dan was a senior banker with, and partner of, Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. He holds a B.A. in Public Policy from the University of Pennsylvania, and lives and works in Manhattan.