Professional Profiles
The Stephens Cori Capital Advisors Team has extensive experience in Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Equity Portfolio Management, Structured Finance, and Corporate Restructurings.
Stormy Byorum
Senior Managing Director
Stormy Byorum is currently the Senior Managing Director of Stephens Cori Capital Advisors. Previously, she was CEO of Cori Capital Partners, and until early 2003, was Executive Managing Director of Violy, Byorum & Partners (“VB&P”), a strategic advisory and investment banking firm focusing on Latin America --- a firm she co-founded in 1996.
At Cori, Ms. Byorum lead the team that advised Trust Company of the West (“TCW”) on managing the US$236 million TCW/Latin America Private Equity, L.P. Fund, one of the largest funds in the region. Cori also provided advice on mergers, acquisitions and other transactions to entrepreneurs, US multinationals and Latin American family-controlled groups.
Prior to forming VB&P, she spent the entirety of her career at Citicorp. Among her responsibilities were Chief of Staff and Chief Financial Officer for the Latin America Banking Group, Head of the US Corporate Banking Business, and in 1995 a member of the bank’s operating committee and a Customer Group Executive.
As Chief of Staff and CFO for Citicorp’s Latin America Banking Group, she oversaw the bank’s US$15 billion Latin America loan portfolio coordinating diverse activities in 22 countries. She was instrumental in designing and implementing the US$3.7 billion loan loss reserve in 1987, which enabled Citicorp to create a then revolutionary debt for equity swap and asset redeployment program. In her last assignment at the bank she was one of six individuals responsible for the entirety of the bank’s corporate relationships. Under her supervision were the following groups: global media and telecommunications, global retail, the Northeast United States and Scandinavia.
Among the more notable domestic mergers on which Ms. Byorum advised was the sale of Calvin Klein, Inc. to Phillips-Van Heusen in early 2003. Additionally, Ms. Byorum and her team have provided M&A advice for individuals and companies including entrepreneurs Mr. Klein and Craig Robins; US multinationals such as Dow, Unilever, AIG; Latin American family-controlled groups such as Grupo IMSA, Benavides, Ragasa, Sociedad Comericial del Plata, Industrias AlEn, Grupo Bavaria and Cemex.
Ms. Byorum was previously on the investment committee of a US$50 million “warehouse” investment facility provided by CDP International for investments in Latin America, and is presently on the Investment Committee for the TCW/Latin American Partners, LP. She represented TCW on the Board of Emprendamiento Compartido S.A., one of Argentina’s most successful pension funds and financial groups.
She was a trustee and chairman of the finance committee of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC for 14 years, a Trustee of Amherst College for 12 years and is now a Life Trustee of the College. She also serves on the Board of the International Center for Research on Women, the world’s largest research institution addressing the problems of women in emerging economies, and she is a director of Aeterna Laboratories, a NASDAQ listed biotech company, and Northwest Natural Gas, a leading gas distributor in the Pacific Northwest.
Ms. Byorum graduated from Southern Methodist University and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In August 2000, she was named by “Global Finance” magazine as among the 15 most powerful women in global finance.
Mauricio Orellana
Managing Director
Mauricio Orellana is a Managing Director of Stephens Cori Capital Advisors and supervises the group’s Washington office. He brings to the Cori team ten years of financial and investment experience in Latin America including AIG-GE Capital Latin American Infrastructure Fund, Inter-American Investment Corporation and Banque Paribas.
He was an integral part of the Cori team advising TCW on managing its Latin American Fund and CDP International on investments in Latin America.
As Director of AIG-GE Capital’s Latin American Infrastructure Fund (“LAIF”), a US$1 billion fund invested in Latin America, Mr. Orellana participated directly in four private equity investments in Latin America for LAIF, representing US$125 million of investments.
He has served on the Board of Directors of companies in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela including Axtel, S.A. de C.V. and TV Cidade S.A. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Grupo Expansión in Mexico, one of the leading magazine publishers, and a company in which Cori made an investment. A native Spanish speaker who also speaks Portuguese, he holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Universidad Central de Venezuela and an MBA from IESA in Venezuela.
Dirk Peters
Managing Director
Dirk Peters is a Managing Director with Stephens Cori Capital Advisors. With over 15 years as a Latin American financier; he is the founder of two companies focused on Latin American investment banking, private equity and asset management, and has ten years of Latin American debt capital markets and structured finance experience at Citigroup.
His Investment Banking product experience includes originating and structuring senior and subordinated public and private debt issuance, liability management, debt restructuring and leveraged finance. Mr Peters’ Private Equity experience includes sourcing Latin American secondary market transactions on an exclusive basis for a capital partner, assisting in management negotiations, deal structuring, valuation, and due diligence on limited partnership interests and direct portfolio companies. His Asset Management experience includes structuring an offshore master-feeder fund with eight quantitative tracking strategies, developing distribution throughout Latin America, registering funds for investment by Chilean pension funds, raising approximately $300 million in assets under management.
Mr Peters possesses broad industry coverage including beverages, retail, real estate, manufacturing, steel, cement, telecommunications, media, government and financial institutions. He holds an MBA in Finance and International Business from Columbia University and B.S. in Finance and Economics from the University of Richmond.
Cristobal Salas
Vice President
Cristobal Salas is a Vice President with Stephens Cori Capital Advisors. Previously Mr. Salas was Vice President of Interland, Inc., a large, publicly traded, internet web hosting company, in charge of Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Development, completing seven acquisitions during his tenure. Mr. Salas also ran and had full P&L responsibility for a $40m line of business with the firm.
With PSINet, a global Internet and web hosting company, Mr. Salas completed six acquisitions in the region valued at over $50 million. He participated in multiple Private Equity placements in the region with the AIG-GE Capital Latin American Infrastructure Fund in the transportation and telecom sectors, as well as multiple M&A transactions. Mr. Salas also served on Boards of Pegaso PCS, MexPlus Puertos and as a financial advisor to the board of Ferronorte, Brazil.
Mr. Salas has a BA in Business Administration from Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, and an MBA from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. Mr. Salas is a native Spanish-speaker, and is conversant in Portuguese.
Pedro Molina
Vice President
(786) 497-7255
pmolina@stephens.com
Pedro Molina is a Vice President with Stephens Cori Capital Advisors based in the Miami office. Prior to joining Stephens Cori, Mr. Molina, worked as a summer associate for Standard New York Securities, the Latin America M&A and corporate finance group of the Standard Bank. At Standard, Mr. Molina worked on various corporate finance and merger and acquisition assignments in a variety of industries, including financial institutions, textiles, leather, telecommunications, food, and manufacturing.
Mr. Molina also worked as a consultant for VIMAC Ventures; a venture capital firm in Boston. At VIMAC, Mr. Molina and his team served as strategic and financial advisors for both the VC firm and for a technology startup, which was part of the VC’s investment portfolio. Previously, Mr. Molina worked in Colombia for Interingenieria Ltda, a civil and electric engineering company. As a general manager, Mr. Molina was primarily responsible for finding, analyzing, and funding several projects. He also designed and implemented an expansion strategy into other Latin American markets.
As an entrepreneur, Mr. Molina co-founded one of the first internet companies in Colombia and raised venture capital funds from Mercurius Ventures; the only VC firm in Colombia at that time.
Mr. Molina earned his B.A. degree in Business from EAFIT University in Colombia and his M.B.A. degree, magna cum laude, from Babson College. Mr. Molina is a native Spanish-speaker.
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