Mr. Calvert is a vice president at Development Specialists, Inc., with over 20 years experience encompassing strategic planning, operations, corporate finance, valuation, mergers and acquisitions, and complex financial restructurings. Mr. Calvert has performed engagements in connection with acquisitions, divestitures, partial investments on minority and majority bases, joint ventures, settlement agreements, plan confirmation matters and determining the value impact of various strategic operating and financing decisions. He has significant international experience, has performed analyses over a broad range of industries and markets and has provided expert testimony in solvency matters. Mr. Calvert has written about off-balance sheet financing techniques and lectured extensively at various graduate schools of business in the areas of finance and creating shareholder value.
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Calvert was with L.E.K. Consulting, a global management consulting firm specializing in corporate strategy. Mr. Calvert was primarily involved in the Executive Education Practice where he assisted companies in implementing value-based management techniques and employing sound corporate finance analysis to improve their decision-making process. He also assisted commercial banks and other financial advisors in using corporate finance analysis to understand their clients’ strategies and their value creation potential, and to structure capital market solutions that addressed key client needs.
In 1997, Mr. Calvert joined the Office Products Group of General Binding Corporation (“GBC”) as Vice President of Business Development. In that capacity he was responsible for all acquisitions, divestitures, and joint ventures on a worldwide basis. Additionally, Mr. Calvert led acquisition integration initiatives that included the rationalization of product lines, distribution channels, manufacturing and warehousing facilities, as well as certain personnel. Mr. Calvert was responsible for developing the Office Product Group’s North American Strategic Plan and he had operating responsibility for the Group’s troubled Australian operations.
Prior to joining GBC, Mr. Calvert was a Manager in the Financial and Economic Advisory Consulting Services Group of Arthur Andersen LLP. Mr. Calvert assisted clients in a variety of merger and acquisition engagements that included transaction structuring, valuation, and negotiation. Further, Mr. Calvert assisted clients in developing appropriate capital structures and in raising financing.
Before joining Arthur Andersen, Mr. Calvert was a Relationship Manager for National Bank of Detroit, providing senior debt financing to Fortune 500 and middle market companies.
Mr. Calvert has significant international experience, including an expatriate assignment in Brussels, Belgium. He has performed transaction-oriented assignments in the following countries: Australia, The Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, Canada, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Egypt, Switzerland, France, United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States.
Mr. Calvert has served on the board of directors of private companies in the office products manufacturing industry and the commercial printing industry. He presently serves on the board of directors of the Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago.
Mr. Calvert has been a guest lecturer and instructor at various executive education programs such as the Andersen-sponsored Korean M&A School and Business Valuation School. He has served on the faculty of the Merger Week program offered by the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Mr. Calvert has been an instructor at the American Institute of Banking and authored “The Application and Effects of In-Substance Defeasance” in The Journal of Commercial Lending and co-authored the “Due Diligence” chapter in Bankruptcy Business Acquisitions, 2d Edition, American Bankruptcy Institute 2006.
Mr. Calvert received a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business with specializations in Finance and Marketing. He also holds a Bachelors Degree in Policy and Administration from Indiana University.
