Christopher Atayan

Senior Advisor

 

Christopher H. Atayan has been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AMCON Distributing Company since 2006.

AMCON is a NYSE listed company with Consolidated Revenues of $2 Billion and distributes Branded Consumer

Products through its own internal logistics and supply chain to 5000 Convenience Store Customers in 33 states throughout the Midwest and Mid Atlantic. For his work at turning around AMCON, he was a finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2009 and was named CEO of the Year by the Turnaround Management Association in 2008.

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In addition, he was a Managing Director and Co-Founder of Slusser Associates, Inc. from 1988-2020. Slusser Associates,

Inc. was a national recognized Investment Banking and Merchant Banking firm with a generalist focus on negotiated

transactions in the Middle Market throughout the United States and internationally. Prior to that Mr. Atayan was with

PaineWebber Incorporated in the High Yield Finance and Leveraged Buyout Group, Goldman Sachs & Co in Equity Sales

and Trading at the CBOE and started his career on at Morgan Stanley & Co in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department

in 1982.

 

Mr. Atayan is a Director of Eastek International a manufacturing business serving leading industrial corporations with

operations throughout the world. He has also been a frequent contributor to Real Money a publication of The Street.com.

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He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Honors in 1982 with a BBA majoring in Finance,

Investment and Banking as well as Economics and was part of The Applied Security Analysis and Investment

Management Program. He also attended The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business where he was a Morris

Vehon Scholar and a Paine Webber Scholar. He was also elected to the Bronxville, New York Board of Education for two

terms serving from 2009 to 2015.