James Zukin is the Co-Founder of Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (NYSE:HLI), a top 10 global investment bank and global leader in financial valuation. He co-headed the Houlihan Lokey groups that created the modern fairness and solvency opinions. Mr. Zukin was the founding Chairman of the Valuation Study Group, the first organization of financial valuation professionals. His government clients included the IRS, the Dept. of Labor, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the Office of Thrift Supervision, CalPERS & the Korean Asset Management Corporation. He formed Houlihan Lokey’s Sovereign Advisory Services practice, whose 20+ clients included Antigua & Barbuda, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Liberia, Iraq, and the Russian Federation. Mr. Zukin served as a senior delegate to the Paris Club meetings involving the private sector and the IMF. He presented to the Paris Club a seminal paper and financial model on determining sovereign contingent liabilities. He created the “rapid sequencing” approach to sovereign debt restructuring. Mr. Zukin has performed, supervised or reviewed over 1,000 financial valuations, over 200 M&A / restructuring engagements and over 20 sovereign debt engagements.