John Adams

Co-Founder & Managing Director

John is a Founding Partner of CMD Global Partners.  Like each of the other Founding Partners of the firm, John previously was a Managing Director at XMS Capital Partners. Prior to his time at XMS, John spent 14 years at Lazard where he ran the Chicago Office / Midwest Investment Banking business, Global Private Equity and the Global Automotive group. He has extensive experience in China beginning in 2006 with the opening of Lazard’s Beijing office. Earlier, during 1986-1999, he was with Morgan Stanley in New York, Chicago and London where he ran the firm’s European M&A Business Development effort. Recently, he represented Icahn Enterprises in the $5.4 billion merger of Federal Mogul and Tenneco.  John has over 30+ years of experience in investment banking working across a number of industries in M&A, public and private financing, as well as restructuring (has completed 15 successful restructuring assignments).

John holds a B.S. from Truman State University (Summa Cum Laude) and an MBA from Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania (Director’s List). He is a US citizen with EU residency.

John Balfe

Managing Director

John is a Managing Director at CMD Global Partners and leads the firm’s Aerospace & Defense practice. Prior to the formation of CMD Global, John served as a Senior Advisor and Head of the Aerospace & Defense Practice at XMS Capital Partners. Prior to XMS, John founded and led Lazard Frères Anglo-American defense and aerospace practice.  Through the late 1990s, John headed  the investment banking departments at Troika Dialog and UFG in Russia. He began his investment banking career managing the Asia and financial products investment banking practice of the New York office of Robert Fleming, a leading UK investment bank focused on emerging markets.

Within the defense sector, John has advised leading defense players including General Dynamics,Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, DRS, General Atomics, Goodrich, Herley, Logistics Management Institute, Thales, and Triple Canopy. Outside of defense, he has advised Clondalkin, Collagen, DuPont, GL Ohrstrom and Co., Norsk Hydro, Philip Morris, Popkin Software, and Toshiba.   He has also advised the Office of the Secretary of Defense and other government agencies on economics and national security for over a decade.

John received his A.M. from Princeton University and his A.B. with high honors from the University of California, Berkeley. He has a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance.

Conor Barry

Co-Founder & Managing Director

Conor is a Managing Director and co-founder of CMD Global Partners. Conor has spent the entirety of his 20+year career in capital markets. Conor runs the European practice of CMD from Dublin where his main focus is on enabling clients to complete Trans-Atlantic transactions through superior execution and support. In addition, Conor has enormous experience dealing with entrepreneur or family-owned entities that are looking to transition to a new phase of growth via some form of PE or growth equity funding. Conor has a particular emphasis on the business services, healthcare and packaging sectors.

Conor began his career in the Equity Capital Markets division at Deutsche Bank in London, where he worked with Pan-European Hedge Funds and Institutions from 2001-2005. After Deutsche Bank and before joining the investment banking world with XMS Capital Partners, Conor was a co-founder of a private equity business in Ireland having raised and invested €350m of equity predominantly in property related transactions.

Conor holds a BSc degree in Finance from University College Cork and an MBS degree in Strategic Management from The Smurfit Graduate School of Business in Dublin.

Scott George

Co-Founder & Managing Director

Scott is a Founding Partner of CMD Global Partners. Scott previously served as a Managing Director at XMS Capital Partners, where he originated and executed a wide variety of transactions for publicly-traded and privately-owned clients.  Prior to joining XMS, Scott served as Senior Vice President – Corporate Development at Hillenbrand, Inc., a global diversified industrial company based in Indiana. During his tenure at Hillenbrand (first as its outside investment banker and then as a member of management), Scott built a highly successful buy-side capability that resulted in Hillenbrand investing over $1.6 billion in the first five acquisitions in its corporate history.

In addition to his corporate development role, Scott spent 35 years as a senior investment banker at Salomon Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Bankers Trust and Ernst & Young, as well as at two smaller firms focused on serving private equity and mid-size public and private companies. During that time, Scott advised on more than 250 transactions involving mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, fairness opinions, going private transactions and various types of public and private financing transactions. Scott also has extensive experience with IPOs including those involving Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs).

Scott holds a BA degree in Economics from Northwestern University and an MBA degree from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Chris Salamasick

Co-Founder & Managing Director

Chris is a Founding Partner of CMD Global Partners. Chris was formerly a Managing Director at XMS Capital Partners, where he executed several successful strategic transactions and financial advisory assignments for a diverse range of clients, including Accuride, Industrea Acquisition Corporation, CLARCOR, CNH Industrial, Exide Technologies, Federal-Mogul, Johnson Controls, Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corporation and LiveWatch Technologies.

Chris began his investment banking career at Lazard Frères in the Global Automotive Group in 2008, executing a range of mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring assignments. During his time at Lazard, he was among a small group of analysts directly promoted to post-MBA associate roles and worked across a variety of groups in the Chicago and New York offices. He executed several successful transactions while at Lazard, with clients including Cooper-Standard, Dayco, Delphi, Exide Technologies, Federal-Mogul, Tenneco, TI Automotive and Tower International.

Chris graduated cum laude from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Geography, as well as a minor in Music Performance (double bass). While at Northwestern, he also studied at New Zealand’s oldest university, University of Otago, in Dunedin.