Michael Baigel Principal
Michael Baigel is originally from Manchester, England and happily moved to Canada 20 years ago. He has been a Canadian for more than 13 years now. He founded, and until creating Baigel Corp., was the Practice Leader of the Small Business Restructuring team at a national insolvency practice. He previously worked at Deloitte, BDO and other boutique financial advisory and insolvency UK firms.
Michael is a federally Licensed Insolvency Trustee, and uniquely in Canada, he is also an exam qualified UK Insolvency Practitioner. He is a Chartered Insolvency and Restructuring Professional (CIRP), Canada; a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales; a Fellow of the Insolvency Practitioners Association (UK) and has a BA (Honours) degree in Economics.
However, more important than exam qualifications, is that Michael provides expert corporate recovery expertise gained from his experience of assisting thousands of small and owner managed businesses over three decades in both Canada and the UK. In that time, he has gained a reputation as a straight-talking advisor, who is both technically strong and commercially minded.
Michael was a member of the exam licensing committee for Licensed Insolvency Trustee candidates in Canada for many years and a peer reviewer of the Insolvency Counsellor’s Qualification Course. Michael scored the highest mark in the national examinations of the insolvency Licensing examinations in 2003, even whilst preparing for his wedding 4 days later.
Michael has presented on insolvency and restructuring issues to the American Bar Association, Ontario Bar Association, Israel Bar Association, GTA Accountants’ Network, National Association of Credit Management, International Factors Association, Investors Group and the Association for Capital Growth, and was published in a national newspaper regarding Small Business Demise: Why Some Companies Succeed Where Others Fail. He is an occasional columnist for the Construction Economist, Journal of the Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors
He volunteers for local charities and associations and is a member of the Canadian Ski Patrol, which is somewhat unusual for a lad from Manchester who had never stepped on skis until he was 23. He still plays open-age football (soccer in Canadian parlance) and plays the guitar very badly, but very, very loudly. Most importantly, he is a Manchester United fan.