If your company is running out of runway and your advisors are defaulting to liquidation, you are who we built CRAGSI for. Our co-founding Managing Directors bring 30+ years of continuous special situations experience from Wall Street, Boston, and Silicon Valley to companies and assets the market cannot understand, price, or exit at fair value. We deliver recovery paths others cannot see, and when closure is right, we run it ourselves.
Special Situations Investment Manager — Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)
Effective March 1, 2026 · Successor to J.P. Morgan Investment Management, Inc.
Pacholder Associates → J.P. Morgan Investment Management → CRAGSI
Our two co-founding Managing Directors are independent, with more than 30 years of continuous special situations experience.
CRAGSI focuses its operations across three primary client bases.
RIAs, VC firms, Pension funds, Family offices, PE sponsors, and Lenders — all holding assets that resist conventional pricing, management, or exit.
Portfolio workout & restructuring
Distressed asset management
LP interest monetization
Special situations advisory
Leadership at small-to-mid-size companies navigating distress, operational crisis, or the zone of insolvency, whether VC-backed or not.
Rapid operational stabilization
Debt restructuring & negotiation
Full Stack Fractional™ C-suite
Strategic alternatives analysis
Founders of VC-backed startups confronting existential financial or operational challenges that exceed what standard VC support can address.
Turnaround strategy & execution
Liability settlement
Runway extension
Follow-on funding positioning
Members of CRAGSI’s team were engaged at a venture-backed company with two months of runway remaining, where the incumbent fractional CFO was counseling acceptance of failure. After a Sunday morning meeting with the CEO, a different path was set. Within one week, a reduction in force was executed, creditor negotiations commenced, and litigation was settled favorably. The company’s monthly occupancy cost fell from over $100,000 to $6,500, runway was extended by seven months, and its Series B financing closed.
$8M
Liabilities negotiated away, including over $7M in lease obligations
94%
Monthly occupancy cost reduction — from over $100,000 to $6,500
+7 mo.
Runway extension — without new equity capital
Series B
Financing closed following the restructuring
Named Engagement · Geltor, Inc.
“David and his team didn’t just provide potential solutions and hope. The team at CRAGSI executed and delivered. Their integrated approach helped us navigate complexity and emerge stronger than ever.”
Dr. Alex Lorestani — Founder & CEO, Geltor
When a portfolio asset resists conventional pricing, management, or exit (through illiquidity, operational complexity, regulatory overhang, or structural distress), most advisors reach for the one tool their practice is built around.
Some advisors push for a rescue at any cost; closure firms tend to move directly to liquidation, an assignment for the benefit of creditors (“ABC”), or a distressed sale. CRAGSI looks first for a path that preserves the company. When closure or a sale is the right outcome, CRAGSI runs that process itself and can serve as assignee in an ABC. We’ve made careers out of designing distressed-to-growth strategies in complex esoteric assets, while getting paid for patience or, in some cases, exceptionally rapid speed.
CRAGSI was built for precisely these situations — to find, structure, and execute the recovery paths that others cannot see.
$730B+
VC ecosystem at risk
75% of venture-backed startups never return cash to investors.
Intrinsic value requires patient, expert execution
Beginning in the mid-to-late 1990s, members of CRAGSI’s team managed busted portfolios for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) through complex workouts. That work created, built, and delivered real markets, led competitive sale processes and auctions, achieved liquidity at intrinsic value, and saved hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.
Boards often close the company before anyone tests the alternatives
CRAGSI’s specialty is its Engineering Alternatives™ approach — stabilizing, restructuring, and recovering special situations assets. When closure is the right answer, CRAGSI runs the ABC or wind-down itself.
Distressed situations deteriorate daily. We move from mandate to execution without institutional lag.
Financial, regulatory, and operational disciplines, working alongside our co-founding law firm.* Our team members hold designations including JD, MBA, CFA®, CPA, and LLM credentials.
Outcome-based fees and incentive compensation structures available. Our success is literally your success.
Our team members' decades of Special Situations expertise — from S&L crisis workouts, through the collapse of the US steel industry, the airline bankruptcies of the mid-2000s, the housing bubble, through COVID. And now CRAGSI carries one of the deepest and highest profile special situations lineages of any boutique in the space.
*CRAGSI is not a law firm and does not engage in the practice of law or provide legal advice. CRAGSI is co-founded and co-owned by the law firm of Groshoff And Urien LLP, whose attorneys are authorized to practice in the state courts of California, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and several federal jurisdictions.
From near-billion-dollar restructurings to startup workouts — across multiple decades and market cycles.
~$1B
Allis-Chalmers Energy — co-founder helped lead turnaround from distress to public exchange listing, WSJ Top-100 equity, to a near-$1B exit
$16M+
Average liabilities settled per startup engagement at ~$0.07 on the dollar
90%+
Average debt reduction across startup turnaround mandates
~80%
Of startup clients positioned for successful follow-on funding after engagement
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
Succeeding J.P. Morgan Investment Management as PBGC’s Special Situations Investment Manager, managing a diverse portfolio spanning venture capital, private equity, private credit, concentrated equities, real estate, intellectual property, and other alternatives.
FDIC Workouts · Airline Restructurings
Members of CRAGSI’s team managed distressed portfolios for the FDIC, served as control shareholders in major airlines during the mid-2000s restructurings, and executed decade-long workouts to achieve liquidity at intrinsic value, saving hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.
Initial consultations are free and confidential (and in some situations, also legally privileged). No obligation. Really.
We’ll tell you honestly whether CRAGSI is the right firm for your situation, and if your situation is the right one for us. We don’t take on what we don’t believe we can execute and win.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
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