Senior People.
Every Engagement.
Every mandate at Westwood is personally led by the firm’s principals from first conversation through closing. The team brings decades of shared experience across structured finance, M&A, affordable housing, and restructuring.
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Daniel Alpert founded Westwood Capital in 1995 after a career in commercial real estate banking and finance that began in 1982, including a partnership at Oppenheimer & Co. His transactional background spans international merchant banking, bankruptcy-related restructurings, commercial mortgage-backed securities, and mortgage REITs—the foundation for the firm’s structured-finance practice.
Alpert is also a recognized voice in financial macroeconomics. He is Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow in Financial Macroeconomics at Cornell Law School, author of The Age of Oversupply: Confronting the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy (Penguin Portfolio, 2013), and a co-creator of the U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index. In 2011 he conceived and co-authored, with economist Nouriel Roubini and law professor Robert Hockett, The Way Forward, a widely cited analysis of the 2008 financial crisis, and he appeared as a featured commentator in the Academy Award–winning documentary Inside Job. He has been a fellow of The Century Foundation and a frequent commentator in national financial media.
That combination—a working structured-finance banker who also studies and teaches the macroeconomics his transactions operate within—is unusual, and it shapes how Westwood approaches its mandates: as instruments that should make economic sense for clients and, where relevant, advance sound public policy.ption text goes here
Dan Alpert
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Ethan Alpert heads up the Westwood’s distribution operations across both securities and M&A placement activities of the firm. Mr. Alpert also leads Westwood’s aerospace and defense practice. He works principally with aircraft and component OEMs and providers of maintenance, repair and overhaul services to help structure and arrange growth and project financing, identify and help execute strategic business transactions, and assist in the development of new markets for clients’ products and services.
Ethan Alpert leads client and business development at Westwood Capital, where he works at the intersection of affordable housing and investment banking. He focuses on originating and cultivating relationships with affordable housing developers, connecting them to the capital-markets via Westwood’s proprietary AHFCABS (Affordable Housing Future Flow Contributive ABS) — the affordable housing structured-finance ABS product the firm pioneered in 2018. He is a central figure in Westwood's AHFCABS platform, which has placed more than $4 billion of securities across approximately 20 discrete transactions. His work includes convening industry principals in settings designed to move deals forward, reflecting a conviction that transactions are ultimately built on direct, trusted relationships.
Prior to joining Westwood, Mr. Alpert was an executive and principal of several successful ventures in the aviation and aerospace sector, including Airlogic Holding Inc., a supplier of component support and logistics services to hundreds of airlines, OEMs, MROs and lessors globally; Spares Support Solutions India Pvt. Ltd, a Mumbai, India-based joint venture with The Airbus Group; and Aviation Systems International, Inc. He has valued, purchased, leased and traded over one hundred transport category jet aircraft and engines and possesses a broad network of contacts with airlines, aircraft and component OEMs, aircraft leasing companies and MRO service providers worldwide. Mr. Alpert began his career as a practicing real estate attorney with the firm of Schulte Roth & Zabel in their New York office. Mr. Alpert received a B.A. in Public Policy from the University of Pennsylvania and J.D. from Boston University.
Ethan Alpert
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Mr. Messersmith, a Managing Director of Westwood Capital, has over twenty-five years of experience in corporate finance, restructuring, and investment banking, working as both an operational executive and advisor across real estate, securitization, media, and heavy industry. He focuses on the firm's real estate and securitization practice, covering residential homebuilding, multi-family development finance, hospitality, entertainment, gaming, and retail, with projects spanning the United States, the Caribbean, China, Vietnam, and Japan. His career includes capital raises, M&A, project finance, and restructuring advisory, notably financing over $1 billion in motion pictures, one of the first music royalty securitizations in the 1990s, and one of the largest out-of-court restructurings in history at over $13.5 billion in debt; he also founded several technology companies and began his career at Merrill Lynch. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Jon Messersmith
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Keiki-Michael Cabanos is currently a Partner and General Counsel to the Westwood Capital group of companies, where he oversees the legal aspects of the firm, including legal and firm operations.
Prior to joining Westwood Capital in 2005, Keiki gained experience with fund formation and operations as the Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel a private equity fund focused on IT and New Energy Technologies. Earlier in his career, Keiki was a SVP of Consulting for Broadcom and VP of First Albany Corporation, a financial services and investment banking firm, where he formed and controlled the employee private equity funds, and a Senior Litigation Consultant at Deloitte & Touche, LLP. In addition to those positions, Keiki was responsible for providing legal counsel in financial, securities, compliance, tax, trust and estate matters for First Albany.
Keiki is a member of several boards, including the Board of Trustees of Albany Law and the board of advisors for the Institute for Financial Market Regulation. Keiki has lectured on several topics including private equity, fund operations, corporate strategies, and secured transactions.
Keiki received a B.S. degree from Cornell University, an M.B.A. degree from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management & Technology, and a Juris Doctorate cum laude from Albany Law School. He is a FINRA Certified Regulatory and Compliance Professional and admitted to practice law in New York and Connecticut.
Keiki-Michael Cabanos
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Michele Harvey joined Westwood Capital in 2009 and is its financial controller. Her accounting focus has primarily been in the financial services industry. Prior to taking time to raise her family, she worked at Martin Geller CPA, Grant Thornton and Bear Stearns. Additionally, Michele was the CFO of Robotti & Company, a registered broker-dealer. Michele received her CPA and holds a BBA, magna cum laude, in Public Accounting from Pace University.
Michele Harvey
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Michele Harvey joined Westwood Capital in 2009 and is its financial controller. Her accounting focus has primarily been in the financial services industry. Prior to taking time to raise her family, she worked at Martin Geller CPA, Grant Thornton and Bear Stearns. Additionally, Michele was the CFO of Robotti & Company, a registered broker-dealer. Michele received her CPA and holds a BBA, magna cum laude, in Public Accounting from Pace University.
Lindsay Fenga
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Rab brings over 30 years of investment banking, capital markets and business development experience to Westwood Capital, where he focuses on investor relations and business development. Rab is also Westwood Capital’s representative member of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association (“NH&RA”) and the California Council for Affordable Housing (“CCAH”).
Before joining Westwood in 2011, he was Managing Director of business development at Parker Global Strategies and Director of Marketing and investment Committee member at Ferrell Capital Management.
Earlier, Rab held capital markets, product development and client coverage roles at Credit Suisse First Boston (“CSFB”) in New York and London, where he headed the Short and Medium-Term Trading Group and launched and managed its euro-commercial paper, asset-backed CP and electronic trading businesses (CPTrade™). He also built CSFB’s alternative liquidity and bridge financing practice in support CSFB’s M&A clients. His client coverage spanned US oil & gas and independent power accounts, European telecom and healthcare issuers and alternative M&A acquisition finance and debut European financings. Rab began his career at Lehman Brothers in Corporate Bond Sales in Chicago and as Medium-Term Note Product Manager in New York.
He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Vermont, studied Medieval History at the University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland, and earned his MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Rab is a GlobalScot affiliated with the Scottish Government’s Scottish Enterprise network, was an inaugural member of the University of St Andrews US Advisory board, was a board member and 97th President of the St. Andrew’s Society of New York – the second oldest charitable organization in the US. He currently serves on its Standing and Scholarship Committees and is the President of the Burns Society of New York.