What We Do
ENSO Advisors provides analysis, solutions, and support for banking, commercial real estate, early stage ventures, and turnaround situations.
Our company is made up of attorneys, certified public accountants, bankers, structured finance and underwriting professionals, financial analysts, and entrepreneurs. Our Managing Directors each have over twenty years experience in a wide variety of banking, commercial real estate finance, debt restructuring, law, start-up ventures, and corporate operations. The diversity of our experience provides a broad frame of reference for defining issues and developing solutions.
Let ENSO Advisors lend its perspective to your organization.
Financial Institutions
Financial Institution Support
Competitive pressure and the search for yield forced many community and regional banks to seek opportunity in the booming Commercial Real Estate Market. Many banks invested heavily in CRE loans, often exceeding 300% of capital, and have relied on future financing as a primary source of collection. In today’s frozen credit markets, banks are under significant fire from their regulators, boards of directors, and shareholders to gain control over their CRE loan portfolios, make adequate and conservative reserves for future loses, manage risk, and maximize recovery.
To that end, ENSO Advisors can assist your bank in accomplishing these critical and time sensitive objectives:
Commercial Real Estate
Commercial Real Estate Finance
In today’s difficult credit markets, access to capital has perhaps become the single most critical component for a viable project. Successfully securing debt or equity to further a development hinges on the realistic determination of today’s value and rational projections for future economic benefits. ENSO Advisors has extensive relationships throughout the capital markets and can help you identify the equity partner or source of debt financing that will enable you to weather the current market and thrive during the inevitable recovery.
ENSO Advisors invests heavily to stay abreast of current underwriting requirements, deal structures, terms, and capital pricing. We are adept at packaging commercial real estate transactions in a manner that maximizes financing opportunities and minimizes cost. ENSO Advisors can help you with:
Distressed Portfolio Due Diligence
Turmoil creates opportunity. The Principals at ENSO Advisors have deep experience rooted in the last financial crisis and have had instrumental roles in identifying distressed portfolio acquisition opportunities, conducting due diligence, and in developing pricing models. We have the distinction of then living with the results of those decisions and proving out the underlying assumptions through actual collections.
Acquiring distressed commercial real estate loan portfolios involves a significant commitment of time to identify opportunities and to understand market pricing dynamics and deal structures. When a realistic opportunity is finally identified, the time available to determine value and identify risk is extremely compressed. Adding ENSO Advisors to your investment strategy can help you make the best possible investment decisions in the shortest possible time by providing:
Early Stage Companies
Strategic Business Planning
Early stage companies are exciting, fast-paced, and fraught with pitfalls. It is not enough to only have a unique product or service, a competitive production advantage, deep industry expertise, or a powerful sales channel. A strategic roadmap is absolutely essential to capitalizing on your strengths. Our Managing Directors have been directly involved in over twenty start-ups and other early stage companies and have front line experience driving growth, managing with limited resources, and attracting growth capital in a wide range of industries. You can make the most of your two most valuable assets — time and capital — by leaning on ENSO Advisors to assist your company with:
Interim Management Solutions
Building an experienced and reliable team is a challenging effort for an entrepreneur. Finding the right blend of experience and common vision is crucial to growth – and sometimes to survival. ENSO Advisors can help you bridge management gaps in your organization that arise from high growth rates or changes in strategic direction. We can bring deep expertise to your company on an interim basis while you search for the right long term solution for your:
Special Situations
Litigation Support
ENSO Advisors has a unique depth of experience in the types of issues that arise when things go wrong in commercial real estate transactions, start-up companies, and middle market corporate operations. Our expertise in finance, asset valuation, debt restructuring, asset management and debt collection makes us an ideal partner to support your litigation efforts. We can directly help your case by providing:
Interim Management Solutions
Significant gaps in management are expensive for a company’s investors, lenders, employees, and customers. ENSO Advisors can help you bridge management gaps in an organization that arise from departures of existing management or loss of confidence by investors. We can bring deep expertise on an interim basis until a long-term solution is determined.
Who We Are
ENSO (pronounced en • so) is a Japanese word meaning “circle” and a symbol strongly associated with the Zen tradition. This tradition is rooted in the concepts of enlightenment, strength, elegance, and a continuing action through time. ENSO Advisors embraces these same concepts in the delivery of solutions for our clients. We strive to think clearly, provide accurate and insightful analysis, develop pragmatic and efficient solutions, and to seek constant improvement.
ENSO Advisors is made up of attorneys, certified public accountants, bankers, structured finance and underwriting professionals, financial analysts, and entrepreneurs. Our Managing Directors each have over twenty years experience in a wide variety of banking, commercial real estate finance, debt restructuring, law, start-up ventures, and corporate operations. The diversity of our experience provides a broad frame of reference for defining issues and developing solutions.
Our Managing Directors
Clay
Wilson |
Mr. Wilson has been involved in institutional commercial real estate for over 20-years. His experience includes loan portfolio management, asset management, loan servicing, and debt restructuring. Mr. Wilson began his real estate career with Kenneth Leventhal & Company (now Ernst & Young) and later managed over $1 billon in troubled commercial real estate assets resulting from the largest savings & loan failure in history for the FSLIC. Mr. Wilson also provided asset management services to the RTC and assisted opportunistic buyers in the successful due diligence, bid, purchase and collection of over $100 million in distressed assets. Mr. Wilson has also served as portfolio manager for over $300 million in distressed commercial real estate assets for regional banks. Mr.
Wilson earned a BBA in Accounting and a BA in Economics from Southern
Methodist University and is licensed as a Certified Public Accountant in
Texas. |
Don
Jones |
Mr. Jones
has been involved commercial real estate law for over 20-years. He has experience with all aspects of
transactional law including acquisition, disposition, brokerage, loan
structuring, lease negotiations, and foreclosure. He has
been practicing real estate law in Texas and Louisiana since 1988. Don was licensed as a Texas
salesperson in 2001 and as a broker in 2007. He has worked for title
companies, a publicly-traded REIT and large and small law firms. He is
presently a partner with Wilensky & Jones, LLP, a Dallas-based law firm
specializing in real estate and transactional law. Don
graduated from Louisiana State University in 1984 with a B.S. in Business
Administration - Finance and from the Louisiana State University - Paul M.
Hebert Law School in 1988. He
was awarded the LSU Alumni Association Scholarship as an undergraduate in
1982. |
What We Like
Economy
Economic Thought
Financial Institutions
Commercial Real Estate
Entrepreneurship & Special Situations
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