NEW ORLEANS – Lawrence Young, the Managing Director of AlixPartners, will be the guest speaker at ACG Louisiana’s April Luncheon on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, at the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blue Room.
Networking begins at 11:30 a.m., and will be followed by a 12:00 p.m. luncheon.
The event is free for ACG members and $65 for non-members.
Young is a Managing Director in AlixPartners’ Turnaround & Restructuring Services practice and co-heads the firm’s Latin
American expansion initiative.
He joined AlixPartners’ Dallas office in 1998.
Young has served in several executive roles, including chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and chief restructuring officer for a number of global companies ranging in sales from $500 million to over $5 billion.
With more than 25 years of experience in senior corporate management, Young has a successful track record of improving financial returns by driving efficiencies, reducing costs, improving asset utilization, and refocusing operations. The changes he has implemented have led to material improvements in key performance matrices, including top-line and cash flow growth.
Young has demonstrated expertise in skillfully managing companies during periods of transition, and he has led in the resolutions of challenging situations in a broad cross section of industries such as telecommunications, real estate, and consumer products.
Recently, Young was appointed CEO of Contec when the company rapidly lost several large key accounts and tripped its loan covenants. With debt totaling more than $1 billion and revenue and cash flow cut in half, Contec experienced a severe liquidity crisis. As CEO, Young restructured the debt, consolidated operations, reduced reporting levels, and streamlined product delivery costs while expanding the company’s service offerings. Those changes to the company’s operating footprint dropped overhead costs by 40%; manufacturing costs dropped by 30%.
Young also served as lead debtor advisor to Reader’s Digest, a multinational conglomerate consisting of more than 40 entities and 90 magazine titles. Young led the company’s professionals and its management team through an operational and financial restructuring of the company. He restructured $2 billion in long-term debt and reduced annual operating costs by more than $100 million in six months, with a plan to capture an additional $100 million during the next year.
In Latin America, Young served as chief financial officer and chief restructuring officer for AT&T Latin America, a public company with
$1 billion in assets. That company had been the product of AT&T’s acquisition and development of three telecommunications companies operating in five countries throughout South America. Young led multinational negotiations to restructure more than $1 billion in secured and unsecured debt and directly assisted in cutting 40% of cash costs out of the company’s operations while improving customer retention and customer service. The company reached an agreement to sell its operations to Mexico’s telecommunications giant Teléfonos de México SA.
Young has an MBA in finance and accounting from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in
economics and computational mathematics from DePauw University. He is a certified public accountant (AlixPartners is not a certified
public accounting firm) and a Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor.