Defense, Telecom & Semiconductors
Aggregates, Asphalt, Paving and Concrete
Managing Director
Christopher Taylor teamed with the partners of Five Crowns Capital in 2016 to build out and lead a new direct lending sister company under the name Five Crowns Credit Partners. He has significant experience across corporate lending, financial and operational restructuring, leveraged buyouts, M&A advisory, and corporate finance with around 20 years of experience in originating, structuring, executing, and managing loans and other debt investments in middle market businesses. Prior to joining Five Crowns, he was a Director at Tennenbaum Capital Partners, a special situations credit investment firm with over $6 billion of assets under management, where he led credit investments in a variety of industries and executed over $600 million of direct loans to middle market businesses. Before joining Tennenbaum in 2008, Mr. Taylor worked in investment banking at Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs where he advised on M&A and leveraged finance transactions. Prior to this, he also worked at Kayne Anderson Private Investors, a lower middle market buyout firm, and Harvey & Co., a middle-market merchant bank and M&A advisory firm. He has served on the boards of Apothecary Health Solutions, Stadco, Tristrux, AGY Holding Corp, Oxford Resources, and Revere Industries, all lower middle-market businesses. Mr. Taylor holds a Chartered Financial Analyst designation and has spoken on the topic of private equity and corporate lending on various industry panels. Mr. Taylor received his M.B.A. from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and his B.S. in Finance from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
Founder and Managing Partner
Jeffrey Schaffer is the Founder and Managing Partner of Five Crowns Capital and Five Crowns Credit Partners. He currently serves on the boards of Streamland Media, Verrex, and Mob Scene. Prior to founding Five Crowns Capital in 2003, Mr. Schaffer was the Managing Director of Private Equity for The United Company, a privately-held Virginia-based corporation founded in 1970. The diverse, multi-billion dollar portfolio included companies in energy, manufacturing, distribution, pharmaceuticals, real estate, financial services and golf. As an executive officer, Jeff served on the company’s Operating and Investment Committees. Prior to joining The United Company in early 1999, Jeff was a principal at Marwit Capital, a Southern California based private investment fund with a forty-year history focusing on equity and subordinated debt investments in closely-held companies. He has also held senior positions at Price Waterhouse Coopers and the H.J. Heinz food company. Mr. Schaffer is a member of the Young Presidents Organization, and a Certified Public Accountant (inactive) in California. He earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of Southern California, and an M.B.A. with a dual major in Finance and Strategic Management from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Managing Partner
David McReynolds is a Partner of Five Crowns Capital, LLC and Five Crowns Credit Partners, LLC. He has nearly 30 years of experience originating, advising, structuring, and investing in middle-market special situations transactions. Throughout his career, he has participated in private equity, structured special situations and distressed debt investments, special situations lending, and M&A and creditor restructuring advisory transactions. Mr. McReynolds was previously with Twin Haven Capital Partners and Versa Capital Management, each with approximately $1 billion in capital under management. He was a Principal and head of the Los Angeles office of the Special Situations Group within American Capital, Ltd., a publicly-traded investment company (NasdaqGS: ACAS) with $20 billion in capital under management at the time of his employment. He is a Past-President of the Southern California Turnaround Management Association Chapter and a Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) member. Mr. McReynolds received his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and B.S. from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Principal Partner
Andrew Flesch is a Principal with Five Crowns Capital and is responsible for deal origination, transaction execution, portfolio management, and administration of the firm’s investments. He has over 20 years of investing and other relevant experience and is on the Board of Directors for Broadcast Microwave Services (BMS/Data911).
Mr. Flesch has experience with CapitalView Investment Partners and with American Capital Special Situations. Mr. Flesch was involved with American Capital’s investments in Evans Analytical Group, Paradigm Precision Holdings, and Pan Am International Flight Academy, and its investments in Bensussen Deutsch & Associates, Trigeant, Republic Financial Corporation, Resort Funding, and LCW Holdings. Mr. Flesch has served on the Board of Directors for numerous portfolio companies and has extensive experience with rapid scaling and restructuring situations.
Prior to joining American Capital, Mr. Flesch was an Associate with Wachovia Securities’ Corporate and Investment Bank in its Special Situations Workout Group where he focused on restructuring transactions across a broad range of industries. Prior to that he started with the bank in its the Leveraged Finance Group. His career began as an Analyst with SunTrust Bank.
Mr. Flesch holds a B.B.A. in Finance and Information Technology from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the Washington Society of Investment Analysts.
Vice President
Lisa Matlaf, Ph.D. is a Senior Associate at Five Crowns Capital as well as the Executive Vice President of Beautisol Holdings, LLC. Dr. Matlaf assists in the firm’s deal origination, marketing, communications, and portfolio company oversight in addition to managing the operations of the sunless tanning portfolio company, Beautisol. Prior to joining Five Crowns Capital, Dr. Matlaf spent 10 years in the fields of oncology, molecular biology, infectious disease, and neuroscience. Her investigations have led to over a dozen publications in peer reviewed scientific journals as well as collaborations with several academic laboratories and biotechnology companies.
Dr. Matlaf received her Ph.D from the University of California, Irvine in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics (M&MG), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco, where she conducted research on novel anti-viral strategies for the treatment of brain tumors in affiliation with the UCSF Brain Tumor SPORE (Specialized Program of Research Excellence). Dr. Matlaf was the recipient of competitive research fellowships from The American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) and the NIH, which contributed to the funding of her studies. Dr. Matlaf is a member of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO), and Beauty Industry West (BIW).
