CRAGSI’s capabilities span the full lifecycle of special situations, from early stabilization through restructuring, workout, disposition, and exit. Each engagement draws on our integrated platform of strategic, financial, operational and legal training and backgrounds. Select any capability below to learn more.
When a company’s capital structure, operations, or stakeholder relationships have reached an inflection point, CRAGSI engineers a path back to viability or an optimized exit with the speed and discipline that distressed situations demand.
Balance Sheet & Financial Restructurings
Strategic & Operational Restructurings
VC-Backed & Small Business Turnarounds
Market Realities
The VC ecosystem faces a structural crisis: $730B+ in assets at risk, with 75% of startups unlikely to return capital to investors under conventional management. The standard response — ABCs, wind-downs, and premature dissolutions — destroys value that patient, expert restructuring can recover. CRAGSI was built to close this gap.
A workout is not a quick fix. It is a deliberate, structured process of resolving distressed obligations over time to achieve outcomes that liquidation cannot. While at prior firms, CRAGSI’s team members have managed complex workouts across asset classes and market cycles for over three decades, including leading landmark engagements for the RTC and FDIC following the S&L crisis.
Workout Services
Not every situation calls for a turnaround. Sometimes, an orderly wind-down, liquidation, or dissolution will be the optimal path. When it is, we will tell you so, and CRAGSI is able to manage the process with the care, legal precision, and fiduciary discipline that not only protects stakeholders but also preserves maximum recoverable value. We treat closure as a professional option of last resort — not a default.
Wind-Down & Closure Services
Disposing of distressed, illiquid, or non-core assets requires an advisor who understands intrinsic value, can construct a credible process, and has the relationships to surface buyers that conventional channels cannot reach. CRAGSI manages the full disposition lifecycle from valuation through closing.
Disposition Services
A successful exit requires strategy, timing, and execution discipline that most advisors deploy only at the end of a process. CRAGSI begins exit planning at engagement inception by identifying the most likely value-maximizing outcome and building toward it from day one, whether that is a sale, merger, recapitalization, or public market event.
Exit Strategy Services
When a company faces a crisis — a product failure, a regulatory action, a damaging press cycle, or an existential reputational threat — the communications response in the first hours determines the outcome for years. CRAGSI’s crisis communications team brings experience that few firms can match: from leading the global communications response to the Takata airbag recall — the largest automotive recall in history — to managing critical product launch and market expansion communications for Tesla and SpaceX while reporting directly to Elon Musk, to guiding high-growth startups through post-press-release cease and desist letters authored by multinational counsel. Our team has helped countless businesses and leaders protect their corporate and personal brands.
Crisis Communications Services
Brand Strategy & Communications
Christina Ra — EVP, Crisis Communications
Christina brings nearly 20 years of communications leadership across global brands — from seed-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies. Her portfolio spans Tesla, SpaceX, Argo, Credit Karma, Affirm, Plenty, Meati, and Shiru, achieving category-leading share-of-voice across transportation, fintech, food systems, AI, and more. Before her technology and venture career, Christina led public relations for Honda’s 13+ vehicle lines and managed crisis communications including the Takata airbag recall from moment “zero.” She earned her degree in Communication from the University of Maryland.
CRAGSI’s Full Stack Fractional™ service deploys experienced C-level operators — CFO, COO, General Counsel, CCO, and more — into companies that need institutional-grade leadership without the cost or commitment of full-time hires. This is not staffing. It is operational leadership with skin in the game, purpose-built for companies in transition.
Full Stack Fractional™ Services
People, Talent, & Human Resources
Our People Credentials
CRAGSI’s team includes leaders holding credentials including degrees in Human Resources and PHR® certification to ensure that every people strategy we deploy is operationally sound, thoughtfully implemented, and built around the humans it serves.
CRAGSI provides rigorous, independent valuation services across the full spectrum of special situations asset types. From early-stage equity to distressed credit to complex intangibles, CRAGSI’s valuations are overseen by team members holding credentials such as a CPA, CFA®, or a Master’s Degree in Finance and therefore built to withstand scrutiny from regulators, auditors, boards, and courts.
Securities Valuations, including 409A
Illiquid Tangible & Intangible Assets, including IP
Expert Testimony & Litigation Support
Complex situations often require an independent fiduciary — in other words, a party with no actual, undisclosed, or unwaived conflicting interest who can make or oversee decisions with full accountability to all stakeholders. CRAGSI provides independent fiduciary and governance services across a range of mandates. This includes our current role as PBGC’s Special Situations Investment Manager, in which we serve as ERISA fiduciaries — an even higher standard than the one to which traditional fiduciaries are held.
Fiduciary & Governance Services
Proxy voting has become one of the most consequential — and legally exposed — functions for institutional asset managers. The landscape has shifted dramatically: state legislatures in Texas and Florida have enacted legislation restricting ESG- and DEI-driven proxy voting by fiduciaries managing public pension assets; the White House issued an Executive Order on proxy voting in December 2025 reorienting federal expectations; and major proxy advisors are now defendants in active litigation. CRAGSI currently provides independent, fiduciary-grade proxy voting advisory (including at the ERISA fiduciary standard) that navigates this environment with legal precision, keeping clients on the right side of their obligations without outsourcing judgment to conflicted third parties. CRAGSI team members have voted proxies, including on ERISA plan assets, in 28 of the past 29 years, bringing an institutional depth of experience that no conflicted agenda-pushing proxy advisor can match.
Proxy Voting Services
The Regulatory Reality
State Legislation
Texas and Florida have enacted legislation restricting fiduciaries managing public pension assets from casting proxy votes driven by ESG or DEI considerations. Similar legislation is advancing in additional states, creating a patchwork of compliance obligations that proxy advisors are ill-equipped to navigate on a manager’s behalf.
Executive Order · December 2025
The White House Executive Order issued in December 2025 has materially shifted federal expectations for proxy voting by asset managers with federal connections — including ERISA fiduciaries and managers of government pension assets — reinforcing the obligation to vote in the exclusive economic interest of beneficiaries rather than in pursuit of collateral policy goals.
In the Courts: Texas TRS v. ISS & Glass Lewis
The litigation brought by the Texas Teachers Retirement System against ISS and Glass Lewis illustrates the real legal exposure now facing institutional managers who have delegated proxy voting authority to third-party advisors without adequate independent oversight. CRAGSI provides the independent framework that insulates institutional clients from this category of liability.
Initial consultations are free and confidential (and in some situations, also legally privileged!). No obligation. Really!
We’ll tell you honestly whether CRAGSI is the right firm for your situation, and if your situation is the right one for us. We don’t take on what we don’t believe we can execute and win!
Schedule a Confidential Consultation