Hilco Global Adds Ex-Alvarez & Marsal MD to Lead Turnaround Practice

Hilco Global has recruited Sonal Trivedi from restructuring powerhouse Alvarez & Marsal to lead its performance improvement practice as a Managing Director — a move that signals the firm's intention to capitalize on what many expect to be a multi-year wave of corporate distress.

The hire comes as corporate default rates edge higher and restructuring advisors prepare for what could be the busiest cycle since the pandemic. Trivedi brings two decades of operational turnaround experience across retail, consumer goods, and industrial sectors — precisely the domains where Hilco has built its valuation and disposition infrastructure.

She's not the first high-profile lateral Hilco has pulled from A&M's bench, but the timing matters. With interest rates still elevated and refinancing walls looming for thousands of middle-market borrowers, advisory firms are racing to staff up ahead of what many see as an inevitable uptick in Chapter 11 filings and out-of-court restructurings.

"Sonal's track record speaks for itself," said Richelle Kalnit, Hilco's Chief Operating Officer, in the announcement. "Her ability to stabilize operations under pressure and extract value in distressed scenarios is exactly what our clients need right now." The firm didn't disclose compensation or equity terms, but industry sources suggest senior MDs at restructuring-focused advisories are commanding premium packages in the current labor market.

Hilco Global's bread and butter has historically been asset disposition — selling off inventory, real estate, and intellectual property when companies hit the wall. But the firm has been quietly expanding its upstream capabilities, positioning itself to get involved earlier in the distress cycle when operational fixes might still save a business.

That's where Trivedi comes in. At Alvarez & Marsal, she led interim management assignments and performance improvement engagements for companies trying to avoid liquidation. Her portfolio included cost restructurings, supply chain overhauls, and cash preservation strategies — the kind of work that happens before the lawyers take over.

The strategic logic is straightforward: by embedding operational expertise earlier, Hilco can either help clients avoid a full-blown restructuring or, if things go south anyway, be the natural choice to handle the wind-down. It's a positioning play that mirrors what larger advisory shops like FTI Consulting and AlixPartners have done for years.

But Hilco's angle is different. The firm already owns a network of liquidation and appraisal subsidiaries, giving it infrastructure advantages when a turnaround doesn't pan out. Trivedi's hire suggests Hilco wants to compete for the front-end advisory fees while maintaining its lock on the back-end monetization work.

Corporate defaults remain below 2020 peaks, but the trajectory is unmistakable. Moody's reported a trailing twelve-month U.S. speculative-grade default rate of 4.3% as of Q4 2024, up from 2.7% a year earlier. The rate is forecast to reach 5.2% by mid-2025 if credit conditions don't ease.

More telling than the headline numbers: the composition of distress has shifted. Consumer-facing sectors — retail, restaurants, and consumer goods — are overrepresented among recent filings. That's Trivedi's wheelhouse. According to S&P Global, retail bankruptcies in 2024 reached their highest count since 2021, with names like Big Lots, Rite Aid, and Party City hitting the dockets.

The common thread? Overleveraged balance sheets colliding with structurally weaker consumer demand and rising labor costs. Many of these companies waited too long to bring in operational advisors, gambling that a sales rebound would materialize. It didn't.

Source: Moody's Analytics, S&P Global Market Intelligence, industry estimates

Bankruptcy filings are a lagging indicator. By the time a company lands in Chapter 11, its problems have usually been festering for quarters — sometimes years. The real action in distressed advisory happens in the shadows: covenant waivers negotiated, asset sales arranged, management teams replaced, all before a public filing ever materializes.

Trivedi spent 20 years at Alvarez & Marsal, rising to Managing Director and leading some of the firm's highest-profile consumer and industrial turnarounds. She specialized in interim C-suite roles — parachuting in as acting CFO or COO to stabilize operations, renegotiate supplier contracts, and preserve liquidity while permanent leadership was recruited.

Her client roster included both public and private companies, ranging from sub-$50 million revenue distressed retailers to $1 billion+ industrial manufacturers facing liquidity crunches. She's fluent in lender negotiations, having worked extensively with ABL lenders, term loan holders, and private equity sponsors trying to salvage their investments.

That fluency matters at Hilco. The firm's clients are often creditor groups trying to maximize recovery or private equity firms staring at impaired portfolio companies. Trivedi understands their economics and speaks their language — a differentiator in a market where credibility with lenders can determine whether a restructuring plan gets approved or not.

But she's also known for operational pragmatism. Industry contacts describe her as someone who can walk a warehouse floor, spot inefficiencies, and build a cash-generation plan in days — not weeks. That's the kind of rapid-response capability that matters when you're burning cash and lenders are circling.

Her move to Hilco also suggests something about the labor market for restructuring talent. A&M remains the industry's heavyweight, but Hilco offers equity upside and entrepreneurial latitude that large advisory firms often can't match. For senior practitioners, the calculus increasingly favors platforms where they can build rather than just bill.

