Sectors:
Leisure and HospitalityZahara Kassam
Biography
Zahara Kassam is a Managing Director at FTI Consulting with nearly 20 years of hands-on experience as a hotel real estate investor, asset manager, and brand partner. Kassam leverages her strategic, financial, and operational expertise to assist clients with a wide range of real estate bankruptcy, restructuring, litigation, valuation, transaction, and asset management advisory engagements.
Kassam’s recent work at FTI Consulting includes advising the senior secured lenders of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, the unsecured creditors committee in the Times Square JV LLC Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the senior lenders in the foreclosure process of 20 Times Square and The Edition Times Square, and the junior mezzanine lender on a New York City hotel restructuring, along with several confidential litigation and valuation advisory engagements.
Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Kassam was an independent hotel consultant to BentallGreenOak and HDG Hotels, an Asset Manager for TIAA/Nuveen’s portfolio of parking assets, and the interim Head of Real Estate Business Development at Industrious. Before that, Kassam launched and scaled Marathon Asset Management’s European hotel real estate portfolio.
Kassam also previously worked at InterContinental Hotels Group, assisting efforts to increase the distribution of IHG’s brands across Europe by structuring and negotiating over 100 franchise, management, joint venture and M&A transactions. Kassam launched her career as an M&A analyst at Citigroup. Kassam sits on the Board of Directors for the Robert F. Toigo Alumni Endowment and serves as a real estate consultant for the Aga Khan Foundation USA.
Firm Overview
Over the last 40 years, FTI Consulting has grown to become a market-leading global consulting firm that brings together distinct capabilities and experts to serve as the trusted advisor to clients when they are facing their greatest opportunities and challenges. Each practice is a leader in its own right, staffed with experts recognized for the depth of their knowledge and a track record of making an impact. Collectively, FTI Consulting offers a comprehensive suite of services designed to assist clients across the business cycle—from proactive risk management to the ability to respond rapidly to unexpected crises and dynamic environments.
FTI Consulting, Inc. is a global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organizations manage change, mitigate risk and resolve disputes: financial, legal, operational, political & regulatory, reputational and transactional. With more than 6,900 employees located in 30 countries, FTI Consulting professionals work closely with clients to anticipate, illuminate and overcome complex business challenges and make the most of opportunities.