By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
It bills itself as the “premier restructuring and financial advisory firm to the middle market in the country.”
A bit boastful perhaps, but in the immortal words of Hall of Fame hurler Dizzy Dean, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”
Conway MacKenzie, Inc., a Birmingham-based operation with eight offices around the country and two affiliates in Europe, will celebrate its 25th anniversary this summer, fresh from receiving another slew of national awards, recognizing it as “Turnaround Firm of the Year” and among the “101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For” in addition to other honors.
Van Conway, who in 1987 co-founded the firm after spending 13 years as a partner with the former Deloitte & Touche, prides himself in attempting to “keep things simple” despite the inherent complexity of the work in the restructuring field.
“We don’t have a company manual per se,” Conway says in his trademark matter-of-fact way. “Our company manual boils down to this—right and wrong. The way we operate is pretty basic. If you live and work by the Golden Rule, there is no need for a 100-page manual.”
It’s a philosophy that Conway has embraced throughout his career as a CPA and licensed professional, in which he has gained a national reputation for his expertise in the fields of “insolvency/bankruptcy; financing, reorganization and management of troubled companies; mergers and acquisitions; debt restructuring; and litigation support.” His company’s success has had a nice spillover effect for various area charitable organizations (see related story), including the Oakland County Bar Foundation.
Conway is a product of Detroit Austin High School, a former Catholic League powerhouse that counts the late NBA great Dave DeBusschere among its distinguished alums. He spent his early years in the Downriver communities of Wyandotte and Grosse Ile before his family moved to Grosse Pointe when he was 8 years old.
“My parents had four kids and we lived in a tiny house in Grosse Pointe, even though my dad owned a foundry type business,” Conway says. “He never made much money, but he provided everything I needed and he taught me how to work and for that I will always be grateful.”
Conway began working at the age of 10, earning a dollar an hour for various odd jobs around the foundry on the northeast side of Detroit. At age 16, Conway received his first pay boost to $2.12 an hour, the entry-level wage for union workers at the plant.
“I always worked as many hours as I could and did whatever I could,” Conway recalls. “I had to prove myself as someone who could stand on his own, even though I was the owner’s son. My dad never cut me any slack or did me any favors. I made his coffee every morning and shined his shoes each day. He was totally intolerant of any under-performers.”
His father also had four basic rules for his son to follow, according to Conway.
“First, get all As in school,” Conway says of his father’s edict. “Secondly, he said for me never to bring the cops to our home. Third, I needed to respect my mom. And fourth, ‘Do what I tell you to do.’”
The last directive, of course, was a catch-all that Conway took to heart as he embarked upon his collegiate career at John Carroll University, a Jesuit school in suburban Cleveland.
“I have to admit that I had a good time in college, but I also appreciated the importance of getting good grades,” says Conway. “I knew it was all about my GPA if I was going to have a chance at getting a good job following graduation.”
Two days after graduating from John Carroll in June of 1974, Conway started work with Deloitte in its Detroit office, one of 25 new hires in the so-called summer class. His starting salary was $12,000 a year.
“I was an outlier and I knew that I needed to step it up if I was going to compete with all of the University of Michigan summa cum laudes,” Conway says. “I was not heralded and needed once again to prove myself worthy of the job.”
He was among those assigned to the GM account, helping conduct the worldwide audit of the giant automaker’s finances. His work soon began to speak for itself, leading Conway to a path to become the only partner out of the 25 in “Detroit Class of 1974.” At the age of 32, Conway was chosen to address Deloitte’s 800 partners at an annual meeting in Florida, a plum assignment that spoke volumes about his future with the company.
“I knew that if I stayed I had a shot at running the firm worldwide,” Conway says. “But I always had an itch to be my own boss.”
So, two years later, Conway and his friend and accounting colleague, Donald MacKenzie, formed the firm that now bears their names, taking the proverbial “leap of faith” that didn’t appear to make much financial sense at the time.
“We didn’t have any clients, but we had a vision about what kind of firm we wanted to build and we were committed to working hard to make it happen,” says Conway on behalf of MacKenzie, who also is a CPA and works out of the firm’s New York office. “Fortunately it has worked out—we have grown to about 100 people now and we plan to grow every year going forward.”
He has put stock in a leadership style that comes from within, investing in “good people” who want to make Conway MacKenzie their career home.
