The following are a small sample of projects undertaken for organisations with enterprise values from €8m to €2bn

 

Global Post-Merger Intergration of Two Listed Portfolios of Businesses

Cross-Border M&A : Merger of two Toronto and Vienna-listed portfolio businesses operating across 37 businesses in 22 countries with 2,300 employees with a combined EV of C$450m. Worked as part of CEO’s office with Chief Value Officer to create coherent global strategy in which both the cost and market synergies could be realised in the Vision to create a C$1bn global group.

Professional Services 5-Year Strategy to Own Market Niche

Law Firm Strategy: Realigning top UK law firm to major trends in the media, entertainment and technology markets – from market research through to driving a new Vision-led business strategy, cultural evolution plan and go-to-market approach. Strategy will take them into the very top tier or UK law firms in terms of profitability (50%+) via controlled growth. 160-day field-to-fork plan to define the strategy and drive an execution focused culture. Value measured in £ms in incremental profitability, staff retention, a culture of excellence and intrinisc curiosity in their sector and reduced risk as the Firm takes the next stage in their journey.

SUPPORT PRIVATE EQUITY EXIT FROM PORTFOLIO INVESTMENT

Recruited by previous client to work primarily in California and Germany on post-merger brand relaunch of CleanTech business with North American, Asian and European footprint backed by Silicon Valley private equity investors with clear remit to (i) integrate, (ii) reposition, (iii) grow and (iv) sell to allow major shareholder (Kleiner Perkins) to exit their investment. Responsible for analysis, brand, marketing strategy and global implementation team plus training of new marketing department as part of planned handover.

Pre-Investment Review for Data-analytics Tech Firm

Concentra: Review product portfolio, brand and culture for the world’s leading organisational data analytics SaaS provider in advance of US expansion strategy and £41 million growth equity investment led by One Peak Partners

Integration & Identification of New Value Points in for PLC

Deutsche Börse Group AG (FWB: DB1): Integration of myriad of data businesses accumulated through years of acquisitions by Germany’s leading stock market to leverage the 'new world' thirst for intelligence from big data accounting for 2bn euros (10%) of DBA's total value. Today, it is worth 2.8bn. In addition, identified two major areas of €35m of future accretive value tucked invisbly away inside the portfolio that simply had gone unnotived (a UK based RegTech business and a New York based Central Bank's Intelligence service).

IMPROVING ENTERPRISE VALUE THROUGH CORRECTIVE BRAND POSITIONING - CYBERSECURITY

Classic use of Competitive Advantage Framework™ methodology to reposition a Microsoft Identity and Access Management (IAM) and cybersecurity system integrater to become the defacto owner of the market niche resulting in a 2 x additional multiple. Methodology used many times with success across organisations seeking a trade exit or private equity investment.

Reverse MarketShare Death Spiral

Berlitz Language Schools: act as part of transformation team for Princeton-based business operating across 70 territories but on verge of death spiral: comprehensive research programme into growing $30bn market, opportunity identification and recommendations to realign the product, culture and brand around the digital-first/global-first generation. Execution stage in progress now

Renewed Competitive Advantage

Re-engineering a Technical Publisher to an as-a-Service: Bring new competitive advantage to a technical publishing house that was once dominant market leader but is now rapidly losing market share to new digital-first entrants. Without breaking confidences, my recommendation was:

  1. Move from being product led to being brand led (typical publishing)

  2. Transition from publishing paradigm to owning their knowledge area as specialist workflow intelligence

  3. From printing, sales and subscriptions to Intelligence-as-a-Service

STRATEGY TO TRIAGE LOSS FLOW, DEVELOP CHANGE PLAN AND PREPARE FOR SALE

Identify key pockets of profit that was being lost in a Microsoft partner, develop a Change plan with management team, support development of new business plan and reposition business (including culture change) to very real (but ignored) actual market trends. Business sold to private equity with losses triaged and future value opportunity identified. Founding majority shareholder able to take value off the table and see the organisation into a safe, forward trajectory.