Consumer Electronics and Technology
Mr. Heid has a strong track record launching new products, building large-scale profitable businesses and executing major business turnarounds at consumer electronic/technology companies. He possesses broad experience in defining and marketing product portfolios to consumers and small businesses through mass consumer (e-direct, e-tail, retail, distribution) and value-add (Resellers, System Integrators, OEM) channels. He has global experience in US, Asia, Europe and Latin America, and is fluent in Spanish, German and English.
During the last three years he was the Senior Vice President of Logitech (NASDAQ: LOGI), with P&L accountability for all global customer facing consumer sales & marketing organizations. During his tenure he strengthened Logitech’s worldwide consumer channel franchise and transformed sales & marketing into a consumer centric organization leading to record market share positions. He defined S&M strategy for emerging markets (especially China, Brazil, India and Russia) enabling a 35% CAGR and laying the foundation for $1B of emerging market annual revenue potential by CY’4.
Previously Mr. Heid served as CEO of Iomega (NYSE: IOM), where he was chosen by the Board of Directors to lead Iomega through wide-scale corporate turn-around. He offset the free fall of sales related to ZIP, a rapidly declining, end-of-life technology, by creating a new line of innovative consumer and small business storage products, capitalizing on the Iomega brand and returning the company to sustainable profitability. He established a strategic business relationship with EMC corporation, which laid foundation for a successful sale of Iomega to EMC.
Previous positions include President of Proxima (NASDAQ: PRXM), a manufacturer of multimedia projectors from 1998 until it merged with InFocus (NASDAQ: INFS) in 2001. He also held various executive positions at Hewlett Packard, where he ran HP’s LaserJet and Printing Supplies business in Europe, a $1.7 billion business, as well as created product/marketing strategy for HP All-in-One Office Jet business worldwide. Mr. Heid earned a master degree in Electrical Engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
Media & Entertainment
Mr. Hope has over 30 years of experience in the media and entertainment industries. His extensive experience, as a senior operating “C” level executive, consultant, and/or investor, spans a wide range of M&E industries including:
Mr. Hope is currently serving as the Vice Chairman of Mob Scene, LLC., a leading movie and TV marketing and content production company, and a recent Five Crowns Capital acquisition.
He is also owner of Lifesurfer, LLC, which provides strategic, management, M&A, operational, and financial consulting services to companies, private equity firms, and high net worth individuals within the media and entertainment industry.
Mr Hope was previously the Co-CEO and Founder of Casting Showcase, LLC an online social community and professional services site connecting actors, writers, talent managers, casting directors, agents, producers, directors and other business professionals in the film, television, and theater industry.
Mr. Hope was also the CEO of Nanouniverse PLC, a publicly traded new media investment fund that he took public on the London Stock Exchange “AIM” market. Nano made investments and provided strategic and managerial support to internet focused content production companies.
He also served as President of OnStage Entertainment, a NASDAQ listed company which produced, staged, and marketed theatrical shows for casinos and theaters across the country, managed theaters, and produced theater shows and events.
Previously, he was EVP and COO for ITC Entertainment Group/Polygram Television where he managed the day-to-day operations for this leading ($200M+) independent film and television production and distribution company based in Los Angeles with offices in New York and London
His responsibilities included worldwide sales and distribution of a library of approximately 10,000 hours of feature films, mini-series, television movies, action series, children’s series, documentaries, specials and other television programming, as well as licensing, merchandising, marketing, operations, finance, accounting and treasury, feature film and television production and co-production, production and corporate acquisitions. He also managed all worldwide production of Feature Films, Mini Series, TV Movies, Action Series, Reality Shows, Sports Programming, Talk Shows, Game Shows, etc.
Prior to ITC/PolyGram, Mr. Hope was a production executive at BHP, a British producer of Sports Programming for television.
Mr. Hope received his Bachelor of Science in Management Sciences with Honors from Loughborough University, Loughborough, England.
Defense, Telecom &
Semiconductors
Aggregates, Asphalt, Paving and Concrete
Healthcare
Josh Shinoff, Ph.D. has over 15 years of experience in evaluating, modeling, and negotiating transactions in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology space, leading the closure of more than 150 deals for multi-billion dollar corporations and advising on countless more. Dr. Shinoff combines expertise in a wide variety of life sciences technologies, from therapeutics to research tools, with graduate level business training that enables a broad array of investments and transactions.
Dr. Shinoff is currently the Director of Life Sciences Business Development for the Bio-Rad Laboratories Digital Biology Center (a $3B+ publicly traded company, NYSE: BIO) which is focused on next generation diagnostics and research tools, and formerly of Life Technologies Corporation (a $13B+ company traded on NASDAQ: LIFE), Applied Biosystems, Inc. (a $7B company formerly traded on NASDAQ as ABI), and Chiron Corporation (a publicly traded $10B pharmaceuticals and diagnostics company traded on NASDAQ: CHIR, now part of Novartis). Dr. Shinoff has been an invited lecturer in negotiations at the University of California at Berkeley, Haas School of Business and has led numerous corporate negotiations training sessions.
In addition, Dr. Shinoff led life sciences licensing transactions for the University of California at Berkeley where he worked with investors to launch several start-ups in the medical device, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals industries. Dr. Shinoff also completed a fellowship in licensing and business development at the Office of Technology Licensing for the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Shinoff has also consulted for the Murphy, Noell Capital Group and John Nuveen & Co., as well as been on staff for California Senator Diane Feinstein and interned for New Jersey Congressman Robert Andrews.
Dr.Shinoff holds both Ph.D. and Masters degrees from Johns Hopkins University, attended the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business, is a graduate of the Executive Leadership Program at the Haas School of Business, is a published author, is certified by Johns Hopkins University in clinical trials conduct and management, is a Certified Licensing Professional, and is a member of the Licensing Executives Society.
Light Manufacturing and Distribution
