We believe CRAGSI is America's premier boutique special situations investment manager and advisory firm.
After 40+ years' combined special situations, distressed, and illiquid asset management experience on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, through the I-95 Corridor as well as the Midwest, our two co-founding Managing Directors built CRAGSI to obtain intrinsic value from assets that conventional markets, processes, and advisors simply aren't able to understand, price, or exit at fair value.
We serve institutional investors, C-suite executives (including startup founders), and corporate boards.
Special Situations Investment Manager — Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)
Effective March 1, 2026 · Full Discretionary Authority · Successor to J.P. Morgan Investment Management, Inc.
Pacholder Associates → J.P. Morgan Investment Management → CRAGSI
Our two co-founding Managing Directors are independent and in their combined seventh decade of continuous special situations expertise.
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
When a portfolio asset resists conventional pricing, management, or exit (through illiquidity, operational complexity, regulatory overhang, or structural distress), most advisors reach for the same blunt instruments.
Liquidation. Wind-down. Distressed sales at pennies on the dollar. They focus on burial, not recovery. 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. But never anything typical.
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 startups never return capital to investors under conventional management approaches.
Intrinsic value requires patient, expert execution
Since the mid-to-late 1990s, CRAGSI's team managed busted portfolios for the RTC and FDIC through complex workouts — creating, building, and delivering real markets to lead competitive private placements, achieving liquidity at intrinsic value, and saving hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.
ABCs, wind-downs, and dissolutions prematurely destroy value
The market defaults to burial. CRAGSI’s specialty is engineering alternatives™ to help stabilize, restructure, and recover special situations assets.
Distressed situations deteriorate daily. We move from mandate to execution without institutional lag.
Financial, legal, regulatory, and operational disciplines under one roof.* 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 is the boutique team with the deepest and highest profile special situations lineage.
*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.
Click on our Track Record page for details.
From near-billion-dollar restructurings to startup workouts — across multiple decades and market cycles.
~$700M+
Allis-Chalmers Energy — co-founder helped lead turnaround from distress to public exchange listing, WSJ Top-100 equity, to exit at over $700M
$32MM+
Startup liabilities settled at $0.06–$0.09 on the dollar since 2024
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, with discretionary authority over a diverse portfolio spanning VC, PE, private credit, concentrated equities, real estate, IP, and other alternatives.
RTC / FDIC Workouts · Airline Restructurings
CRAGSI's team managed distressed portfolios for the RTC and 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. [Additional detail to follow.]
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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