Strategy Focus:

Private Credit, Private Equity, Real Estate, Venture Capital and Direct Deals

Kenneth Allen

Founder

Mr. Kenneth Allen is the Founder of Azurest Partners.

Azurest Partners is an investment banking and advisory services firm focused on providing strategic and financial expertise in key economic sectors that promote high-impact business opportunities. In the United States, these key economic sectors include technology, media, telecommunications, financial services, real estate, business services, and other emerging sectors.  

Mr. Allen has over 29 years of experience in investment banking, strategic planning, and program management. His prior experience includes senior roles at Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase’s Investment Bank. Mr. Allen has business development experience and transactional expertise in the United States, West Africa, and the Caribbean.

At Lehman Brothers, Mr. Allen was a Senior Vice President. He covered clients in the business services, telecommunications/information services, financial technology, and the internet/technology sectors. His clients included Accenture, Affiliated Computer Services (now Xerox), CheckFree (now Fiserv), Electronic Data Systems (now Hewlett Packard), IBM, Insurance Services Office (now Verisk), and Perot Systems. Mr. Allen has been involved in equity and debt capital-raising transactions and M&A assignments on behalf of his clients. 

Mr. Allen also served as a Chief Administrative Officer in Lehman Brothers’ Mortgage Capital division. He supported technology planning and management across the five mortgage origination subsidiaries, which comprised the division. Mr. Allen was one of the leaders in the development of Lehman’s offshoring strategy for its mortgage origination capability, ultimately leading to the creation of a successful operating model for the largest component of Lehman Brothers’ Mumbai facility (over 800 employees involved in mortgage processing, mortgage applicant data verification and research). 

At JP Morgan Chase, he was a Global Business Manager, overseeing planning and administration, compliance, and management reporting, and oversaw special projects for various groups in the Investment Bank. He co-led initiatives, including a PeopleSoft-based project for headcount tracking and forecasting across the institutional businesses at JP Morgan Chase (representing over 120,000 employees), as well as efforts to implement technology-based operating models across the Investment Bank’s human resources division. 

Mr. Allen earned a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and has an MBA and an MA in Education from Stanford University.

Mr. Allen currently holds Series 63, 79, and SIE registrations with FINRA.

Jon Walls

Managing Director

Mr. Jon C. Walls is a Managing Director at Azurest Partners.

 

Azurest Partners is an investment banking and advisory services firm focused on providing strategic and financial expertise in key economic sectors that promote high impact business opportunities. In the United States, these include technology, media, telecommunications, financial services, real estate, business services and selected other emerging sectors. 

 

Mr. Walls possesses over 30 years of experience with Fortune 500 companies and small to mid-sized businesses. Mr. Walls began his career at Lehman Brothers where he served as a Senior Vice President of Investment Banking until 2000 with an industry specialization in Financial Institutions. While at Lehman, he developed his deep expertise in delivering complex M&A, equity and fixed income solutions to sophisticated clients. Over a span of eight years, he successfully executed more than 30 transactions totalling over $16 billion in mergers and acquisitions and over $5 billion in debt and equity financings.

 

Mr. Walls’ most recent experiences include his role as CFO of an early stage investor-backed B2B healthcare finance and analytics company. Prior to that, he spent over 8 years leading a professional staff as President of an insurance brokerage he acquired with private equity and property management partners. During that time, he turned around the sales and overall financial performance of the company while overhauling the company’s technology infrastructure and its financial strategy. In addition, for more than ten years, Mr. Walls was the instructor of S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Fundamentals of Bank Valuation, a seminar he designed which was offered throughout the country. Mr. Walls has also held senior leadership roles at a mortgage bank and a technology start-up. 

 

Mr. Walls holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a JD from Harvard Law School (Cum Laude) and a BA from Yale University.

 

Mr. Walls currently holds SIE, series 63 and 79 registrations with FINRA.