David L. Sawyer

David Sawyer is a senior managing director with Ankura Consulting Group, LLC in New York and has more than 25 years of experience in global financial markets. For a significant portion of his career, he has been active in the distressed-debt and restructuring arena, with roles ranging from a distressed- debt and special-situations investor to a senior lender and lead agent, and the global head of a workout and restructuring group at a major international financial institution. A principal for most of his career, Mr. Sawyer has been an investor across most of the capital structure, including first- and second-lien loans, ABL and leveraged loans, rescue financing and DIP facilities, secured and unsecured bonds and principal equity positions. His experience ranges from structuring and underwriting to restructuring and bankruptcies to managing post-reorganization equity. He has led successful transactions and restructur- ing processes, handling complex negotiations, and building and developing organizations and teams and shaping cultures within both distressed and growing organizations. Mr. Sawyer joined Ankura from Barclays, where he was the global head of the Portfolio, Counterparty Credit and Workout Group and managed more than 150 people and over $6 billion of distressed principal positions, including post- restructured equity. Before Barclays, he spent several years at Silver Point Capital, where he ran the firm’s Restructuring and Portfolio Group. In this role, he was responsible for leading the restructuring and workout activities across the firm, including participating on creditor committees and managing the firm’s $3 billion private financing portfolio. He was also a member of Silver Point’s Distressed Private Equity Group, where he focused on obtaining control equity positions though restructurings and debt- for-equity conversions. In addition to being responsible for the execution of the restructuring process, Mr. Sawyer was intimately involved in the transitional efforts from debt to equity ownership and the op- erational strategy and activities as equity owner. Earlier in his career, he was a director at Credit Suisse in their workout group, focused on media, telecommunications, and energy. He also held various roles at Societe Generale and HSBC, focusing on leveraged lending. Mr. Sawyer is a member of ABI and the Turnaround Management Association. He received his B.S. in finance from Georgetown University.