“If you want to be a great leader, then you want to surround yourself with people better than you,” Conway claims. “We want the next generation of leaders to be created from within the company. We have some superstars in this firm and they all recognize that we are part of a family that is strong when united and weak if ever divided.”
Divisiveness has not been an issue during the firm’s 25 years, according to Conway, principally because “being fair and honest” is part of “the DNA of our company.”
“We have high expectations here and work hard, but I tell everyone that the Little League game that you miss can never be made up or that eighth grade play that your child is in can’t be replayed because you’re at the office working away,” he says.
The father of four children, Conway has watched his share of games over the years. His two sons, Matthew and Kevin, are baseball players at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
As an avid baseball fan, Conway has racked up plenty of frequent flyer miles watching his sons in action on the diamond. Matthew, who led Birmingham Brother Rice to the Division 1 state title his junior year, is a 6-foot-7 first baseman who batted .382 as a freshman at Wake Forest, ranking third in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He has been dogged by a series of knee injuries the past two seasons, however, and is hoping to regain his form in the Cape Cod Summer League.
“He is learning first-hand all about adversity and the need to stay strong and to persevere when things don’t go your way,” Conway says of his son, who has gone under the knife four times over the past two years.
Kevin, who played his high school ball at Detroit Country Day and was a first team All-State selection, is a freshman at Wake Forest who possesses speed and an ability to play eight positions, according to his father. He is expected to be a key contributor to the team’s success in the coming years.
His older daughter, Molly, 29, earned a degree in chemistry from Akron University and was awarded a master’s from John Carroll, and now works for Steris Corp., a medical equipment supplier.
His youngest child, Kelly, is an eighth-grader at Country Day where she is a pitcher on the softball squad. Conway makes no bones about calling her his “favorite child.” He even admitted as much at a team banquet.
“I love my kids the same, but I ‘like’ her more,” he offers by word of explanation. “My kids can appreciate that.”
They also undoubtedly admire their father’s desire to be a mentor to disadvantaged young boys in the Detroit and Pontiac areas. His mentees include a former high school football player who now is a member of the Hawkeye squad at the University of Iowa, a student from Pontiac currently enrolled in the robotics and engineering program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and a high school wrestler from Highland Park who advanced to the state semifinals this year. Conway’s hope is that the standout wrestler will make his way to Stanford University.
“I aim to make a difference in their lives,” Conway says of his mentoring work. “I want to give them a chance to better themselves and I insist that they have good grades and behavior in return. So far, it has worked out well. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing someone from a difficult situation succeed and make something of himself.”
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Giving becomes a way of life for area business
Van Conway is rarely focused on his firm’s budget when approached about a charitable contribution.
“We try to stay the course no matter how the company is performing in regards to previous years,” Conway says with conviction. “We don’t look at it as a budgetary issue. We prefer to view it in terms of whether it is a good cause. We try not to say no to anybody if the need is there and money is going to reach those it’s intended to reach.”
The Oakland County Bar Foundation is one such cause, benefiting annually from Conway MacKenzie’s generosity, this year with a $10,000 Platinum level sponsorship for the 13th Annual Signature Event on April 20 at Oakland Hills Country Club.
Such contributions to the OCBF have become customary for Conway MacKenzie, which has been a longtime supporter of pro bono and legal aid work in Metro Detroit. This year’s sponsorship money will be used to support OCBF grants for the University of Detroit Mercy Mobile Law Office, the Family Law Assistance Program, the Oakland County drug treatment courts, Legal Aid Mini Clinics, and the William Beaumont Hospital Legal Aid for Children program among other recipients.
“We’re not lawyers, but we believe in what the Bar Foundation is doing in terms of its support of worthy causes in the legal community,” Conway says. “We know that our donation is going to go directly to those in need and won’t be eaten up by administrative costs. That makes a difference to us.”
Conway, whose late parents, Paul and Barbara, owned a small company in Detroit, believes that generosity is a “learned behavior,” and credits his father and mother with instilling in him the “desire to do good” for others.
“I saw my dad always helping others, not necessarily with money but with his time, which can be even more valuable,” Conway says. “That has stuck with me throughout life.”
Twice named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young, Conway has made a habit of challenging his firm’s employees to give more.
“I challenge everyone here to give within their means, especially if they are asking us to support a particular cause they are involved in,” Conway says. “I want to see what level of commitment they are making in terms of their own money or their own time. It gives me an idea about how serious they really are about helping out. If I see them step up, then I’m more than happy to up the ante for the sake of their charity.”
-By Tom Kirvan
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