Affiliation: Senior Managing Director & Head of Sovereign Advisory, Guggenheim Securities

Mark Walker has forty years of experience advising more than twenty countries around the world on complex financial matters. 

Prior to joining Guggenheim Securities, Walker was head of sovereign advisory at Millstein & Co. and Rothschild London and a Senior Advisor at Lazard Paris. Walker led the Rothschild team that advised Cyprus during its financial crisis in 2013 and co-led the Lazard team that advised Greece in 2011 and 2012 on the first sovereign debt restructuring of a Eurozone country and the largest sovereign debt restructuring ever. Walker also advised the governmental authorities of Greece and Cyprus in their negotiations with the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank and is currently advising the Venezuelan bondholders committee. Walker has worked with the IMF and other official bodies in seeking to improve the practices followed by debtors and creditors in dealing with liquidity and solvency problems of heavily indebted states. Walker has lived and worked in Paris, Brussels and London and has spent substantial time working in Latin American and Asia. 

Walker was a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton LLP from 1975 to 2011 and the firm’s Global Managing Partner from 2005 to 2011. He led and co-founded that firm’s premier sovereign practice and developed much of the documentation that set the standard for sovereign debt restructurings during the 1980s and 1990s. Walker received a law degree from Yale Law School and a B.A. in English literature from Stanford University.