Cody J. Smith – Managing Director
Mr. Smith brings strong industry experience in trading, management and real estate, combined with functional expertise in finance, business development and strategy. Mr. Smith is a hands-on entrepreneur that has verifiable leadership as a principal in several of his own companies over the previous 15 years.
Early in his career, Mr. Smith was a trader of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) S&P 500 futures contract and a founding member of Kaschke Smith & Tysdal Capital (KST). In addition to focusing on new startups, the firm worked with a number of technology companies during the boom of the late 1990s. KST also financed the angel stages of the first business-to-business e-commerce marketplace to go public.
More recently, Mr. Smith acted as a managing director for Thinami Consulting. During his tenure with the firm, Mr. Smith served as capital partner and or interim officer in numerous business acquisitions and sales valued from $100,000 to $50 million.
Mr. Smith graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University and lives in Windermere, FL.
John Hyltin – Director of Client Solutions
With over 25 years of being actively involved in troubled company management, Mr. Hyltin enjoys a diverse financial and general management background. This experience includes management and advisory roles, in companies large and small in various industries. Positions and/or clients have included an airline, manufacturing, service industries, education and high net-worth individuals, among others. Mr. Hyltin brings significant experience in strategic planning, troubled-company management, mergers & acquisitions, debt restructuring and negotiation, capital sourcing and reallocation.
Formerly an associate of a premier New York investment firm, Mr. Hyltin began his involvement with them as a portfolio company Chief Financial Officer. When the acquisition ran into financial difficulties, Mr. Hyltin was able to retire all of the existing debt through a series of financings, acquisitions and finally divestitures. The firm then offered Mr. Hyltin positions with other under-performing portfolio companies. Mr. Hyltin was successful in each assignment. The firm was considered the top investment group at the time whose holdings included Avis Car Rentals, Atlas Van Lines, Six Flags, Gibson Greeting Cards, Simmons Mattress Company, among others.
Mr. Hyltin is a graduate of the University of Texas and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting. Mr. Hyltin is a non-practicing certified public accountant originally certified in 1983 by the State of Texas. Mr. Hyltin is an instrument and multi-engine rated pilot and is type-rated in the BE-300.
Brian Clapp – Director of Strategic Analysis
Mr. Clapp is director of the analytics group at Covendium. Mr. Clapp has ten years of progressively responsible experience in real estate, finance and analytical analysis. He has extensive experience in financial underwriting, due diligence review, disposition modeling, impairment analysis, capital risk analysis, as well as financial structuring within a variety of real estate asset classes.
With strong knowledge in real estate development and analytical analysis, Mr. Clapp’s experience includes two years with Lennar Homes serving as the Senior Land Operations Manager. He oversaw the regional due diligence review and financial underwriting for communities within North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. His responsibility also included management of the regional acquisitions and development pipeline including 1,200 lot deliveries per year, 2,000 plus lots within the development pipeline as well as 6,000 lots within the acquisition pipeline. He also implemented Critical Path Management (CPM) during his tenure significantly reducing late delivery of lots while dramatically reducing budget overruns.
As part of the Covendium team some of Mr. Clapp’s recent experience includes extensive Chapter 11 bankruptcy financial modeling for several clients, creation of a detailed Investment Memorandum for a large 4,300 unit mixed use project for a client, and a detailed financial restructuring analysis for several large scale retail and hospitality clients.
Brian holds a Masters in Real Estate Planning and Development from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst as well as his Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Georgetown University.
Linda Morgan – Chief Operations Officer
Linda brings 30 years of knowledge and experience in the mortgage lending industry to our team. Her diversified background in many areas of the business includes loan processing, closing, quality control, internal audits, regulatory compliance and operations. A summary of her overall qualifications are: Team leadership and training, operations management, policy and procedure administration, time management, cross departmental coordination, vendor relationships, and research development.
Her expertise and experience in the initial set up of a new organization and her abilities to work with outside vendor and agency relationships brings a key component to expand on the business opportunities. In her last position she held the position of EVP Total Quality Management where she managed over 150 employees and oversaw the Regulatory Compliance, Agency Reviews and Audits, and Quality Control for 100 branch locations and corporate office.
Linda holds an AA Degree in Business Administration from Daytona Beach Community College. She has completed several of the MBA Course of studies such as: Underwriting the Self-employed, Understanding real-estate appraisals, and Fundamentals of Secondary Marketing. Through the Agencies she has earned certificates in Loan Prospector Training, Fundamentals of Mortgage Lending, and Compliance Education I & II.
John Kopelousos– SCIS, INC – Asset Due Diligence
Mr. Kopelousos has over 15 years of experience in the Development and Construction field ranging from commercial and multi-family to residential areas. For the past four years, Mr. Kopelousos has been Owner and President of Southeast Construction Inspection Services, Inc., a company specializing in lender review services which includes third party oversight and monitoring of the funding process for multi million dollar development projects. This company also focuses on specialized due diligence review, property condition assessments and valuation, cost to complete evaluations and upfront plan and cost reviews. As the lending climate has changed drastically over the past three years, Southeast has adapted to incorporate special asset solutions to assist with troubled assets.
For more information, or to find out how to work with Covendium, please call us at 407-284-4000, or email us at info@Covendium.com