Headwaters Merchant Bank announced Stephen Lewis joined the firm as a managing director focused on cross border finance within its debt products group. As a senior leveraged finance and asset basedasset backed professional, Lewis has more than 30 years of broad legal and business experience in multi-jurisdictional lending, including structuring, re-structuring, workouts and insolvency.

Prior to founding Cross Border Strategies, Lewis served for seven years as an executive director with GE Corporate Financial Services in Chicago and then London. Before GE, he practiced international transactional law with several financial institutions before joining Heller Financial where he continued to practice international transactional law for 13 years. At that point he was chosen to design and lead Heller’s international lending practice, a position he held until Heller’s merger with GE Capital.

“I’m thrilled that Headwaters continues to add crucial new capabilities to our portfolio such as cross border financing,” remarked Philip W. Seefried, founder & CEO Headwaters. “Steve represents exactly the kind of experienced banker with niche expertise that will help us serve middle market companies as they look to grow and expand internationally.”
Prior to joining Headwaters, Lewis served as founder and managing director of Cross Border Strategies, which focused exclusively on facilitating international debt financing for middle market companies with current or planned operations outside North America. Having worked on debt transactions in over 30 countries, he has personally led over 100 international financing transactions involving more than $10 billion in international financing.

“Headwaters’ national reputation and global reach will allow me to hit the ground running with an order of magnitude of greater resources,” said Lewis. “I look forward to becoming an integral part of the Headwaters team and to what we will be able to accomplish together.”