Mark E. Palmer- Professional Experience

Although Mark E. Palmer is no longer engaged in the practice of law, he started his career as a corporate lawyer with Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, where he specialized in global Mergers and Acquisitions and structured investment transactions. After 6 years of practice, he moved to a client to become the Director of Strategic Transactions for Reuters America as well as the General Counsel at Reuters’ TIBCO Finance subsidiary in Palo Alto, CA, where he spearheaded Y2K compliance, strategic sales and partnerships. Mark also advised and assisted on the investment/disposition and corporate governance activities of the Reuters “Greenhouse” Venture Capital Fund.

After assisting on the successful IPO of TIBCO Software, Mr. Palmer joined his prior CEO at TIBCO Finance to co-found and become EVP Business Affairs/VP Americas of  NextSet Software, where he helped raised $32 million — backed by Integral Capital and growing the business to more than 300 employees worldwide — and oversaw strategic sales, legal and business development and the opening of two development centers in India. Following the “dot-com” crash of 2001, he helped restructure the business so it could eventually be sold to an Australian electronic trading platform.

Mark then joined Stroock, Stroock & Lavan as a Partner, where he helped create a corporate restructuring practice geared to large creditors and private distressed investment funds.  He lateraled to become a Partner and Head of the US Corporate Practice in New York for Linklaters, where he oversaw US-based M&A and helped launched a leading practice serving private investments funds focused on global insolvency and special situations.

Mr. Palmer then joined ex-mayor Rudolph Giuliani to found and lead the NY Corporate Practice and Global Private Funds Practice for Bracewell & Giuliani, where he specialized in representing large funds and creditors’ committees on several of the market-defining transactions of the period, as well as funds and global corporations on US-based M&A activity.

During the Financial Crisis of 2008, Mark again was asked to join a leading client and transitioned to become a Managing Director and Investment Partner at MatlinPatterson, a $10 billion dollar global distressed private equity franchise, based in New York City.  While at MatlinPatterson, Mark focused on transaction structuring, complex liability management, creditor committee engagements as well as overseeing several direct investments in targeted sectors and serving on the Boards of various portfolio companies.

Examples of legal representations, advising bondholders and creditors’ committees include the following: WorldCom, Adelphia, WestPoint Stevens, Viasystems Group, Personnel Group of America, Railworks Corporation, APW Ltd., Desa International Holdings, Maxim Crane, NSC/Pueblo, TransTexas Gas, Woods Equipment, Satélites Mexicanos, VARIG Airlines and Variglog Cargo, Ormet Aluminum, Oneida, Standard Pacific Homes, ATA Airlines and Global Aviation Holdings.

Representative Corporate Clients have included BP, Merrill Lynch, Cablevision Systems of America, Goldman Sachs, ING, AB InBev and Giuliani Capital.

Mark is no longer engaged in or admitted in NY to practice law.

Mark was heavily involved as a Principal Investor in structuring and making investments in Standard Pacific, Global Aviation, FXI, Crescent Communities, Flagstar Bank, Nortel, Tousa, Idearc. Many of these transactions involved creating and implementing unprecedented structures and redefining the applicable legal/market standards.