THESEUS STRATEGY GROUP
We provide tailored and high-impact services for “Special Situations” investment funds and their portfolio companies/investments. We are an efficient, outsourced solution for complex transaction structuring and coordination; critical crisis, liability and risk management; and event-driven trading analysis and strategy. Our clients obtain distinct advantage by leveraging our expertise – together, we seize fleeting opportunities, defend critical positions and navigate labyrinthine risks.
Evaluate, develop and implement informed and practical solutions. We help “special situations” investment funds and their portfolio companies extract value, solve problems and get things done.
Propose creative structures and novel restructuring alternatives. We coordinate with your multiple advisers to identify and pursue realistic high-impact objectives, efficiently and with adaptability.
Analyze and strategize event-driven “here today, gone tomorrow” trades. We deconstruct complex capital structures and find the fulcrum points. We assist in evaluating the position, defending it, and pursuing strategies to increase value.
Solve Gordian crisis and liability management problems. We work with you, as an adjunct to your legal team, to identify practical and novel solutions — and avoid treacherous pitfalls — that others don’t see at all or simply won’t see in time.
MARK E. PALMER
FOUNDER
Mr. Palmer is Founder/Managing Director of Theseus Strategy Group. He brings more than 20 years of proven experience in “special situations” investing, novel transaction structuring and complex liability and crisis management, forged in the most extreme and unprecedented scenarios. He has multidisciplinary experience, having acting as a global distressed Alternative Investor, a leading corporate/restructuring Legal Adviser and a venture Investor/Entrepreneur.For 7 years, Mark E. Palmer was an Investment Partner for MatlinPatterson, a $10 billion global private equity franchise, where he was responsible for structuring all major investment and disposition transactions; evaluating and managing capital structure arbitrage plays; critical liability/crisis management involving Fund investments;and coordinating/overseeing targeted investments in the Media/Telco/Tech sector and those with “litigation/Creditor Committee” strategies.
- Mark was instrumental to the outcome of many ground-breaking transactions, included Standard Pacific, Global Aviation/ATA, Foamex/FXI, Crescent Communities, Flagstar Bank, Ormet Aluminum, several Media Properties, Nortel, TOUSA, and Idearc. In these matters, he developed and implementing unprecedented creative structures and actually redefined applicable legal/market standards in order to accomplish the Firm’s goals and objectives.
- Mark also provided liability management, and oversaw contractual structuring and negotiation, in connection with portfolio dispositions and follow-on investments. In addition, he coordinated complex litigations, crisis management projects and portfolio company restructurings/reorganizations/liquidations.
- Board representations have included Global Aviation, Advantix, FXI and Crescent Communities and the Idearc and Boston Generating litigation trusts
For 13 years, Mark had a distinguished career as a market-leading legal advisor, serving as a Partner at Bracewell & Giuliani (as Chair of the Private Investment Funds Practice/NY Corporate Head), as a Partner at Linklaters (as US Corporate Head in New York) and as a Partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan (in Corporate/Financial Restructuring). He represented private investment firms, financial institutions and corporations on M&A, governance, takeovers, JVs, investments and reorganizations. He began his law career at Sullivan & Cromwell, as a Corporate and M&A Associate.
- Example creditors/committee representations: WorldCom, Adelphia, SatMex, Ormet, Standard Pacifc, Varig, Oneida, Global Aviation/ATA. Airlines, WestPoint Stevens, Viasystems, Personnel Group of America, Railworks Corp, APW Ltd, Desa Int’.l, Maxim Crane, NSC/Pueblo, TransTexas Gas and Woods Equipment. Example corporate clients: BP, Merrill Lynch, Cablevision, Goldman Sachs, AB InBev and Giuliani Capital. Mark no longer practices law.
For 3 years, Mark was an accomplished entrepreneur/venture capitalist, gaining experience as the EVP/co-founder at NextSet Software (a high-tech middleware and trading/order management applications company); as the Director of Strategic Transactions at Reuters/Reuters Venture Capital (involved in many notable investments and dispositions of the “dot.com” era); and as SVP/General Counsel for TIBCO Finance (where he was as an Executive Committee member and oversaw Y2K compliance as well as strategic partnerships and the spin-off IPO of TIBCO Software).
EDUCATION:
Mr. Palmer received his Juris Doctorate from the Columbia Law School in the City of New York in 1994, where he was recognized as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar every year of study, was named a Fellow for the John M. Olin Foundation for the Study of Law and Economics, and was appointed an Articles Editor for the Journal of Transnational Law.
In 1990, Mark obtained his Bachelors of Arts in Political Science from the University of South Florida in Tampa, graduating with numerous honors and distinctions.
MILITARY SERVICE:
Mr. Palmer enlisted in the US Naval Reserves in 1986. Following recruit training in SanDiego, CA, he attended the Hospital Corps “A” school in Great Lakes, IL, and was subsequently tapped to complete training as a Fleet Marine Force Corpsman with the US Marines Corps in Camp Johnson, NC.
He served as an active reservist based in Saint Petersburg, FL and was mobilized for active duty in Operation Desert Storm during 1990-1991. He received multiple commendations during his period of service and was honorably discharged in 1994.