Advisory · Announcing
The Expert Advisory Board.
A standing bench of operators, accountants, former securities lawyers, and industry specialists, convened by Buxton Helmsley for the moments that decide a company’s future—and for the years before them, when those moments can still be prevented.
Not a law firm. The panel does not act in a legal capacity or give legal advice; a company’s legal advice comes from its own counsel.
Launching shortly · Founding seats open
01 · Examine
Diagnosis before prescription.
02 · Prevent
Treatment while it is still simple.
03 · Intervene
Care in the crisis.
The Idea
Most advisers arrive after the damage.This panel is built to arrive before it.
A physician’s best work is the illness a patient never has. Corporate advice has mostly worked the other way round: the specialists are called once the restatement is announced, the covenant is breached, or the chief executive has gone.
The Expert Advisory Board brings that depth of expertise to a company early, while a weakness is still a finding in a report rather than a headline, and stays ready for the day it is not.
The Practice
Examine. Prevent. Intervene.
01. Examine
Diagnosis before prescription.
Every engagement begins with the record: the company’s filings, accounts, controls, governance, and operations, read by people who have run, audited, financed, and litigated companies like it. The panel reports what it finds, including what management may not want to hear.
02. Prevent
Treatment while it is still simple.
Weak controls, a fragile capital structure, a board missing a skill, a disclosure that will not survive scrutiny: each is cheaper to fix in the quiet years. The panel helps a company find and close them before a regulator, a lender, or a shareholder does.
03. Intervene
Care in the crisis.
When the crisis has arrived—an investigation, a liquidity squeeze, a failed audit, a sudden departure, a shareholder campaign—the panel brings people who have been in the room before, to steady the company and set out the path back.
What It Treats
The conditions it is built for.
Each begins with signs a trained eye can read in a company’s own record, often long before the market does.
Accounting and disclosure failure
- Signs
- Late filings, auditor turnover, revisions to reported figures, a material weakness.
- Care
- A forensic review of the record, controls put right, and disclosure that will hold.
Governance breakdown
- Signs
- A board without the skills its business needs, conflicted transactions, entrenched control.
- Care
- An assessment of the board, reform of its committees, and independent directors who fit the gap.
Liquidity and capital structure
- Signs
- Covenant pressure, maturities without a plan, cash burn running ahead of the forecast.
- Care
- A review of the capital structure, support in talks with lenders, and a plan to restructure.
Operational decline
- Signs
- Margins falling behind peers, a turnaround that has stalled, costs outrunning revenue.
- Care
- An operating review by people who have run the business, and a plan with measurable steps.
Leadership crisis
- Signs
- A sudden departure, a succession with no candidate, a leadership team that has lost the board’s confidence.
- Care
- Interim leadership where the conflict check allows it, and a search grounded in what the role needs.
Regulatory and legal exposure
- Signs
- An inquiry, a subpoena, a whistleblower complaint, litigation over what the company reported.
- Care
- Independent analysis for the board and its counsel to weigh, with the record rebuilt from the documents. The legal advice stays with counsel.
Shareholder pressure
- Signs
- A campaign under way or expected, a failed vote, a persistent gap between price and value.
- Care
- An honest reading of the record first; the firm advises a board facing a campaign only where that reading supports it.
Transaction risk
- Signs
- A deal resting on numbers nobody outside has tested, a lender about to commit.
- Care
- Diligence on the reported results before the transaction closes or the money moves.
Who Calls On It
Two kinds of patient.
Companies, boards, and their advisers
The panel serves the clients of Buxton Helmsley’s advisory practice: boards and committees, management teams, private equity firms and lenders, and litigation counsel. Members join an engagement where theirs is the expertise the matter turns on. Where a matter turns on the law, the company’s own counsel directs, and the panel works alongside them as consultants, never in their place.
The firm itself
Buxton Helmsley also calls on the panel for independent analysis of situations its funds are weighing, and for help in rescue situations, where a company and its investors need more than capital. Where the firm’s funds intervene to protect investors or to save a company, panel members may be put forward as candidates for that company’s board.
Before a member is asked to work on any company, the firm checks the request against that member’s other work for the firm and for its clients, and a client’s confidences stay within that client’s engagement.
Founding Members
Launching shortly.
The Expert Advisory Board is being assembled now, and its founding members will be announced here when it launches. Founding seats are open to accomplished practitioners: former chief executives and chief financial officers, directors, auditors and forensic accountants, restructuring professionals, former securities lawyers, former regulators, and specialists in the industries the firm studies.
What the firm looks for
A record of having been in the room when it mattered.
Expertise a board would want on call.
Independence of judgment, and the willingness to say what the record shows.
Time to give to engagements as they arise.
Not a Governing Body
Members advise; they do not govern. The panel holds no seat on Buxton Helmsley’s Board of Directors and no authority over the firm, and its members owe the firm none of the duties of a director. A member who serves on the board of a client or of any other company does so in that company’s interest, under that company’s rules.
Not Legal Advice
Buxton Helmsley is not a law firm. Neither the firm nor the panel practices law, and neither acts in a legal capacity for anyone. A member who is or was a lawyer serves on the panel only as a consultant: never as an attorney for the firm, a client, or anyone else, never representing anyone, and never giving legal advice or a legal opinion. Working with the panel creates no attorney–client relationship with the firm or with any member. A company’s legal advice comes only from its own counsel, who decide for themselves whether to take the panel’s views.
Advisory services are provided by a U.S. operating subsidiary of Buxton Helmsley, Inc. that is not part of the firm’s asset management business, and are not offered by Buxton Helmsley USA, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. The firm is building the advisory business to run separately from asset management, with its own staff behind an information barrier. That separation will be complete once the firm has made the hires it requires; until then, some of the same people serve both businesses, under the conflict rules the firm applies to every engagement.
Where to start.
Each engagement begins with a short call to confirm there is no conflict and to agree the scope. Boards, management teams, deal teams, and counsel can reach the firm directly or send the request below.
Point of Contact
Advisory
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1185 Avenue of the AmericasFloor 3
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Correspondence
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