Twelve senior appointments for London office of FTI Consulting

12 May 2016 Consultancy.uk

FTI Consulting has unveiled twelve senior appointments in its UK business. Three advisors have been promoted to the level of Senior Managing Director, while seven have moved up one level to the role of Managing Director. Subsidiary Compass Lexecon has made two senior appointments.

With over 4,600 professionals in 28 countries, FTI Consulting is one of the larger consulting firms globally. The firm, founded in 1982 in the US*, provides a range of management consultancy and financial advisory services, including investigations, litigation, mergers & acquisitions, regulatory, reputation management, transaction services, and restructuring.

Its London office, which opened back in 2003 – at the time the firm’s first hub outside the US – today comprises a team of over 600 consultants. The office’s growth follows years of organic growth, as well as a number of UK based acquisitions that have bolstered its footprint, including the likes of G3 Consulting in 2006 ($2.5 million deal), London headquartered Financial Dynamics in 2005 ($260 million; 450 staff in 17 offices globally), Forensic Accounting in 2008 (a move which turned its London office into the firm’s largest operation) and more recently, in 2014, London-based TLG Partners**.

On the back of a strong year, FTI Consulting’s London office has rewarded twelve of its senior professionals with a personal advancement. The promotions, which formally took effect on 1 April 2016, cover a variety of disciplines, with three of the twelve advisors operating in the firm’s Strategic Communications unit, four sitting in the Corporate Finance & Restructuring service line, two in the Economic & Financial Consulting unit and one working in the Forensic & Litigation Consulting practice. Subsidiary Compass Lexecon made two appointments.

FTI Consulting makes twelve senior appointments

An overview of the Senior Managing Director promotions:
Simon Conway – works in the Life sciences practice in the Strategic Communications segment. He joined FTI early 2012 from Evolution Securities, where he was the research analyst responsible for the biotech and small cap healthcare sector. Prior to that Conway spent several years on the buy-side, including stints at Millennium Capital and Lehman Brothers as the analyst on global healthcare investment portfolios. Before that he was on the sell-side as the European Biotech analyst at Bear Stearns. He began his City Career at Williams de Broë as an analyst.

Simon Kirkhope – an experienced advisor with more than 15 years of restructuring and insolvency experience in the UK and internationally. He sits in the Restructuring practice within the Corporate Finance & Restructuring segment. Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Kirkhope served Deloitte, where he worked in the Big Four’s restructuring unit, and EY, where he spent thirteen years. Kirkhope is a Licensed Insolvency Practitioner.

Charmaine Wong – an expert in financial due diligence on large leverage buy-outs. Wong, who is based in FTI’s Transaction Services practice within the Corporate Finance segment, previously worked for KPMG, where she began her career in 1999, and in her most recent role prior to leaving in 2013, was a Director in KPMG’s Private Equity Transaction Services team.

An overview of the Managing Director promotions:
Josephine Corbett – works in the Strategic Communications segment and heads the corporate communications offer within the Retail, Leisure and Consumer Industries practice. Her areas of expertise include reputation management, thought leadership, media and stakeholder relations, creative engagement, financial communications, M&S, IPO and issues & crisis management. Corbett began her career at Financial Dynamics.

Gareth Crooks – a specialist in tax matters that impact the hospitality, leisure and real estate industries. Crooks, who joined the consultancy in 2013 from Deloitte, is a member of the European Tax Advisory practice. His tax advisory experience includes the structuring of acquisitions, due diligence requirements, financing and refinancing considerations, exit planning and tax forecasting.

Alex Davie – focuses on expert financial advice in the context of litigation and international arbitration, typically engagements such as business or IP valuation, the quantification of lost profits and assessments of wasted costs. Prior to joining FTI’s ranks in 2011, Davie was a member of Morgan Stanley’s Leisure and Hotels equity research team, where he performed financial analysis and worked on IPO deliverables. Prior to that, Davie served LECG and Deloitte.

