Yvette R. Austin

Yvette R. Austin is a senior managing director and chair of Compass Lexecon’s Global Finance Practice in New York. She specializes in M&A, financing and bankruptcy disputes with subjectmatter expertise in valuation; credit and solvency analysis; and other financial damages. Ms. Austin provides testifying and consulting expert services in litigation and disputes related to breach of representation and warranties, breach of fiduciary duty, material adverse effect, dissenting shareholder actions, leveraged buyouts, financing transactions, debt recharacterization, avoidance actions and antitrust damages. She also has served as an expert in international trade subsidy disputes. Ms. Austin has submitted expert oral and written testimony in multiple venues including state courts in Delaware, New York, and California; U.S. federal bankruptcy and district courts; international courts in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom; and the World Trade Organization and other international arbitration forums. In addition to providing expert testimony, she advises special board committees on M&A litigation matters and serves as a bankruptcy trustee. Ms. Austin has written a number of publications and presented on valuation and credit analysis for organizations such as the American Bar Association, ABI, the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, the Delaware State Bar Association, Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg Law. She is a contributing author to the Model Merger Agreement for the Acquisition of a Public Company, published by the ABA’s Mergers and Acquisitions Committee, and a contributing researcher to The Standard & Poor’s Guide to Fairness Opinions: A User’s Guide for Fiduciaries. Ms. Austin also has been a member of the teaching faculty of Harvard University Extension School, where she taught a graduate finance course (Business Analysis and Valuation), and a past faculty member of the American Bar Association’s National Institute of Negotiating Business Acquisitions. Earlier in her career, she provided investment banking advisory services, including mergers and acquisitions, fairness opinions, solvency opinions and commercially reasonable debt opinions. Ms. Austin received her A.B. in government and philosophy from Harvard College and her M.B.A in finance from Columbia University.