Mark Claster

Mark L. Claster is a Partner of Carl Marks Advisors (CMA) and the Immediate Past President of Carl Marks & Co., where he also serves as Co-Chair of the Board. He brings more than 40 years of executive leadership and transactional experience, having participated in more than 100 transactions over his career. He is President of Carl Marks Securities LLC and is FINRA-registered as a General Securities Principal. Claster founded Carl Marks Advisors, the affiliate that provides investment banking and turnaround & restructuring (T&R) services to companies across a wide range of industries.

Carl Marks & Co. is one of the investment community's oldest and most experienced merchant banks, founded in 1925 and family-owned and -operated. Under Claster's leadership as President, the firm operated as a platform spanning advisory services, distressed investments, investment management, private equity, real estate, and the incubation of new investment businesses. Claster has publicly framed the firm's identity around this builder role — "We have been in the business of building investment businesses for decades" — describing Carl Marks' strategy of anchoring and incubating independent investment managers.

Claster began his career as a tax attorney at Olin & Philips. His education includes a B.B.A. with honors from Ohio University, a J.D. from Hofstra University School of Law, and an LL.M. in Taxation from New York University School of Law.

Beyond finance, Claster has been deeply involved in healthcare and civic leadership. He served roughly five years as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Northwell Health, New York's largest health system, and continues to serve on its board as a member and as Special Advisor to Northwell and its CEO. He sits on the Joint Board of Overseers of the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, the boards of Mather Hospital and ImpactIsrael, and is a Trustee of the Carl Marks Foundation. In 2022 he was elected a Trustee of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He is also a former President of Fresh Meadow Country Club.

• Builds and anchors investment platforms rather than writing individual seed checks — Carl Marks incubates and seeds independent investment managers, providing anchor capital and infrastructure. In his words: *"We have been in the business of building investment businesses for decades."*
• Multi-strategy principal investing across private equity, distressed credit, real estate, and special situations, industry-agnostic by design.
• Sector platforms Claster has overseen include: CM Equity Partners (U.S. federal services and aerospace & defense), Sand Oak Capital (industrial and manufacturing companies), Stone-Goff Partners (lower-middle-market services), and Carl Marks Management Company (distressed-credit funds).
• Advisory-driven perspective: through CMA, the firm engages companies via investment banking, M&A, and turnaround/restructuring — meaning Claster's world centers on operationally complex, middle-market, and distressed/special-situation companies rather than venture-stage startups.