Presentation of the Harvey R. Miller Outstanding Achievement Award for Service to the Restructuring Industry
This year's annual Harvey R. Miller Award recipient is Edward I. Altman, Professor of Finance, Emeritus, New York University's Stern School of Business.
The award will be presented by last year's winner, Marc Lasry, CEO, Avenue Capital Group, and Prof. Altman's former student.
The award will be presented by last year's winner, Marc Lasry, CEO, Avenue Capital Group, and Prof. Altman's former student.
Edward I. Altman Max L. Heine Professor of Finance Emeritus at New York University, Stern School of Business and Director of the Credit and Fixed Income Research Program at the NYU Salomon Center Edward I. Altman is the Max L. Heine Professor of Finance, Emeritus at the Stern School of Business, New York University. He is the Director of Research in Credit and Debt Markets at the NYU Salomon Center for the Study of Financial Institutions. Prior to serving in his present position, Professor Altman chaired the Stern School's MBA Program for 12 years. Dr. Altman was named to the Max L. Heine endowed professorship at Stern in 1988 and his Emeritus status in September 2015. Dr. Altman was born and raised in New York City and attended N.Y.C. public schools and the City College of New York, graduating with a BA degree in Economics in 1963. He then went on to pursue a MBA and Ph.D. in Finance from UCLA’s School of Business, receiving the Doctorate in 1967, the same year he married his wife, Elaine Karalus. In 1973, their son, Gregory, was born in Paris, France, where Professor Altman was serving as a Visiting Professor of Finance at Hautes Etudes Commerciales from 1971-early 1973. Dr. Altman returned to France in 1976 and taught a Ph.D. seminar at the University of Paris-Dauphine (Paris IX). Subsequent to his French University experiences, he has been a Visiting Professor in Rio de Janeiro (PUC), Madrid (CEMFI), Naples (Partenope), Sydney (UNSW, Macquarie), Perth (UWA), and Milan (Bocconi). Dr. Altman has an international reputation as an expert on corporate bankruptcy, high yield bonds, distressed debt and credit risk analysis. He was named Laureate 1984 by the Hautes Etudes Commerciales Foundation in Paris for his accumulated works on corporate distress prediction models and procedures for firm financial rehabilitation and awarded the Graham & Dodd Scroll for 1985 by the Financial Analysts Federation for his work on Default Rates on High Yield Corporate Debt and was named "Profesor Honorario" by the University of Buenos Aires in 1996 and “Honorary Doctorate” from Lund University (Sweden) in 2011 and the Warsaw School of Economics in 2015. He was an advisor to the Centrale dei Bilanci in Italy and to several foreign central banks. Professor Altman is also the Chairman of the Academic Advisory Council of the Turnaround Management Association. He was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame in 2001, President of the Financial Management Association (2003) and a FMA Fellow in 2004 and was amongst the inaugural inductees into the Turnaround Management Association’s Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2005, Prof. Altman was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Finance” by the Treasury & Risk Management magazine. Professor Altman was one of the founders (1977) and an Executive Editor of the international publication, the Journal of Banking and Finance and Advisory Editor of the publisher series, the John Wiley Frontiers in Finance Series. He was the Co-founder of the International network of Graduate Business Students Exchange Program, now known as PIM, started in 1973. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Board and an Associate Editor of many academic journals including the Journal of Management and Financial Services (Warsaw), Journal of Credit Risk (London), International Journal of Banking, Accounting & Finance (UK), Revista Mexicana de Economia y Finanzas (Mexico), and Risk & Decision Analysis (Netherlands), as well as the co-founder and coordinator of the International Risk Management Conference (annually since 2008). He has published or edited two-dozen books and over 150 articles in scholarly finance, accounting and economic journals. He was the editor of the Handbook of Corporate Finance and the Handbook of Financial Markets and Institutions and the author of a number of recent books, including his most recent works on Bankruptcy, Credit Risk and High Yield Junk Bonds (2002), Recovery Risk (2005), Corporate Financial Distress & Bankruptcy (3rd ed., 2006) and Managing Credit Risk (2nd ed. 2008). His work has appeared in many languages including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. Dr. Altman's primary areas of research include bankruptcy analysis and prediction, credit and lending policies, risk management and regulation in banking, corporate finance and capital markets. He has been a consultant to several government agencies, major financial and accounting institutions and industrial companies and has lectured to executives in North America, South America, Europe, Australia-New Zealand, Asia and Africa. He has testified before the U.S. Congress, the New York State Senate and several other government and regulatory organizations and is a Director and a member of the Advisory Board of a number of corporate, publishing, academic and financial institutions, including Paulson & Co., Franklin Mutual Advisors, Equinox Capital, Van Eck (Market Vectors), S&P Capital IQ, and a senior advisor to Classis Capital in Milan, Italy. Dr. Altman is Chairman Emeritus of the InterSchool Orchestras of New York, a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of American Finance, and a patron of the Pershing Square Signature Theatre Group. |
