Navigating complexity in the middle-market

Birchton is an independent financial advisory and investment firm focused on special situations involving corporate distress and real assets. We return struggling businesses to the path of profitability and sustainable growth.

We provide businesses and investors with the intellectual and financial capital that revitalizes troubled businesses and assets.

About us

Middle-market businesses facing complex balance sheet and operational challenges require prompt, reliable, and measurable strategies that lead to favorable results. The partners at Birchton have deep expertise and hands-on experience advising management teams, corporate boards, creditors, and sponsors facing complicated problems with non-obvious solutions. Led by veteran investment fiduciaries, Birchton brings the intelligent counsel and financial capital that revitalizes troubled businesses and assets into vibrant, going concerns.

Special situations advisory
Middle-market companies encountering special situation problems face a whirlwind of evolving and seemingly unending challenges. Birchton’s steady hand solves those challenges. We conceive and implement the actionable solutions that alleviate uncertainty and return businesses and assets to thriving trajectories.

Direct investments
Birchton not only advises in special situations, it also invests in them. Our direct investments in credit, equity, and real assets target misunderstood, complex settings where our capital and tactical initiative returns businesses to the path of profitability and sustainable growth.

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We advise management teams, corporate boards, creditors, and sponsors in situations involving financial distress.

Advisory services

Turnarounds &
Restructurings

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Guiding competing interests into alignment.

Birchton’s turnaround and restructuring practice coalesces a myriad of disparate interests into a viable, go-forward strategy. Decades spent navigating the complexities of distress allows Birchton to understand and appreciate all stakeholders’ perspectives in ways that builds consensus.

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Mergers & Acquisitions

Creating value in turbulent markets through strategic M&A.

Birchton delivers a fresh perspective on evaluating strategic bolt-on acquisitions and dispositions of non-core assets and business lines. Whether assisting with integration, valuation, or financing, Birchton is noted for its assistance and advice across a variety of industries.

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Real Assets

Executing strategies that maximize the value of distressed real estate.

Birchton works with real estate owners and lenders, both thriving and distressed, to gain a deeper understanding of the opportunities and obstacles they face. Together, we develop a thorough, property-specific strategy, boost productivity, and optimize each client’s portfolio more effectively.

We invest in idiosyncratic fact patterns where our involvement can be outcome determinative.

Direct investments

Credit

With the ever-increasing size of both deals and debt markets, Birchton identifies and capitalizes upon credit investments overlooked and under-appreciated by the broader market. We deploy capital where returns are commensurate with the underlying risk, and outperformance is rewarded.

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Control buyouts

As multi-national companies grow, the acquisition of non-core assets provide a plethora of opportunities, where small- and medium-sized business can thrive on a stand-alone basis. Alignment of interests throughout organizations are paramount at Birchton.

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Real assets

Birchton seeks to generate superior returns through the acquisition and management of middle-market commercial real estate assets. We make controlling debt or equity investments, while seeking to increase net operating income through an operationally intensive approach to asset management.

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Market tested and seasoned by decades on the front lines of transformative economic change.

Leadership

Mark Martinson

Mark Martinson, a co-founder and partner at Birchton, has spent his entire career navigating the complexities of distressed special situations and has over two decades of experience as a principal investor in middle-market companies undergoing financial restructurings. His focus at Birchton is analyzing and structuring challenging turnarounds and restructurings, particularly on behalf of firms facing the constraints of limited liquidity.

Throughout his career, Mr. Martinson has worked at the intersection of accounting, finance, and law. He holds a tactician’s appreciation of the interplay between cash flow and intellectual capital that are critical to a company’s  recovery. Mr. Martinson has spearheaded turnarounds as an advisor, creditor, and principal investor, both in- and out-of-court, and has arranged all manner of financings, from merchant banking deals to DIP and exit financings in Chapter 11 proceedings. His industry experience runs the gambit—from industrial and manufacturing firms to cutting-edge biotech—and has served on the board of numerous companies.

Before co-founding Birchton, Mr. Martinson served as the co-founder and managing partner of Orox Capital Management, a credit opportunities investment firm focused on the U.S. middle-market. He served as a Senior Portfolio Manager of distressed and credit opportunities at Courage Capital. Additionally, Mr. Martinson was a Portfolio Manager at Highland Capital Management, where he served on the distressed and restructuring team. He began his career as investment banking analyst at Merrill Lynch in New York City.

Mr. Martinson earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia.

John Turner

John Turner is a partner and co-founder of Birchton, where he advises businesses, lenders, and investment sponsors facing financial uncertainty and also leads Birchton’s real asset investment strategy. A veteran entrepreneur and corporate attorney, Mr. Turner combines a founder’s vision and dexterity with the lawyer’s discipline to help clients navigate complex special situations. His expertise includes financial restructurings and operational turnarounds, in particular time-sensitive challenges that require a broad sweep of legal and operational expertise.

Before co-founding Birchton, Mr. Turner spent a decade-plus as an investment fiduciary within the private equity real estate industry. He co-founded and led both Rockstreet Partners, a real estate investment firm focussed on opportunistic and value-add transactions across major property types, and AltaMesa Capital, a special situations investor targeting non-performing commercial loans and distressed commercial properties. Prior to his investment career, Mr. Turner was an attorney in private practice, specializing in mergers & acquisitions, real estate transactions, and loan workouts and restructurings on behalf of creditors and investment sponsors. He began his legal career as the law clerk to the Honoroable John McBryde, U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Texas.

Mr. Turner earned a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, and a B.A. in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to university, he served as an enlisted infantryman in the U.S. Army.