Jim’s background includes a balance between corporate finance advisory and execution work as well as operational restructuring; both of which draw on his focus on solid strategic direction.

Specifically, he has worked with many companies to strengthen their operational activities and strategic objectives so as to: a) render them stronger candidates for a financing, sale, or other corporate finance transaction, and/or b) enable them to grow larger and more efficient so that they can enjoy the benefits of scale. He has completed over 60 corporate finance transactions for client companies that have raised additional capital, sold their businesses, acquired a company, or recapitalized to reallocate ownership.

He has an MBA from The Wharton School and a BA from Amherst College. Prior to commencing his business career, Jim served as an officer in the Navy Supply Corps with the Nuclear Submarine Force (Pacific Fleet). He has over twenty years of experience, including both corporate finance and reorganization consulting roles with a “Big Five” financial advisory firm (where he was National Director of M & A), and line management operating responsibilities with a highly diversified NYSE producer of, among other products, specialty and bulk chemicals, health care consumables, and building materials.

Deborah Hicks Midanek, President of Solon Group, Inc. is a seasoned corporate executive with an investment banking background. Ms. Midanek works with the board, management, lenders, investors, shareholders and employees to help companies facing difficult choices successfully develop and implement comprehensive plans for recovery – even when the interested parties themselves are having trouble reaching decisions and moving forward. She has led a variety of businesses through strategic, operating and financial challenges, and has a reputation for using creative and practical thinking to achieve unusually successful results.

Her experience includes building, buying, selling, and rebuilding companies in a variety of industries, from heavy manufacturing to financial services; from start up to merger, to renewing growth, to closing. She has served as a corporate executive and as independent director, as financial advisor and investment banker, and as trainer and manager of teams charged with responsibility for troubled companies.  Often required rapidly to understand their financial situation and prospects, while in midst of difficult circumstances, her teams have also provided due diligence services to possible buyers of distressed or healthy assets, to look more deeply into the numbers and their meaning than a typical accounting firm could, and to reconstruct them if required.