Sugar Felsenthal Grais & Hammer LLP (“SFGH”) announced Monday that Michael A. Brandess has been elevated to partner.

Michael joined the firm’s business transactions and corporate restructuring and creditors’ rights practice groups in 2011. He has a wealth of experience representing companies in a wide array of healthy and distressed situations. He has led complex restructurings and liquidations across the country, in industries ranging from energy, real estate, construction, agriculture, retail, financial services, telecommunications and restaurant franchises. Michael also consistently represents asset purchasers and sellers in complex transactions, creditors’ committees in difficult reorganizations and trustees during the wind-down of multi-million dollar bankruptcy estates.

Michael has been named a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers® and is rated AV® Preeminent by Martindale-Hubble, the highest ranking available. In 2015, Michael received the Turnaround Management Association’s prestigious Emerging Leader of the Year Award from the Chicago/Midwest chapter. He is an established thought leader in modern business law, publishing cover stories in the American Bankruptcy Institute and ABF Journals and speaking on numerous panels on a variety of matters including the ins and outs of business startups.

Addressing the recent promotion, Adam J. Grais, the firm’s managing partner, noted, “Michael’s unrelenting commitment to client service has made him an invaluable member of our team. Time and again, he demonstrates well-reasoned counsel and dedicated advocacy to our clients. It is a pleasure to now call Michael my business partner.” Aaron L. Hammer, leader of the firm’s Bankruptcy, Reorganization and Creditors’ rights practice group, added “one of the great privileges in practicing law is watching younger talent develop into fantastic lawyers, committed to delivering outstanding results for clients and representing the bar with class and professionalism. From his earliest days in the practice of law, Michael has been deeply committed to these causes and will be a credit to SFGH’s outstanding partnership and firm culture.”

About SFGH: For over 35 years, clients have turned to SFGH as their most trusted advisors. Through an unmatched level of personal service, combined with business and legal acumen, SFGH continues to represent almost all of the clients it started with in 1981. The firm is a general business law firm concentrated in seven key areas: Bankruptcy, Reorganization & Creditors’ Rights; Business Transactions and Securities Regulation; Commercial & Probate Litigation; Labor & Employment; Estate Planning & Administration; Federal Income Tax Planning & Litigation; and Real Estate & Community Development.