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Previously a director, James “Chip” Cottrell ’77 has been elected a partner in Goodman & Company L.L.P., a large regional public accounting firm based in Virginia and Maryland.
In his new role Cottrell assists companies facing major changes. “Fifty percent of the companies I work with are having financial difficulties. I’m able to call upon lots of skill sets from experiences all over the world in helping companies rebirth themselves, or get to the next stage in their corporate life. The answer may be selling or merging–bankruptcy is one tool,” he explains.
Cottrell has 25 years of experience restructuring companies. A specialist in global operations, trade, and finance, he is credited with the turnaround and repositioning of companies in the United States, Hong Kong, Latin America, China, and the Netherlands. Before joining Goodman he was an international investment banker and worked for accounting/consulting firms, including KPMG in New York, London, and Hong Kong, as well as Deloitte & Touche.
An economics and business graduate, Cottrell says his liberal arts background has been a great professional asset. “Peat Marwick put me through a two-year program at NYU to take liberal arts graduates and strengthen their quantitative thought practices. But my liberal arts background gave me a very broad way to qualitatively analyze business situations,” he says. “I’ve noticed that many of my colleagues with liberal arts undergraduate degrees are the most successful.”