Dora Grunwald – operates in the FTI Consulting’s Economic and Financial Consulting segment. She has over 10 years’ experience in regulatory, due diligence, strategy and policy impact engagements assisting large corporations, private equity companies and government agencies. Prior to joining FTI in 2012, Grunwald worked at the Strategy and Economic Consulting groups of PwC.

Brett Pollard – joined FTI in June 2015 from Abingdon Health, where he latterly served as Chief Operating Officer. Before co-founding Abingdon Health in 2008, Pollard was Head of Life Science Research at Numis and an Equity analyst at Seymour Pierce. At FTI, Pollard works in the Healthcare & Life Sciences practice within Strategic Communications.

Andrew Ponting – works in the Corporate Finance & Restructuring practice of FTI Consulting. Previously served PwC.

Iain Whittingham – an expert in the development and implementation of Target Operating Models and in Process Re-engineering programmes within the Insurance sector. Whittingham works in the firm’s Global Insurance Services group, and prior to joining early 2014, he was an executive at insurance company RSA. He started his career in the British Army and later on worked eight years for Williams Lea.

Compass Lexecon
In addition, FTI Consulting’s wholly owned subsidiary Compass Lexecon, formed in 2008 through the combination of Competition Policy Associates (Compass) and Lexecon, announced two promotions in the UK. Thilo Klein, a former consultant of NERA Economic Consulting (a sister company of Mercer and Oliver Wyman) has been named an Executive Vice President, while Julian Delamer, who joined FTI following the firm’s acquisition of LECG in 2011, has been appointed a Senior Vice President.

Reflecting on the promotions, Chris Osborne, Co-Chairman of FTI Consulting’s EMEA region, says, “We are proud to have so many exceptional leaders within our firm and congratulate them all on achieving these career milestones.” Osborne further highlights that almost one third of the appointments are female, a ratio which “reflects the firms’ continued commitment to identifying and retaining high performing women.”

Looking ahead, Chris Osborne says he is, despite’s the globe’s mixed economic fortunes and the Brexit debate, confident on the outlook, stating: “We are confident about the growth opportunities that lie ahead and this investment will help ensure FTI Consulting continues to help our clients with the critical challenges they face.”

EMEA promotions
Across the EMEA region, FTI Consulting has made ten more promotions. Simon Dibb, Hans Hack (both Brussels), Mark Higgins (Dublin), Oleg Leonov (Moscow) and Hartmut Vennen (Frankfurt) have been named a Senior Managing Director, while Juliette Fortin (Paris), Victoria Graefin Strachwitz (Frankfurt), Steve Harris (Dubai), Kyra Obolensky (Brussels) and Emma Pitt (Dublin) have been appointed a Managing Director.

* FTI Consulting was founded as Forensic Technologies International. In 1998, one year before it started trading as a public company (under the ‘FCN’ symbol), the firm rebranded as FTI Consulting.

** An overview of major acquisitions by FTI outside the UK since 2002: PwC’s US restructuring business (2002; $230 million), Ten Eyck Associates (2003; US), KPMG’s Dispute Advisory Services business in the US (2003; $89 million; ~150 consultants), Lexecon (2003; 200 staff in the US), US, UK and Australia based Ringtail Solutions (2005; $35 million), Compass Lexecon (2006; US), Brower, Kriz & Stynchcomb (2006; US), Schonbraun McCann Group (2006; US), International Risk (2006; Asia), Holder International (2007; Latin America), Brewer Consulting, Blueprint Partners, Rubino & McGeehin Consulting Group (all in 2008), Dallas based turnaround advisory CXO (2009), FS Asia Advisory (2010; Asia), various operations of LECG (2011; 200 professionals globally) and KordaMentha and Think First (2012). In 2013, FTI Consulting spent more than $50 million on six acquisitions (including Taylor Woodings in Australia, Princeton Economics Group in the US and the insurance practice of Distinct Consulting in the US), in 2014 it added, among others, US based oil & gas expert Platt Sparks, and last year the firm picked up HighView Media and Global VAT Compliance.