Morgan Stanley’s Wissam Kairouz and Harlan Wakoff to Discuss Media Industry Economic Trends at 2017 MFM CFO Summit

Northfield, IL, February 23, 2017 – Wissam Kairouz, Managing Director in Morgan Stanley’s Leveraged & Acquisition Finance Group, and Harlan J. Wakoff, Managing Director in the firm’s Media and Communications Group, will discuss economic trends that will be affecting media industry businesses in the coming year at the 2017 Media Financial Management Association (MFM)  CFO Summit.

Scheduled for March 2-3, at the Hilton Ft. Lauderdale Beach Resort, MFM’s annual CFO Summit provides the media industry’s senior finance executives an exclusive forum for an in-person exchange of ideas and discussions.

 “Economic and financial market trends that will affect the performance and value of media businesses are always an importance area of focus for the industry’s senior finance executives,” said Mary M. Collins, President and CEO of MFM and its BCCA subsidiary. “Thanks to the participation of Morgan Stanley’s Wissam Kairouz and Harlan J. Wakoff, our 2017 CFO Summit attendees will come away with some of the best available market intelligence concerning factors that will affect their companies’ revenue generation and corporate financing options.”

Wissam Kairouz currently serves as a Managing Director in the Morgan Stanley’s Leveraged & Acquisition Finance Group in New York, where he oversees the group's industry practices in Media, Financial Services and Healthcare. Before joining Morgan Stanley in 2009, Wissam was a Managing Director in the Global Leveraged Finance group at Merrill Lynch. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch’s Investment Banking Division in 1998, he worked for four years in fixed income investment management with BlackRock. Wissam received a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from McGill University and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.

Harlan J. Wakoff has served as Managing Director in Morgan Stanley’s Media and Communications Group since 2014. Harlan has 24 years of Investment Banking experience and has covered the media sector in New York and London for more than 20 years. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, he spent nine years at Deutsche Bank as a Managing Director in the Media and Telecom investment banking group, Head of Media and Telecom in EMEA and Head of Media M&A in the Americas. Before joining Deutsche Bank in 2005, Harlan spent six years at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., where he was a Managing Director heading the firm’s Media M&A franchise. Harlan started his media investment banking career in 1996 with Furman Selz. Harlan received a B.S. in Accounting from the State University of New York at Albany and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

David Bestler, Executive Vice President & CFO for Hubbard Radio, and Brett Fennell, CFO and Executive Vice President of National Ad Platforms for Cox Media Group (CMG), are serving as Co-Chairs for the event. Previously announced presenters include Tom Joyce, Managing Director and Capital Markets Strategist for Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.; Jason Rademacher, Special Counsel in the Regulatory Communications Practice at Cooley LLP; Jacobs Media’s Fred and Paul Jacobs; Sandhi Kozsuch, Principal of Strategic and Industry Initiatives for Cox Media Group and Chairman of the Board for the Pearl broadcast consortium, Jerry Fritz, EVP of Strategic and Legal Affairs of ONE Media; and Greg Portell, a Lead Partner in A.T. Kearney’s Consumer Products & Retail Practice in the Americas. Additional information about the CFO Summit and an online registration form may be found on MFM’s website, at http://www.mediafinance.org/cfo-summit.

About MFM and BCCA:

Media Financial Management Association (MFM) is the premiere resource for financial professionals for media industry education, networking, and information sharing throughout the U.S. and Canada. More information about MFM is available on its Web site: http://www.mediafinance.org and via its updates on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. Its BCCA subsidiary serves as the media industry’s credit association. BCCA’s revenue management services encompass a variety of credit reports on national and local media advertisers, including Media Whys, a credit report for media businesses which offers a credit score based on industry-specific aging combined with trade data from Experian or D+B. More information about BCCA is available at http://www.bccacredit.com as well as its updates on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.