Lynda Davey’s career spans over 20 years of investing in and financing retail and consumer product companies. She brings the Fund significant expertise as both a principal investor and an investment banker, with bulge bracket and small firm experience. Lynda has developed a wide operating and financial network to assist companies and source mid-market transactions. During her career, she has developed in-depth skills in working with company owners and operators, strategic positioning within industry niches, completing due diligence analysis, and structuring and closing consumer product and retail transactions. In both buy-side and sell-side investment banking assignments, she has maintained a reputation of focusing on creating value for owners.
Lynda began her finance career at Salomon Brothers Inc., where she successfully completed numerous private sale transactions, private debt and equity placements and various public offerings. In 1984, she was a co-founder of that firm’s Retailing and Merchandise Corporate Finance Group. As a senior member of the Retail Group she worked on both merger and acquisition assignments, as well as completing initial public offerings for a variety of retailers and the first off-balance sheet financing, which included a real estate sale/leaseback accomplished with public debt as the leveraged portion.
Following her time at Salomon Brothers, Lynda was named President of Tribeca Group, Ltd., a New York-based buyout firm that invested in retail companies. Investments by Tribeca and its principals included positions as the largest shareholders in substantial, publicly-traded companies, as well as control of various privately-held retail chains purchased in public company divestiture auctions and privately negotiated acquisitions.
In 1992, Lynda left Tribeca to found Avalon Group Ltd. and its affiliate Avalon Securities, Ltd., one of the few woman-owned broker-dealers registered with the SEC and NASD. Avalon is a private merchant bank that provides strategic and financial advice, mergers and acquisition services and private placement services to middle market private and public companies. Avalon is focused on retail and consumer product companies and has a strong reputation and network of high-caliber, committed business owners, senior executives and entrepreneurs in mid-market companies. Avalon clients range from divisions of Fortune 500 companies, to established private companies.
At Avalon, Lynda has both invested and provided strategic and investment banking services, which include advising with regards to restructuring and strategic repositioning and arranging debt and equity for select companies. Investments have included:
Jane Cosmetics, the 12th largest U.S. cosmetic company, which was purchased from The Estée Lauder Companies, grown and subsequently sold to two private equity funds
Tempur-Pedic International, the leading designer, manufacturer, and distributor of visco-elastic foam products, which was formed through the merger of a Danish manufacturer and its U.S. distributor. Lynda also assisted through the sale of a minority interest, a debt financing and a subsequent sale of the majority of the company for a $400 million valuation.
Lynda is recognized as an expert in valuing companies in both the New York State Supreme Court and various Bankruptcy Courts. In 1998, she was a New York City finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Lynda has spoken on finance and consumer topics at various conferences including the 2nd Annual International Textile and Apparel Conference held in Beijing in 2005, the New York Entrepreneurship Summit on The Changing Landscape of Finance in New York, and Touched by An Angel.
Lynda has been a board member of various retail and consumer product companies including Tuffy Associates Corp., a private 400 unit auto service franchiser, Jane Cosmetics, and Textus, a private textile company. She was also a founding member of the President’s Advisory Board of the Fashion Institute of Technology and its Center for Design Innovation. Lynda graduated from the University of Virginia with a BS in Architecture and has a Masters in Architecture from the University of Michigan. She practiced as a registered architect in New York City before earning an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
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