This week we chat with Ken Wormser and David Powar, managing partners at GreensLedge. Founded in 2008, GreensLedge is an independent investment banking firm focused on the global structured credit and alternative investment marketplace. With offices in New York, London, Tokyo and Seoul, the firm provides advisory and related transactional services to issuers, investors and other institutional market participants worldwide.

The Lead Left: Gentlemen, anyone in the structured finance space is no doubt familiar with you both, but some readers may not be as familiar with GreensLedge. Tell us a bit about your firm.

Ken Wormser: David and I have been at GreensLedge since July 2011, over six years now and have worked together for 20. We are a credit-focused investment banking boutique. Structured finance is just one of the tools in our arsenal. We are an advisory firm of placement in capital markets and private credit, as well as M&A, debt, and equity raises. We cover four geographies: the US, Japan, the UK, and Korea.

TLL: How did the firm start?

KW: The firm was founded by Jim Kane and Brian Zeitlin in September 2008. Their background was running structured credit at JPMorgan, and they started GreensLedge as a similar business. It’s grown because of the people. For example, Iku Nishino came out of JPMorgan to help set up a Tokyo office. Brian and Jim knew David and me and reached out in 2011 to talk about coming over. Then in 2014 we reached out to Lesley Goldwasser who we knew from Bear Stearns and Credit Suisse to join the firm.