Navigating the Pandemic: Essential vs. Non-Essential Industries

Claudine Cohen is a principal in CohnReznick’s Advisory Group’s national Transactional Advisory Practice (TAS). She leads the Northeast TAS practice   With more than 25 years of business experience, Claudine has developed an expertise in providing transactional advisory services, serving as an adviser to public and private companies, both domestically and internationally.  She works with private equity investors, family offices alternative investment funds, lenders, family offices and strategic investors.

Claudine’s specific advisory activities include: strategic advisory, quality of earnings analyses, identifying revenue sources and profitability drivers, examining operating cost structure and sustainability factors, investigating business models including cash flow and financial projections, reviewing quality and realization of assets and liabilities, identifying working capital requirements and negotiating positions, post-close working capital verification, and adjustment mechanisms.  Claudine has advised on a number of different buy - and sell-side transactions, including standalone platforms; carve-out of business segments, product line, or facility; bankruptcy auction processes; mergers; and industry consolidations.

Claudine was named to Mergers and Acquisitions 2019 list of the most influential women in mid-market M&A, and Crains NY 2018 most notable women in consulting. She has authored several articles and Thought Leadership, The Deal and other publications focusing on buy and sell-side due diligence, working capital and purchase price allocation.

Kimberly Bruce is a Managing Director and leads a middle market banking team covering West and North Florida for CIBC. As one of the five largest banks in Canada with $597B in assets, CIBC maintains its global headquarters in Toronto and US headquarters in Chicago. In middle market banking, her team works with public, private and sponsor backed companies with annual revenues between $25 million and $2 billion to provide commercial lending, treasury, capital markets and enterprise solutions.

Prior to joining CIBC, Kimberly was the National Small Business Client Management Executive at Bank of America where she was responsible for leading a line of business with more than $4B in loans, $13B in deposits and 100,000+ client relationships across the U.S. With more than 29 years of commercial banking experience, she has held various leadership and individual contributor roles focused on working with companies to develop strategic financial solutions and partnerships. Also, as a senior leader at Bank of America she served as Bank of America’s Executive Advisor in their strategy agreement with work with China Construction Bank in addition to other strategic initiatives and projects.

Kimberly earned her B.A. in Government & Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame and her MBA from The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. She also has held Finra (NASD) Series 7 and 63 licenses.

Kimberly currently serves as Board Chair and member of the Executive Committee for The Florida Aquarium. She has previously served in different leadership capacities in the Tampa community including as Treasurer and Executive Board Member for The Center for Women Centre and as a past member of the Board for The Florida Venture Forum and Association for Corporate Growth.

Will is involved in all aspects of the firm’s investment activities including identifying, structuring and executing transactions.  He serves on the board of directors for all KLH portfolio companies and is directly responsible for overseeing Apogee Lighting, Shenandoah Industrial Solutions and ElectriCom. Additionally, he is a member of the KLH Investment Committee and oversees investor relations for the firm. Will graduated from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce with a Bachelor of Science degree in Commerce and minored in Aerospace Engineering.

Mr. Elias is a Partner at Trivest Partners, based in Coral Gables, Florida.  Trivest was founded in 1981 and has $2.0+ billion in assets under management.  Mr. Elias joined the firm 23 years ago in 1997 and today is involved in all aspects of the firm, including the origination of founder/family owned investment opportunities, completing acquisitions, portfolio oversight and overall firm management.  Mr. Elias also oversees Trivest Growth Investment Fund (TGIF) which focuses on making growth and non-control investments in founder/family owned business.  Mr. Elias is a member of Trivest’s Investment Committee and serves as a Chairman or Board Member of numerous Trivest companies.  Prior to joining Trivest, Mr. Elias served as a senior accountant in the Audit and Business Advisory Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Miami.  Mr. Elias is a current Board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Miami, and a former Board member of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of South Florida.  He received his B.S. from Boston College and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.