William Atkins is a Partner of Fairfax Partners, LLC and is a Senior Partner of Fairfax Media Partners, LLC.  He has advised media and telecommunications companies on, inter alia, the monetization of their assets and on their overall positioning and internal readiness for investor exits via either initial public offerings or strategic sales. He has also served an adviser to plaintiffs’ attorneys on valuation issues related to litigation in the telecoms equipment sector.

Mr. Atkins uniquely combines both operational and banking expertise, having served as Chief Financial Officer of two telecommunications companies and as a senior investment banker. His involvement in the telecommunications and media sectors spans two decades, ranging from the privatization of formerly government controlled operators, through the funding of new wireless and alternative carriers in response to industry deregulation and technological change, and to executing both as principal and advisor mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and public and private debt and equity offerings with an aggregate transaction value of over $100 billion.

Prior to Arbor, Mr. Atkins was Chief Financial Officer of Rivada Networks International, LLC from 2006 to 2009. Rivada is a rapidly growing provider of mobile emergency communications services for the homeland security and public safety sectors, using both commercial cellular networks and deployable private cellular networks to provide state of the art, feature rich and cost-effective interoperable communications. At Rivada, he prepared the company for further rounds of fund-raising, including the establishment of budgets and long-term plans. He instituted financial controls, a new general ledger and accounting system and prepared the company for its first audit by a Big 4 accounting firm.

From 2004 to 2005, Mr. Atkins was Chief Financial Officer of Intelsat, Ltd. Intelsat is a global fixed satellite services operator, privatized in 2001 and purchased by a consortium of private equity investors via a leveraged buyout in January 2005. The company, an SEC registrant with quarterly financial reporting and other responsibilities, operates in over 200 countries and provides communications and media services to customers in the telecommunications, media and government sectors. At Intelsat, he led the $5.1 billion private equity sale process, including associated investor presentations, valuations, reviews of strategic alternatives and negotiations with the ultimate owners of the business. Within the company, Mr. Atkins instituted centralized monthly reporting, introduced rolling twelve month forecasting, created product line based profitability analyses, established Sarbanes-Oxley compliance readiness and initiated the overhaul of previously fragmented and inefficient accounting systems and procedures.

Before joining Intelsat, Mr. Atkins was a senior member of Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division and held various positions from 1994 to 2003, including Head of European Corporate Finance Execution, Deputy Head of Investment Banking in Japan, and Head of European Telecommunications Corporate Finance. Prior to Morgan Stanley, he co-founded the Telecommunications Investment Banking practice at one of Europe’s leading investment banks, S.G. Warburg, where worked from 1985 to 1994.

Mr. Atkins has a BA and an MA from Stanford University. He resides in Washington, DC and serves as Treasurer and Board member of the Ellington Fund, which supports the activities of the Duke Ellington School for the Arts, one of the leading arts-oriented high schools in the United States.