Jay M. Goffman is co-founder and CEO of Smith Goffman Partners in New York. In this role, he works to preserve and enhance the equity value of companies in or nearing distress. Prior to co-founding the firm, he was with Teneo and was vice chair of Global Advisory at Rothschild & Co., a large international investment bank, where he advised clients across Rothschild’s Restructuring, Debt Advisory and M&A practices. Before Rothschild, he spent 36 years as a lawyer focused on restructuring, debt advisory and distressed M&A. For the last 24 years of his legal career, he practiced at Skadden Arps, where he was the global head of its Corporate Restructuring Department. Over the course of his career, Mr. Goffman has consistently been recognized as one of the leading and most innovative restructuring advisors in the world. He was named a “Dealmaker of the Year” by The American Lawyer and one of the “Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade” by The National Law Journal. He has also received several Lifetime Achievement and Hall of Fame honors, in addition to numerous philanthropic awards. Mr. Goffman is best known for having devised and pioneered the “prepackaged” restructuring, now the predominant method for most major restructurings — which revolutionized the field and has been used to reorganize hundreds of companies in a quick, efficient and cost-effective manner. As a result of his efforts, prepacks are now the predominant method used in major restructurings. Mr. Goffman has successfully reorganized businesses out of court and in court across multiple industries and geographies, including some of the largest, most high-profile and most complex cases in history. Many of his deals and accomplishments have been profiled in various publications, including The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Goffman has received numerous honors, including “Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade,” Dealmaker of the Year and several Hall of Fame and Lifetime Achievement Awards, in addition to numerous philanthropic honors from AJC, Catholic Renewal, Tina’s Wish and the China Institute. Mr. Goffman received his B.S. in 1980 in chemical psychobiology from the State University of New York at Binghamton and his J.D. in 1983 with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the University of North Carolina Law Review. In 2018, the University of North Carolina School of Law presented him with its Distinguished Alumni Award.