Niso Abuaf heads the Financial Strategies Group at Ramirez & Co and is Clinical Professor of Finance and Economics at Pace University. In his strategist role, Niso is responsible for developing capital allocation, risk management and valuation strategies for Investment Banking clients. Niso’s role typically starts by performing a Financial Checkup of a client’s balance sheet, where he analyzes the client’s optimal capital structure, its debt capacity, its shareholder value maximization, asset-liability management, and shareholder payout strategies. Niso’s work typically forms the underpinnings of a client’s corporate finance strategies such as issuing debt or equity and swapping fixed rate debt to floating.
In his academic role, Niso teaches courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels including managerial economics, global macro, international finance, corporate finance, investments, valuation and entrepreneurial finance.
Niso’s academic and commercial research publications include: the characteristics and management of foreign-exchange risk, global cost of capital, optimal capital structure, valuing financial instruments, corporate issuance and shareholder payout strategies.
Niso has 35 years of Wall Street experience, including eight years at Credit Suisse, where he was the founding head of its Global Financial Strategy Group, and 13 years at Salomon/Citigroup, where he was the head of its International Financial Strategy Group, based in London. He is an internationally recognized expert in valuation, optimal capital structure, and the effects of global macroeconomic conditions on corporate financial decisions. Niso has advised numerous clients on debt capacity; optimal capital structure and credit rating; optimal cash balance; liability and risk management strategies; corporate payout policies; and on equity valuation drivers.
Throughout his career Niso has advised numerous clients including: American Express, Amgen, AT&T, BMW, ConocoPhillips, GE, IBM, International Paper, Microsoft, Nestle, Oracle, and Wal-Mart, among others. Niso has also advised sovereigns such as the Republics of Argentina, Colombia, France, Mexico, Korea, and Turkey. Niso is fluent in French, Spanish, and Turkish; and has a working knowledge of German and Italian.
Niso received a BS and MS in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University; and an MBA, and a PhD in Financial Economics from the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous scholarly and professional publications in international and corporate finance; and in derivatives.