Restructuring advisory is experiencing a quiet talent war. As deal flow accelerates, firms are competing aggressively for senior practitioners with deep industry expertise. Lateral moves from A&M, FTI, and AlixPartners to smaller platforms have picked up noticeably over the past 18 months.

Part of it's compensation — boutiques and specialist firms can often offer better economics. But there's also a lifestyle component. Smaller platforms tend to offer more control over client selection, less bureaucratic overhead, and faster paths to leadership roles. For MDs in their prime earning years, that combination is increasingly appealing.

Hilco Global operates as a holding company for a network of specialized advisory and asset monetization businesses. Its subsidiaries handle everything from retail liquidations (Hilco Merchant Resources) to intellectual property valuations (Hilco Streambank) to real estate dispositions (Hilco Real Estate).

The firm has historically been called in late-stage — when a company is already in bankruptcy or on the verge of liquidation. Trivedi's hire is part of a multi-year effort to move upstream, getting involved earlier when operational interventions might still change the outcome.

This isn't Hilco's first foray into performance improvement. The firm has quietly built out its advisory capabilities over the past five years, adding practitioners with interim management and operational restructuring experience. But Trivedi represents a step-change in ambition — someone with the profile and client relationships to compete directly with the bulge-bracket advisory firms.

The strategic bet is that Hilco can bundle services in a way larger firms can't. Need an interim CFO to stabilize cash flow? Trivedi's team. Need to liquidate 300 stores if the turnaround doesn't work? Hilco Merchant Resources. Need to monetize IP and real estate? Other Hilco subsidiaries handle that. It's a one-stop shop for distressed situations — if you buy the pitch.

There's a potential conflict buried in that bundling strategy. If Hilco's advisory arm is ostensibly helping a company avoid liquidation, but Hilco's liquidation arm stands to earn fees if the turnaround fails, whose interests are really being served?

To be fair, this tension exists across the advisory industry. Most restructuring firms have some form of transaction or monetization business alongside their advisory practices. The question is governance: are the incentives structured so that the advisory team genuinely pursues the best outcome for the client, even if that means less work for the firm's other divisions?

Trivedi's background in retail, consumer goods, and industrial operations aligns almost perfectly with the sectors showing the most distress signals. Here's where the pain is concentrating:

Retail: Legacy brick-and-mortar chains with overleveraged balance sheets and structural sales declines. Think mid-tier department stores, specialty apparel, and home goods retailers that missed the e-commerce transition. Hilco has handled more retail liquidations than perhaps any firm in North America — adding upstream advisory capabilities here is obvious.

Source: S&P Global, industry analysis

Consumer Goods: CPG companies that levered up during the private equity boom and now face margin compression from rising input costs and retailer consolidation. These situations often require supply chain optimization and SKU rationalization — exactly the kind of operational work Trivedi has done for two decades.

Hilco's announcement was light on specifics. The firm didn't disclose how large the performance improvement practice currently is, what revenue targets it has for the division, or how many additional hires are planned. Those details matter.

If Trivedi is a one-person bridgehead, her impact will be limited. If Hilco is serious about competing with A&M, FTI, and AlixPartners for operational turnaround mandates, it'll need to build a bench of 10-15 senior practitioners — fast. The economics of advisory work don't scale like asset sales; you need credentialed senior people on every engagement.

It's also unclear how Trivedi will be compensated and incented. Is she on a traditional advisory model (origination credit, utilization bonuses)? Or is Hilco offering her equity upside tied to building out the practice? The structure will determine how aggressively she recruits and how quickly the division grows.

And then there's the cultural question. Hilco has historically operated as a transaction-oriented shop — move fast, monetize assets, close the file. Advisory work requires a different rhythm: multi-quarter engagements, ambiguous outcomes, tolerance for situations that don't resolve cleanly. Can Hilco's internal infrastructure support that, or will there be friction between the advisory team and the legacy monetization businesses?

If Hilco's performance improvement expansion is real — and not just a press release — here's what to look for over the next 12-18 months:

1. Additional senior hires. One MD doesn't make a practice. If Trivedi recruits 3-5 senior practitioners from A&M, FTI, or AlixPartners within a year, that signals Hilco is serious. If she's still a solo act in 18 months, this was a talent grab, not a strategy shift.

2. High-profile interim management appointments. The real test is whether Trivedi lands marquee C-suite roles — acting CFO or COO at a distressed public company or a large PE-backed business. Those mandates are credibility signals and relationship validators. If she's relegated to mid-market private company turnarounds, the ambition didn't translate.

3. Separation of advisory and monetization. If Hilco starts publicly disclosing performance improvement revenue separately from its liquidation businesses, that's a signal the firm views advisory as a standalone growth driver. If the numbers stay bundled, it's still a side hustle.

For now, this is a bet on a single high-profile lateral hire. Whether it becomes a lasting shift in Hilco's business model depends on what happens next — and whether the distressed market delivers the volume everyone expects.