Bankruptcy Beat Snapshot: Jim Nugent

Distress in the health-care industry isn’t going away. Enter Jim Nugent.

Mr. Nugent recently joined Huron Consulting Group’s business advisory team, bringing some 30 years of experience helping companies restructure, find partners or improve their operations. Notable cases include advising the investor group that acquired the Chicago Sun-Times out of bankruptcy.

“It was a lot of fun to assist them,” Mr. Nugent told Bankruptcy Beat last week.

Attracted to Huron’s “growing restructuring practice” and “strong focus on health care,” Mr. Nugent will work with companies across a variety of industries. However, he does expect to spend much of his time helping troubled health care providers and other companies in the industries address such ongoing challenges as declining reimbursement rates.

“They need assistance with growth strategies, with labor-cost reductions and non-labor cost reductions as well as good assistance in evaluating strategic alternatives,” he said.

Among Mr. Nugent’s proudly recalled assignments was helping multiple-hospital communities with mergers and acquisitions-type deals to enable them to continue caring for patients. It’s a strategy that’s worked in cities around the U.S., from Batavia, N.Y., to Saginaw, Mich.

Also taking Mr. Nugent, a Chicago native, to cities near and far are his 17-year-old son’s hockey games, which he and his wife attend faithfully. In fact, the family, including a 25-year-old daughter, sometimes makes a vacation of it.

Write to Jacqueline Palank at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @PalankJ.