Experience

A career spent close to the transition, not just the deal

Much of my work has been where transaction decisions have to become operating reality. I first learned M&A from inside operating organisations, dealing with integration, optimisation and organisational change before moving into Big Four advisory.

The roles varied. I led defined programmes, built and ran the governance around execution, advised decision-makers and worked from inside the business itself.

years of professional experience
25+
years focused on cross-border M&A and related transaction work
15+
deals managed or advised
20+
countries of international experience
20+
years in the Big Four, including 8+ at Director level
10+

Responsibility carried

Not every mandate carried the same kind of responsibility.

Across my career, I have worked from different positions around execution. Sometimes I had direct responsibility for a defined programme. Sometimes I built and ran the governance that allowed many teams to execute together. In other situations I advised the people making the decisions or worked from inside the organisation itself.

  • Leading defined programmes

    In a number of situations, I was accountable for a defined programme or project and for getting it from one point to the next.

    That meant bringing together the people, workstreams, decisions and dependencies needed to move the work forward, while dealing with the issues that emerged along the way.

    Selected roles

    • Carve-out Programme Director
    • Project Director & Separation PMO Lead
    • Integration PMO Lead

  • Governing and coordinating execution

    A large part of my work has involved creating the structure through which complex execution can actually happen.

    I have designed governance and PMO structures, put them into operation and then worked through them day to day: coordinating functions and workstreams, clarifying decision paths, managing dependencies, bringing issues to the right level and keeping different parties aligned.

    Selected roles

    • Separation Governance & PMO Lead
    • Separation Governance & Execution Lead

  • Advising

    I have also spent a substantial part of my career advising the people who owned the decision.

    That work has included operational due diligence, transaction readiness, synergy assessment, integration and separation planning, operating-model questions, blueprints and the design of M&A processes and capabilities.

    Selected advisory work

    • Operational due diligence
    • Synergy assessment
    • Integration and separation blueprints
    • M&A process and capability design

  • Operating inside the organisation

    My M&A experience did not start in advisory. It started inside operating organisations, where the decisions had to work after they were made.

    I held in-house integration and optimisation responsibility before moving into the Big Four, and I have also worked inside organisations going through structural change and built ventures of my own.

    Selected in-house experience

    • Project Manager Integration & Optimization in a state-controlled energy group

Transaction experience

I have worked with buyers integrating what they acquired and with sellers separating what they sold. Much of that work crossed functions, legal entities and countries, so decisions made on one side often created practical consequences on the other.

On the buy side

  • Operational due diligence and integration blueprints
  • Integration planning, PMO and Day 1
  • Post-close integration and operating transition

On the sell side

  • Separation readiness before signing
  • Carve-out governance and buyer-seller coordination
  • TSA definition, Day 1 and standalone readiness

Across mandates, my work has spanned the full transaction lifecycle. No single mandate covered every stage; the breadth comes from experience accumulated across different transactions.

  1. Pre-signing assessment
  2. Signing to close
  3. Day 1 readiness
  4. Transition and execution
  5. Stabilisation and standalone

Scale and operating contexts

The mechanics change with the situation.

The situations have ranged from focused divisional separations to larger international programmes involving multiple functions, legal entities and countries.

What works in a contained situation does not automatically work once the same problem is spread across a much wider organisation.

Focused

Around 100 people

Contained divisional or business-unit situations, in a single country or across borders.

Multi-country

Several hundred people across multiple countries

More distributed organisational, cultural and geographic complexity.

Larger-scale

1,000+ people

Greater organisational scale, more workstreams and more complex dependencies across functions and entities.

Organisation and ownership

Mittelstand and other small-to-mid-sized businesses, including founder-, family- and private-equity-owned companies, alongside larger corporates, sovereign-backed and state-controlled businesses and public-sector environments.

Operating environments

Industrials and manufacturing, energy and infrastructure, life sciences and other complex operating businesses.

International context

Experience across more than 20 countries, spanning Europe, the Middle East, North America, the Caribbean and Southern Africa.

The mandate record

Selected Mandates provides a closer look at anonymised engagements: the situation, my responsibilities and what was put in place.

It is not a complete record. Some deal-related work, including due diligence, synergy assessment and blueprint preparation, is not published there.