James Zukin

James Zukin is an American investment banker and author who is currently the Managing Partner at Zukin Partners, a strategy-focused investment bank which he founded in 2018. He is primarily known as one of the co-founders of Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (NYSE:HLI), a leading global investment bank with a focus on financial valuation. He founded Houlihan Lokey’s Sovereign Advisory Service, and led several international sovereign debt transactions. He is also the principal of Zukin Capital, the Zukin Family Office.
==Education==
Zukin attended UC Berkeley, graduating with a BA in economics with a minor in poetry. He then earned an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.
==Career==
Houlihan Lokey
1970’s: Zukin co-founded Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (NYSE:HLI) a global investment bank with an initial focus in financial valuation. As of March 23, 2021, it has a market capitalization of $4.5 billion. HL was # 1 US M&A advisor in 2020- 210 deals.
1980’s-1990s: Zukin co-headed the valuation groups at Houlihan Lokey responsible for creating the modern fairness and solvency opinions. Zukin, working together with Kit Lokey, Paul Much, and others, pioneered the use of advanced financial valuation techniques to determine post-transaction solvency in highly leveraged LBO deals. These solvency opinions eventually became an integral part of LBO transactions in the 1980’s, with Houlihan Lokey delivering more opinions than any other firm. In the 1990s, he spoke on the rise of merchant banking and leveraged buyouts, arguing that their expansion was restricted by the then current market conditions. 
In 2004, Mr. Zukin formed the Sovereign Advisory Services Group for Houlihan Lokey, whose clients include Antigua & Barbuda, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Liberia, the Republic of Iraq, and the Russian Federation. He was responsible for attracting talent and growing the Houlihan Lokey sovereign advisory practice. This expanded Houlihan Lokey “global leadership in financial restructuring,” where they provided services such as “restructuring of sovereign debt ... the restructuring of debt owed to bondholders, commercial banks and other creditors, and domestic debt restructurings.” His work with the Iraqi government helped expand their “access to capital,” which helped the government to decrease their borrowing costs. This restructuring was one of the more complicated deals in international finance, as it had significant political implications that took priority over pure valuation.
In 2007, James Zukin was elected Chairman of Asia for Houlihan Lokey. He was appointed at a time when Houlihan Lokey was focusing on business development and expansion in Asia. He delivered expertise in M&A, valuation, and financial restructuring to advisory clients across Asia. Zukin's focus on business development in Asia enabled Houlihan Lokey's rise in their Chinese M&A practice.
In 2009, Mr. Zukin gave a presentation to the North American Representative Office of Shenzhen, China (NAROS) called “The Great Unwind and its Impact on China,” , which highlighted the several systematic problems the U.S. faced from both a political and economic landscape. He discussed the failure of financial models to accurately depict future trends, and concluded that “compound optimism” is heavily in effect.
2014: Zukin left Houlihan Lokey to pursue his love for poetry.
Additional Positions
2016: He served as chairman of the Audit and Risk Management of Athenex, Inc. (ATNX) from 12/14/16 – 7/1/18. Athenex is a biomedical company listed on NASDAQ, where he guided the company through the Sarbanes-Oxley mandated internal controls.
Financial Publications: 
In 1990, Zukin served as editor in chief of Financial Valuation: Businesses and Business, published by Warren Goran and Lamont with six supplements, proposing new strategies for financial modeling and business valuations. It is the first multi authored (39) text in the then nascent field of financial valuation. This book is still being used for financial research today, as this textbook is part of the foundation of modern corporate finance and has enabled others to build upon his work . His theories are still relevant today and many other authors have cited Zukin’s techniques to determine business liquidity and relevant metrics to determine financial value in their own books 
Zukin is also the co-author “CPA’s Guide to Valuing a Closely Held Business,” published by the California CPA society, handbook that explains various valuation techniques under IRS revenue ruling 59-60 including alternative strategies to value control and minority premiums.
Poetry
Alongside his work in finance, Mr. Zukin is also a poet. As a college student, he was able to expand his knowledge of poetry when he worked in a local bookstore owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a legendary poet. To date, Zukin has authored five volumes of poetry including several hundred poems with most remaining unpublished.
In 2019, Zukin published, Threads, a selection of his poems. He is active in the poetry community and is currently on the Board of Trustees for the Beyond Baroque Foundation. http://beyondbaroque.org/
He is a co-founder of the Carlos Segovia Scholarship Fund which gives money to aspiring poets in need of financial support.
Philanthropy
Zukin is the trustee of the Eisenstein-Zukin Family Foundation and on the board of Jewish World Watch (JWW).
Zukin Partners
** In 2018, Zukin returned to the financial world and founded Zukin Partner, a boutique strategy led investment bank based in Los Angeles.
The Founding Partners include:
* Rajit Molhatra - Formerly Managing Partner of LA Offices of McKinsey
* Jacob Salk - Formerly with Houlihan Lokey and the Zukin Family Office 
* Christopher Petzel - Formerly with Houlihan Lokey and currently co-CEO of Byte-to-Byte Industries, a portfolio company (minority interest) in the Zukin Family Office
* Ari Schottenstein - Formerly of the Zukin Family Office
Category:American investment bankers
Category:American authors