American Equity Partners

Founder, Chairman and CEO

Raymond H. Wechsler recently retired as Senior Advisor of Cerberus Operations and Advisory Company.   He previously was Managing Director at Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. and a Senior Executive and Director of Cerberus Operations and Advisory Company.

Mr. Wechsler has more than 30 years of senior leadership, investing, and restructuring experience and has managed the distressed portfolio or selected portfolio companies for private equity firms, including Cerberus and George Soros, among others. In successfully investing in and reorganizing numerous companies in financial and operational difficulty, he has been Chairman and CEO or President of more than 15 companies including Mueller Industries, United Press International, Jos. A. Bank, Protect Services Industries, Mervyns, Scottish Re, among many others. Earlier in his career, Mr. Wechsler held senior financial positions at RCA Corp. and then as EVP & CFO of AT&T International. He also served as a Court appointed Administrative Trustee in the Southern District of New York in the administration and resolution of a major financial fraud case in the 1990s. Mr. Wechsler holds a BA in Economics from Queens College and an MBA from Columbia University. He has also been a CPA in New York State.