We step into messy, high-stakes situations as executive partners stabilizing companies, sourcing or restructuring capital and capital partners, and leading the relationships that determine the outcome.
Red Lion Advisory is an executive advisory firm for private companies, founders, family offices, and capital allocators navigating growth, capital events, and special situations.
CEO/CFO-level leadership, deep capital markets experience, and real operating discipline turn chaos into a clear plan and a closed transaction.
Step in as interim or fractional CEO, CFO, or CRO—leading through restructurings, turnarounds, and complex transactions with full operational authority.
Design, structure, and negotiate financing across the entire capital stack backed by decades of treasury and capital markets experience.
Stabilize liquidity, create one version of the truth, reset expectations with boards and lenders, and install the accountability needed to restore momentum.
Active relationships with lenders, private credit, family offices, institutional investors, and strategic buyers and we know how to build trust fast on both sides of the table.
We help companies at inflection points and in the right cases, we'll run them, buy them, and grow them.
Take the seat. Deploy as interim CEO, COO, or CRO, bringing operating discipline, decision-making authority, and real accountability. Own the role and drive outcomes.
Interim CEO · COO · CRO · Fractional Leadership · C-Suite Deployment
In the right situations, we move beyond advisory and acquire companies directly alongside family offices, capital partners, and co-investors. When the fit is right, we bring our own capital, our own operators, and our full conviction to the table.
Direct Acquisitions · Co-Investment · Family Office Partnerships
Raise capital, design strategy, and drive operational performance then stay through execution to ensure the plan becomes results. Growth isn't just a goal set with you. It's a process managed through closing and well beyond.
Capital Raises · Operational Scaling · Post-Close ExecutionMost of our work starts at an inflection point: the model has broken, the capital stack no longer fits reality, or stakeholders have lost confidence in the current plan. These are the kinds of situations where we do our best work.
Cash is tight, covenants are in question, vendors are nervous. We stabilize liquidity, implement real cash visibility, and re-open productive conversations with lenders and key counterparties.
The existing debt and equity mix doesn't fit the business anymore. We re-underwrite the company, design a fit-for-purpose capital structure, and lead a targeted process to secure new capital or restructure existing facilities.
The company is off plan, board pressure is building, and ad-hoc cost cuts aren't fixing the core issues. We bring one version of the truth, reset the plan, and align management, sponsors, and lenders around a credible path forward.
The business is compelling, but the finance function and narrative are not deal-ready. We act as transaction-ready CFO and deal leader tightening the numbers, anticipating diligence, and managing capital partner relationships.
The opportunity is real, but growth is burning too much cash and straining stakeholders. We redesign the growth and capital plan so the company can survive its own upside and build a structure that lenders and investors can back.
Embed directly into critical moments—leading operations, capital strategy, and stakeholder alignment simultaneously. Own execution from day one through completion.
Embedded executive roles: interim/fractional CEO, CFO, CRO, or turnaround leader as needed.
Active engagement with boards, attorneys, lenders, and investors from start to finish.
One integrated roadmap for operations, capital, and stakeholder management owned and driven by us.
See every engagement through to execution and delivery.
Step into the seat with full mandate owning the P&L, the lender relationships, and the board conversation.
When the situation requires an independent voice with full authority, we carry the mandate from day one stabilizing, restructuring, and positioning for the next chapter.
Manage the process end-to-end financial modeling, diligence, lender and investor management, negotiate terms, and drive to close.
Serve as the independent expert voice boards and special committees need when management is conflicted or the situation is too complex for existing advisors.
Deep, working relationships with capital providers, commercial partners, and specialist service firms across the full capital stack and value chain. Long-standing partnerships built through years of successfully closing complex transactions together—forged through execution.
Architect how you show up to the market: sharpen the story, the strategy, and the numbers so capital providers and partners can underwrite your opportunity with confidence. Anticipate the questions before they're asked, and prepare you to answer them.
Frame, structure, and negotiate solutions that work in practice—grounded in market understanding and operational insight. Solutions built for execution across capital and operations.
Access capital and prepare companies and capital partners for each other.
We sit at the intersection of operating leadership and capital markets. We translate messy realities into bankable stories, design structures that fit the business, and negotiate outcomes that work for both companies and capital providers.
We’ve been borrowers, bankers, investors, and operators we understand each side’s constraints and objectives.
Lead from inside the company, not from a distance aligning operations, numbers, and narrative before going to market.
Long-standing relationships that open doors and accelerate trust.
Post-closing reality matters as much as the term sheet—structure has to work in practice across operations, capital, and stakeholders.
Red Lion Advisory is led by Simit Shah, a senior finance, capital markets and business transformation executive who has served as CFO, Treasurer, and interim C-suite leader, while using treasury, capital structure, and deal-making to drive strategy, growth, and value creation for PE and Family office backed, distressed, and growth companies. He blends CXO/CEO/CFO-level Commercial and Financial leadership with stakeholder-facing execution across capital raising, complex financings, and business transformations in dynamic, high-stakes environments.
Simit brings over two decades of experience closing complex transactions, leading organizations through high-stakes inflection points, and building the institutional relationships that determine outcomes. He has structured, marketed and executed over $3B in capital across debt, equity, and structured products and led the operational side of some of the largest transactions in his sectors.
He is known for being direct, deeply networked, and able to move at the speed of a transaction rather than a consultant. With entrepreneurial tenacity, resiliency, and tactical rigor, he builds trusted relationships with boards, executives, lenders, investors, and operating teams across the globe. He thrives in ambiguity, wears multiple hats, and is often tapped to solve urgent capital structure, liquidity, and growth challenges. He holds an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and graduated from Villanova University with a BS in Chemistry.
View full profile on LinkedInIdris Elgabalawy is a Director at Red Lion Advisory, where he leads execution across the firm's M&A advisory, capital raising, restructuring, and fractional CFO mandates.
Idris has advised on transactions ranging from $5 million acquisitions to capital deployments exceeding $500 million, spanning buy-side and sell-side M&A, recapitalizations, joint venture structuring, leveraged buyouts, growth equity raises, and asset-backed credit facilities. His engagement work includes structuring multi-party recapitalizations with earnout pools and rollover equity across operating partners, selling shareholders, and joint venture counterparties; designing leveraged buyout structures incorporating PIK toggles and four-tier distribution waterfalls; and leading enterprise valuation work supporting credit facilities of $15–20 million and capital raises of $125–320 million.
He focuses on complex, multi-stakeholder transactions in which capital structure, governance, and operational transition are designed in parallel. He has structured management buyouts with phased seller exits and cross-border manufacturing integration, advised on capitalization design across SAFEs, convertible notes, and priced equity rounds covering 75+ investors, and authored investment memoranda supporting capital raises of $100 million to $320 million for industrial and energy platforms.
Idris advises clients across energy and cleantech, defense and aerospace, healthcare, manufacturing, and consumer products, with technical range spanning unit economics and bill-of-materials cost build-ups for emerging hardware platforms, levelized cost of storage analysis for battery technology, and working capital and covenant frameworks for asset-heavy operating businesses.
Idris holds a B.S. in Finance, with a concentration in Financial Analysis, from California State University, Northridge.
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Whether you're facing a liquidity crunch, a complex recap, or a strategic pivot that can't fail we're built to step in early and lead.