Birch Lake - Trusted Partners | Inspiring Outcomes

Trusted Partners. Inspiring Outcomes

Birch Lake deploys intellectual and financial capital in stressed and transitional businesses by advising corporations and investors on mergers and acquisitions, financial restructurings and complex situations, and making structured equity investments where we can influence enhanced financial outcomes.

Bill Welnhofer 2016

​Bill Welnhofer Managing Director Emeritus & Retired Partner, Birch Lake Associates, LLC

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Over his distinguished career, Bill Welnhofer has helped achieve successful transactions totaling billions of dollars across a wide array of leveraged financings, complex M&A and debt restructurings. Many of these transactions have involved substantial private companies owned either by family offices or private equity. For many years, Bill led the restructuring business in the global investment banking department of Robert W. Baird & Co., which previously acquired his investment banking practice at Starshak Welnhofer & Co., a Chicago-based broker-dealer, that Bill founded and operated for almost two decades. Bill joined Birch Lake from KPMG Corporate Finance, KPMG’s investment banking division in 2016. On February 1, 2023, Bill became Managing Director Emeritus and Retired Partner at Birch Lake and continues to consult with the Firm.

In addition to holding numerous securities licenses, Bill is a licensed attorney and a member of the American Bar Association, the American Bankruptcy Institute and the Turnaround Management Association. He holds B.A. (Economics, with distinction), M.B.A. and J.D. degrees from Northwestern University. His civic and charitable activities include being an executive committee and board member of the Northwestern University Settlement (House) Association.