Dr Paolo Castagna

Managing Director, Castagna Consulting Sarl

Paolo Castagna is shareholder and managing director at Castagna Consulting Sarl, Lausanne, Switzerland. His experience in special situations adds up to more than 30 years, both in industrial and in banking environment, in Europe, USA and Asia.

After completing his student life with a doctorate in Finance, he started his working life at Magirus AG in Germany in the trucks division of the Fiat Group. In few vears he became managing director of Fiat Deutschland GmbH, the local headquarter of the Fiat Group in Germany, sitting in the supervisory boards of Fiat Automobil AG and Sorin Biomedica AG, and responsible for the treasury activities of the Group in Germany, Austria and Czech Republic. At the age of 34 he moved to India, where he succesfully organized the financial restructuring of a major automotive manufacturer in a insolvent-like situation, and managed the financial setting up of several greenfield projects and local JVs in the subcontinent. After completion of such tasks he moved to Chicago, Illinois, in the function of worldwide assistant treasurer at Case Corporation and lately at CNH Global NV, organizing the financing of the Group and the financial reorganization of the legal entities during the challenging years of the merger of Case and New Holland in the agricultural and earth moving business. He came back to Europe for the restructuring of the German and Austrian businesses of the CNH Group, taking care of the shutting down of plants, reorganization of commercial networks and companies and the squeeze out of the listed german company Orenstein&Koppel AG in Berlin.

He covered the position of Chief Accounting Officer for the European operations of CNH Group, before moving back to India as managing director of Fiat Automobiles Limited, taking care of the shutting down of the local plant and of the setting up of the JV with the Tata Motors Group.

In 2007 he joined Hypovereinsbank AG (3rd german private bank) as head of restructuring department and reporting directly to the Chief Risk Officer. Being Hypovereinsbank the center of investment banking worldwide of the Unicredit Group, the italian based biggest banking group, he managed for the 10 years after the Lehmann crisis a worldwide portfolio of 12 Mrds USD countervalue with the help of 250 people operating in restructuring and workout.

Aside of the recovery management of the retail portfolio in Germany, he managed adresses such as Merckle, Schäffler-Conti, Borsodchem, Valentino Group as well as the restructuring of the project financing of highways in US and infrastructure projects in Singapore and China. He was project leader of the restructuring of the offshore windpark project Bard/Ocean Breeze in the most challenging phase, as well as responsible of the restructuring of UK securitization warehouse Redstone and the Holland based portfolio Lancelot.

In Italy he managed adresses such as Kartogroup in Tuscany and Ligresti Group in Milan.

He was member of the supervisory and investors board of CMP FUND, a Germany based fund for distressed assets, and managing director of Unicredit Beteiligung GmbH, a company for the investment in businesses needing debt/equity swaps.

After many years in the Credit and Risk committees of the German Hypovereinsbank, he left Unicreditgroup in Dec.2016 for setting up his own company in Switzerland for consulting banks,insolvency practitioners and administrators and investors in distressed assets with special focus in Italy, Germany and India.

He is a well known speaker at the European Distressed Assets events (Euroforum, Handelsblatt, Debtwire) and is member of INSOL Europe Academic Forum and of the Lenders Group. He is author of many articles in financial magazines and books in insolvency matters and workout processes. He is co-author of the chapter on italian insolvency law in the last edition of the „Münchener Kommentar Länderberichte“ – edited by Beck Verlag.