Marc Lasry Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Avenue Capital Group Marc Lasry is the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Avenue Capital Group, a global alternative investment manager focused on distressed and undervalued debt and equity opportunities in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In 1995, Mr. Lasry formed Avenue with his sister, Sonia Gardner, with less than $10 million in capital from friends and family. Today, Avenue is one of the largest distressed debt investors globally, managing assets of approximately $9.6 billion, with headquarters in New York City, and offices in London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, and five offices throughout Asia. Mr. Lasry is known as a pioneer in distressed investing which has been the focus of his professional career for over 33 years. After law school, Mr. Lasry clerked for Edward Ryan, Chief Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York. He spent the following year practicing law at Angel & Frankel, which focused on bankruptcies. Mr. Lasry subsequently became the Director of the private debt department at R.D. Smith, the firm where he first became involved in “trade claims,” the market in purchasing and selling to investors the unsecured claims of vendors and other creditors against a debtor. In 1987, he moved to Cowen & Company where he was Co-Director of the bankruptcy and corporate reorganization department. It was at Cowen that he caught the attention of the Texas investor Robert Bass, who was a client of the firm. When he left Cowen, Mr. Lasry went to manage over $100 million for the Robert Bass Group, Inc., where he invested in bank debt, senior bonds, and trade claims. The Bass fund Mr. Lasry oversaw was called Amroc Investments, L.P., and, at the time, it stood as one of the largest distressed funds in the U.S. In 1990, he co-founded a boutique distressed brokerage firm, keeping the Amroc name and maintaining the affiliation with the Robert Bass Group. Mr. Lasry is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he has served and will continue to serve on various other boards of advisors/directors of both for-profit and not-for-profit private and public companies. He is also co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks NBA team. Mr. Lasry received a B.A. in History from Clark University (1981) and a J.D. from New York Law School (1984). |
Bankruptcy Guru Recognized for Prediction Model
(Excerpt below from article in latest issue of Turnarounds & Workouts)
People often ask Dr. Edward I. Altman, Ph.D., this year’s recipient of the Harvey R. Miller Outstanding Achievement Award for Service to the Restructuring Industry, how he came up with the name for his Z-Score formula for predicting the probability of bankruptcy. The Z, he said, does not stand for Zero. “The Z is a very common value used in statistics,” explained Dr. Altman, the Max L. Heine Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University (NYU), citing the Z test and Z ratio in statistics. “Also, I liked it was the last letter of the alphabet. Some people say why didn’t you call it the A score or similar to my name, but I never thought it was going to last past my dissertation.
“That is, of course, probably the piece of work I’m known for and the one that catapulted me in my career in distressed debt, high-yield bonds, and credit risk in general,” he said.
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Tickets are still available to attend the conference and recognize Dr. Altman.
People often ask Dr. Edward I. Altman, Ph.D., this year’s recipient of the Harvey R. Miller Outstanding Achievement Award for Service to the Restructuring Industry, how he came up with the name for his Z-Score formula for predicting the probability of bankruptcy. The Z, he said, does not stand for Zero. “The Z is a very common value used in statistics,” explained Dr. Altman, the Max L. Heine Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University (NYU), citing the Z test and Z ratio in statistics. “Also, I liked it was the last letter of the alphabet. Some people say why didn’t you call it the A score or similar to my name, but I never thought it was going to last past my dissertation.
“That is, of course, probably the piece of work I’m known for and the one that catapulted me in my career in distressed debt, high-yield bonds, and credit risk in general,” he said.
_________
Tickets are still available to attend the conference and recognize Dr. Altman.
Previous Recipients of the Harvey R. Miller Award
- 2001 Harvey Miller
- 2002 Steve Cooper, Zolfo Cooper
- 2003 Wilbur Ross, U.S. Secretary of Commerce
- 2004 Jay Alix, AlixPartners
- 2005 Arthur Newman, The Blackstone Group
- 2006 Tony Alvarez II, Alvarez & Marsal
- 2007 David Tepper, Appaloosa Management
- 2008 William C. Repko, Evercore Partners
- 2009 Al Koch, AlixPartners
- 2010 Barry Ridings, Lazard
- 2011 David Resnick, Rothschild
- 2012 Jay Goldin, Goldin Associates
- 2013 Marty Whitman, Third Avenue Management
- 2014 Jim Millstein, Millstein & Co.
- 2015 Ken Buckfire, Miller Buckfire & Co.
- 2016 Jack Butler, BirchLake Holdings
- 2017 Marc Lasry, Avenue Capital Group
