Zahara Kassam

Zahara Kassam has close to 20 years of hands-on industry experience as a hotel real estate investor, asset manager, brand partner and financial advisor. Ms. Kassam applies her strategic, financial and operational background to assist clients with a wide variety of real estate bankruptcy, restructuring, litigation, valuation, transaction and asset management advisory engagements.

Ms. Kassam has supported real estate investors, developers, lenders, loan servicers, commercial mortgage-backed securities (“CMBS”) investors, ground lessors, hotel management companies and receivers during periods of growth, transformational change and financial distress. She has experience helping stakeholders through out-of-court restructurings and formal bankruptcy proceedings, as well as with acquisitions and dispositions, damages analysis and valuation, fraud investigations, receiverships, CMBS disputes and partnership dispute resolution.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Ms. Kassam launched and scaled Marathon Asset Management’s European hotel real estate portfolio, which she grew to 20 hotels (around 4,000 rooms). In this role, she turned around property performance by leading the refurbishment, rebranding and upscale repositioning of most of the portfolio, including the implementation of new food and beverage concepts. Ms. Kassam also previously worked in the global headquarters of InterContinental Hotels Group, where she assisted efforts to increase the distribution of the group’s brands across Europe by structuring and negotiating more than 100 franchise, management, joint venture and M&A transactions.

Ms. Kassam launched her career as an Energy M&A analyst at Citigroup’s U.S. and UK offices. She also worked as a microfinance advisor in India and Switzerland after growing up as an instrumental contributor to her family’s hotel business in Florida.

Relevant Experience:

• Advised the unsecured creditors committee (“UCC”) in the Times Square JV LLC Chapter 11 bankruptcy
• Advised the senior lenders of 20 Times Square and The Times Square Edition
• Advised the landlord in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of the former The Ritz-Carlton Battery Park
• Advised the junior mezzanine lender on a New York City hotel restructuring
• Advised the UCC in the Steward Health Care Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Awards & Recognition:

• The Top 25 Travel and Hospitality Consultants and Leaders, The Consulting Report (2024)
• CRE’s Women of Influence, GlobeSt. (2024)
• Influence Award, Gold: Rising Star, Commercial Property Executive (2022)
• Breakthrough Award, Women in Real Estate, Commercial Observer (2020)