Mr. Nicholls has nearly 20 years of principal investment and investment banking experience. Prior to joining FTI, Mr. Nicholls spent eight years in GE Capital’s Media Communications group, where he was head of the telecom risk management team. At GE, Mr. Nicholls managed a $1.5 billion telecom portfolio, was responsible for more than $2.5 billion in telecom debt investments, led creditor committees in restructuring balance sheets totaling over $10 billion and was a principal in at least eight M&A transactions.

Mr. Nicholls has assessed the current operations, financial models and future strategies of companies in the business of local exchange, IXC, internet, wireless, tower, publishing and cable. He has significant experience in restructuring troubled credits and has one of the best records for portfolio performance and value creation over the media and telecom boom and bust cycles since the late 1990s. Some of the companies Mr. Nicholls has worked with include Allegiance, ITC, Choice One, Telcove, NuVox, PaeTec, US LEC, FDN, McLeod, Cavalier, Conversent, American Tower, Spectrasite, SBA, Level 3, Qwest, Valor, Fairpoint, Otelco, Voice Stream, Triton PCS, US Unwired, Nextel, Rural Cellular, Millennium Digital Media, CBD Media and Dex.

Mr. Nicholls has led creditor committees through pre-packaged, pre-arranged and free-fall bankruptcies; 363 sales; negotiated sales; and balance sheet and operational restructurings. He is an expert in company valuation, business plan and operational analysis, corporate governance and bankruptcy law. Some transactions he has managed include the Choice One Communications operational restructuring and pre-packaged bankruptcy, KMC Telecom’s CLEC asset sale, Allegiance Telecom’s operational restructuring and 363 sale to XO communications, Broadview’s out-of-court restructure and merger with Bridgecom, and the recent ITC Deltacom debt restructuring.

His M&A experience includes leading creditors in the evaluation and sale of Allegiance to XO, the merger of NuVox/New South and the merger of Broadview/Bridgecom. He was a principal and performed diligence in numerous other M&A transactions including Choice One/US Exchange, NuVox/Trivergent, ITC/BTI, Cavalier/Net 2000, Broadview/Network Plus, ITC/FDN and several confidential private transactions.

Prior to GE, Mr. Nicholls was with Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, primarily in fixed income capital markets and industrial investment banking. Mr. Nicholls holds a B.A. in economics from Boston University.