Who We Are

Joseph W. Cleverdon — Founder and Managing Director

Mr. Cleverdon has more than twenty years of experience advising, investing in and guiding companies across a broad range of industries, sizes, and financial and strategic situations. Mr. Cleverdon’s experience has centered on companies undergoing significant transformation, whether due to accelerated growth or challenges related to economic cycles, other macroeconomic factors, technological change, competitive encroachment, undercapitalization, commodity price swings, strategic misalignment, and regulatory or judicial proceedings. In these contexts, Mr. Cleverdon has executed dozens of advisory assignments and investments – amounting to many billions of dollars in aggregate – to enable companies and their stakeholders to maximize value and gain strategic advantage. Mr. Cleverdon has extensive expertise in mergers and acquisitions, financings and capital raising, financial restructuring, valuation, fairness and solvency opinions, commercial strategy, executive and financial management, and the commercial and strategic dimensions of litigation.

Prior to forming BayMain Partners, Mr. Cleverdon was a Managing Director at Harbinger Capital Partners in New York for nine years, where he was responsible for over $1.1 billion of private equity, activist, turnaround, and public markets investments in the manufacturing, media, satellite, commercial finance, casino resort, and food industries, among others. Prior to Harbinger Capital Partners, Mr. Cleverdon was a Vice President at Houlihan Lokey in New York and London for seven years, and was a founding officer of its Frankfurt office. At Houlihan Lokey, Mr. Cleverdon advised both companies and their creditors and other stakeholders on dozens of investment banking and financial restructuring assignments involving companies from diverse industries, as well as some of the most complex transactions since the late 1990s. Mr. Cleverdon has served on multiple boards of directors of both public and private companies, including as chairman, as well as chairman of executive, finance and governance board committees. In addition, Mr. Cleverdon has served as interim chief executive officer and chief restructuring officer.

Mr. Cleverdon earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Cornell University, where he focused on mathematics and mechanical engineering, finance and economics, and English Renaissance literature and history.