Benjamin Cheng

Benjamin Cheng manages the Investment Administration & Reporting group that acts as the outsourced accounting department and financial reporting advisor for both public and privately held real estate and real estate finance companies.

Mr. Cheng has more than 25 years of experience managing large complex accounting and SEC financial reporting functions. He provides a wide range of strategic, financial and regulatory reporting, and operational consulting to some of the world’s largest financial institutions. Mr. Cheng is an expert in U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”) and International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”) on financial instrument accounting, with extensive knowledge on securitization and derivative products. He also has extensive experience in implementing complex financial accounting subledger, general ledger (“G/L”) and reporting systems.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Mr. Cheng, a former reservist in the United States Marine Corps, was a Senior Director in EchoStar’s Technical Accounting group. Prior to this, he held positions as a Managing Director at BDO US LLP and as a Senior Vice President and Head of Financial Reporting and Accounting Policy at Webster Bank. Prior to this, Mr. Cheng served as Head of Internal Audit in the Finance Division at Freddie Mac, as a Managing Director at PwC in their Financial Markets practice, as an Accounting Systems Director at Freddie Mac and as a Financial Auditor at both Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young.

Relevant Experience:

• Advised the Federal Reserve during the 2008 economic crisis on several economic recovery programs including the AIG and Citi transaction, Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (“TALF”), Troubled Assets Relief Program (“TARP”) and other liquidity programs to support the U.S. real estate and securitization market; Ben’s focus was on the financial and economic impacts of the programs on the federal reserve system and financial reporting requirements
• Led a large cross-functional project to assist a top-10 bank in the valuation and development of a complex purchase accounting model for an acquisition of a $30 billion subprime lender
• Assisted several mortgage real estate investment trusts (“REITs”) in the preparation of their IPO and SEC compliance-related requirements
• Advised the National Credit Union Administration (“NCUA”) on their initiatives to manage the assets of the failed corporate credit unions (“CCU”)
• Assisted a large investment bank on the overhaul of the bank's valuation/impairment process and valuation governance framework, asset types included fixed income, equity, equity derivatives, FX, rate/credit derivatives and municipal bonds