LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Scott Eisenberg • Managing Director, Financial Advisory Services Capstone Partners • Birmingham

WHY SCOTT EISENBERG EARNED ACG’S LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

While most people move around throughout their career, Scott Eisenberg has been working in the same office building in downtown Birmingham for 28 years — first as a partner with Amherst Partners and, more recently, as managing director of financial advisory services at Capstone Partners.

In a career that includes more than 75 investment banking and 200 financial advisory assignments in manufacturing, services, financial services, and technology, Eisenberg has seen his share of unique deals. One transaction that stands out is the sale of a waste energy business out of receivership in Freeport, southeast of Grand Rapids.

“The company was an anaerobic digester — essentially they would take food waste product and put it in silos and cover it with enzymes that digest the food, which in turn creates methane that powers a turbine, and the excess energy gets sold to the grid,” says Eisenberg, an international board member of ACG and past president of ACG Detroit.

“They had a valuable contract with Consumers Energy, but the company’s operation was shut down due to a number of factors. However, the contract was valuable and required that the company produce at least some electricity over a 12-month period. If they didn’t produce electricity over that time, they would be in default of the contract.”

Knowing a sale to a waiting buyer would span more than a year, Eisenberg and his team approached the secured lender of the business, a bank, about restarting the operation. Over the span of 10 months, Eisenberg searched for an outside business to bring in to get things going, but he didn’t find any takers.

“Finally we went back to the bank, and ultimately that’s the last thing a bank would allow to happen. But we were persistent, got all of the necessary insurance and approvals, and we started up the facility. We generated enough electricity to light a lightbulb for more than 30 seconds, and we saved the deal.”

Across his career, Eisenberg has served as an international board member of the Turnaround Management Association and was past president of TMA Detroit, past president and board member of the Detroit Chapter of Young Entrepreneur’s Organization, past president of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce of Michigan, and past chairman of the Automotive Supplier Committee of the Michigan Association of CPAs.

“When my wife and I moved here from Chicago in late 1984, I knew no one,” Eisenberg recalls. “I vividly remember watching the Super Bowl (in January 1995), where my team growing up, the Chicago Bears, won, but I was watching it with my wife and her grandmother. From then on, I vowed to volunteer for nearly everything just to meet people and get involved. I keep doing that to this day.”