Joseph Coote and Mike Darland join Alvarez & Marsal
International consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal has bolstered its Private Equity Performance Improvement practice with two new senior hires Joseph Coote (Managing Director) and Mike Darland (Senior Director). Coote joins from Hitachi Consulting, while Darland joins from Big 4 firm Deloitte.
Joseph Coote
Joseph Coote has more than 20 years of experience in the chemical, energy and industrial sectors and is a veteran in the consulting market. After starting his career in the chemicals industry he in 1993 joined A.T. Kearney, where he worked as a Senior Manager in the firms’ Chemical and Pharmaceutical Practice. Two years later he moved to Sanford C. Bernstein, a research and brokerage firm, to work as a Senior Analyst for the global chemical sector. In 1997 he decided to return to the consulting industry, when he was appointed as a Managing Director at Charles River Associates. Coote worked for more than twelve years at CRA, until he in 2009 switched to counterpart Arthur D. Little, where he was appointed Global Leader of ADL’s Energy and Chemicals Practice (the group responsible for 40% of the firm’s revenue). Following a two-and-a-half year spell at Hitachi Consulting, the consulting unit of IT services firm Hitachi, he has in July opted for a new challenge at Alvarez & Marsal.
Coote is specialised in among others strategy (e.g. strategic planning, due diligence), financial advisory (e.g. M&A, corporate valuation, turnaround) and operations services (e.g. performance improvement, supply chain management). He is a graduate of the NYU School of Engineering, and has earned an MBA in finance and international marketing from Fordham University. Besides his consulting work, Coote is the current president and Chairman of the Societe de Chemie, an industry network specifically for the chemicals industry.
Mike Darland
Before joining Alvarez & Marsal, Mike Darland was a Director with Deloitte Corporate Restructuring and previously was a partner at CRG Partners (Deloitte bought CRG Partners in May 2012). Prior to his consulting career, he fulfilled the role of Chief Procurement Officer at Sappi Fine Paper, a pulp and paper company, and Director of Manufacturing Operations at camera company Polaroid. He is specialised in mergers & acquisitions, due diligence and performance improvement.
Darland is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and holds an MBA in finance and strategic planning from the University of Massachusetts. He recently retired as a Captain in the Naval Reserves after five command tours, during which he served as a nuclear submarine officer and was certified as a professional engineer on multiple nuclear reactor facilities.
Senior professionals
“Private equity investors are increasingly pursuing complicated, technical and time-consuming opportunities in order to continue to generate significant returns,” said Nick Alvarez, Managing Director and national practice leader of Alvarez & Marsal’s Private Equity Performance Improvement Group. “Such investments require the expertise of senior industry professionals such as Joe and Mike, who can help ensure deals are informed by proper due diligence and value is created through a deep understanding of the sectors in which these companies operate.”
