Valerie L. Gerard and Jim Jackson, co-CEOs of The Alta Group, released the following statement:

With heavy heart we must share that our friend, colleague, and industry icon Joe Nachbin has passed away following a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. Joe was an industry veteran who devoted more than four decades of knowledge, skill, and insight to the equipment leasing industry, starting as a vendor and large ticket specialist with Continental Illinois Bank, structuring and managing transactions with Heller Financial and Flagship Credit Corporation, providing senior management experience with Copelco Financial Services, and serving for the past 20 years as a highly valued consultant and leasing expert with The Alta Group.

As an industry stalwart he served as a director of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association and as chairman of the Association’s Accounting and Compensation Committees, and he was always available to provide advice and ideas for those who called on him.

Joe’s extensive capabilities in analyzing businesses and transactions, his experience and insights into equipment leasing and financial operations, and his remarkable ability to analyze and assess leasing companies and the leasing business were invaluable to Alta and will be greatly missed, as will his friendship, his optimism, his easy laugh, and his ever-present spirit of camaraderie and participation with his colleagues and clients.

Joe was an inspiration to all who knew and worked with him. Indeed, he was involved in two important engagements with Alta during his short but terrible final illness, and he continued to work, participate and contribute to the mission until his very last day.

His presence and his contributions will be sorely missed by Alta and by the industry he loved.