William A. Brandt, Jr.

William A. Brandt, Jr. is the founder and executive chairman of Development Specialists, Inc. in New York and has been involved in thousands of insolvency and restructuring cases over his long career. He has often advised members of Congress on insolvency policy and was the principal author of the amendment to the Bankruptcy Code which permits the election of trustees in chapter 11cases. Mr. Brandt currently serves as the chapter 11 trustee in the largest cross-national insolvency pending in the U.S., China Fishery Group, and serves as a chapter 11 trustee for the San Luis & RioGrande Railroad in southern Colorado. He served on ABI’s Commission for the Reform of Chapter11, and in 2015 he completed serving his third and final consecutive term as chair of the IllinoisFinance Authority, having first been appointed by the governor in 2008 and confirmed unanimously by the Illinois Senate that same year, then subsequently reappointed as chair in 2010 and 2012. He is also part of the ownership group that controls Chicago’s second-largest daily newspaper, TheChicago Sun-Times. More recently, in the political realm Mr. Brandt was a member of the U.S.Electoral College for the 2016 presidential election, serving as an elector from the State of Illinois.Mr. Brandt has written for a number of publications spanning a broad spectrum of thought, including Maclean’s, Canada’s Weekly Newsmagazine, Corporate Board Member and Urban Land. He isa frequent commentator on topics of corporate restructuring, bankruptcy, municipal insolvency and related public policy issues, and regularly appears on a host of both cable and broadcast outlets. Mr.Brandt was a member of the National Advisory Council for the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley from 2006-18, serving as chair for the last two years.Mr. Brandt served several terms as a member of ABI’s Board of Directors and as a member of theAdvisory Board for the ABI Law Review. He is an advisory board member of ABI’s annual NewYork City Bankruptcy Conference, having earlier served for 15 years in a similar capacity for ABI’sBankruptcy Battleground West program. In 2020, he received the New York Institute of Credit’s46th Annual Leadership in Credit Education Award for Dedication and Commitment to NYIC and the Credit Industry. Mr. Brandt received his B.A. from St. Louis University and his M.A. from theUniversity of Chicago, where he also completed further post-graduate work toward a doctoral degree.