About

Carl Marks Advisors is an investment bank that provides financial and operational advisory services. We are a collaborative partner delivering effective and durable results for our clients – whether they need solutions to complex problems or help navigating transition and growth. Our proactive, persistent approach breaks through roadblocks, identifies a viable path forward, and creates the alignment and momentum needed to achieve successful outcomes.

At Carl Marks Advisors, we custom build integrated service teams for each client, uniting operational, transactional, and industry expertise to create effective solutions in even the most challenging situations. Our senior professionals are hands-on leaders who collaborate with clients to develop and implement improvement initiatives while enabling management teams to focus on running their businesses.

Awards & Recognitions

Heritage

We are an independent division of Carl Marks & Co., one of the nation’s most experienced merchant banks that today runs a range of principal investment and advisory businesses. Founded by the firm’s namesake in 1925, the entire Carl Marks organization is widely regarded for its family-based culture, financial acumen and high ethical standards. We share this core sense of family with our clients, stressing alignment of interest and a deep personal commitment to all transactions and engagements.

True to this heritage, Carl Marks Advisors continues to bring insightful, innovative and effective operational and transactional solutions to clients in this dynamic and rapidly changing landscape.

Timeline

1925: Carl Marks & Co. was founded by Mr. Carl Marks. Established as the first foreign securities trader in the U.S., the firm became the market-maker for foreign securities, and remained the industry leader for the next forty years. Mr. Marks believed in fair dealing and fostered a culture of collegiality and family, cementing the firm’s reputation for integrity and trustworthiness.

1975: Carl Marks & Co. was one of the first to recognize and capitalize on the emergence of “bootstrap financings,” also known as leveraged buyouts, the investment approach that pioneered the private equity industry.

1983: Carl Marks & Co. formed Carl Marks Realty Services and was one of the first practitioners of distressed real estate investing.

1987: Sensing the start of a period of corporate stress, Carl Marks Strategic Investments was created as an investment vehicle through which sophisticated institutional and individual investors could access Carl Marks & Co.’s skill as a value investor in fundamentally undervalued securities and obligations of underperforming companies.

1988: Carl Marks & Co. merged its broker dealer with Smith New Court PLC.

1992: Launched CM Equity Partners, a generalist private equity business that transitioned its focus to U.S. Federal services contractors and aerospace & defense.

1992: Carl Marks Consulting Group was formed when the firm saw an entrepreneurial opportunity to create a business that could provide consulting services to help turn around distressed companies.

2001: Carl Marks Capital Advisors was created when the firm identified the opportunity to address the investment banking and transactional opportunities that arose as they conducted successful turnaround projects. Stepping Stone Financial was merged into the firm to form this new partnership, adding transaction services capabilities to the firm.

2006: Carl Marks Capital Advisors and Carl Marks Consulting Group combined to form Carl Marks Advisory Group LLC – a vital resource providing integrated, end-to-end financial and operational advisory services, with expertise in turnarounds, restructurings, and investment banking transactions.

2007: Formed Carl Marks Securities LLC to provide clients with financial advisory services related to private placement of debt and equity capital.

2014: Carl Marks Advisory Group LLC rebranded to Carl Marks Advisors with a new tagline “Driving Success Through Change and Growth”.