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Managing Director and Global Practice Leader, Global Transaction Advisory Group, Alvarez & Marsal
Paul Aversano is a Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal and the Global Practice Leader of the firm’s Global Transaction Advisory Group. For over 25 years, Mr. Aversano has specialized in leading both buy-side and sell-side financial and accounting due diligence projects for complex public and private company transactions, as well as transactions in the capital markets.
Mr. Aversano works to deliver the firm’s services to clients not only in North America but throughout Europe, the Middle East, India, Asia and Latin America as well. He leads the group’s efforts in the cross-border delivery of services to private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds and family offices as well as to corporate and strategic buyers around the world across a wide-spectrum of industries. Mr. Aversano specializes in assessing quality of earnings and GAAP accounting, providing accounting and transaction structuring advice for leveraged buyouts as well as purchase accounting and SEC reporting,
Prior to joining A&M, Mr. Aversano was a Partner and Director of Middle Market Private Equity with Ernst & Young in New York. In this role, he led financial accounting due diligence projects for private equity investor groups, and the development and coordination of the firm’s go-to-market and service delivery strategies focused on the private equity market. Previously, Mr. Aversano was with Arthur Andersen’s Transaction Advisory Services and Audit practices in New York.
Mr. Aversano earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Binghamton University, School of Management. He is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in New York, and is an active member of the American Institute of CPAs, the New York State Society of CPAs and is also a member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (CFE). He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Answer the Call (New York Police & Fire Widows’ & Children’s Benefit Fund) and PowerPlay NYC and is a former board member of Youth I.N.C (Improving Non-Profits for Children), the Audit Committee of the Manhasset School Board of Education and the Alumni Association Board of Directors of Binghamton University. In 2019, Mr. Aversano was also the recipient of the B. Jean Fairbairn Access Award in recognition of his efforts and contributions in improving the services and access for students with disabilities at Binghamton University.
In 2015 Mr. Aversano was named the “Service Professional of the Year” by The M&A Advisor and was formerly a finalist of The M&A Advisor’s 40 Under 40 Award in recognition of outstanding achievements in the M&A and financial industry. Mr. Aversano is a regular contributor to FOX Business Network, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, TD Ameritrade Network and many other broadcast and print media outlets, and is a frequent guest lecturer at industry conferences and universities.
Executive Director, Global Transaction Advisory Group, Alvarez & Marsal Data Intelligence Gateway
−Launch of deal idea generation, investment thesis validation, platform discovery, add-on acquisitions and pre-acquisition market intelligence service offerings
−Management of product roadmap and future product offerings
−Growth strategy and business development
−Oversight of all marketing and PR initiatives
−Launch of global transaction analytics in the marketplace and within priority accounts
−Overseeing activities related to private equity priority account management and managing/maintaining go-to-market collateral and reporting including the launch of new service offerings
It’s an age-old question: how do you best identify new deal ideas and add-on acquisition opportunities? This workshop will help you identify levers you can pull based on better use of data. Questions we’ll explore include:
What insights are available when using open source intelligence?
How can you make the deal identification process systematic and consistent?
How can you tap the value of mapping market and analyzing value chains and relativity of companies?
Managing Director and Chief Talent Officer, AlixPartners
Ted Bililies is an internationally recognized expert on leadership and organization development and the Chief Talent Officer of AlixPartners. Ted launched the first commercial practice in leadership and human capital at AlixPartners which advises investors, CEOs, and boards on the selection and development of leaders and the alignment of culture for maximum and sustainable value creation. Ted’s career spans three decades as a psychologist, human resources executive, management consultant, and executive coach. He holds academic degrees from Loyola University of Chicago and Harvard University. Ted taught at Harvard University for many years, is currently on the Executive Education faculty of the Harvard Business School and is a board member of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. Ted has helped leaders around the world achieve enduring change in their organizations, their teams, and themselves by expanding their psychological, behavioral and organizational insights into leadership.
Demand for the right talent is swiftly outstripping supply as people have grown far more selective about who they want to work for. With competition heating up for the talent required to successfully navigate disruption, executives are wondering how their organizations’ already strained talent-sourcing resources can cope. So how can you address the forecasted tsunami of talent turnover? Leadership and culture are two of the most powerful forces to attract and retain talent. Ted Bililies, an internationally recognized expert on leadership and organization development, will share examples of transformative leadership in action to help you evaluate your own leadership skills and embrace the fact that workforce planning will look very different in 2022.
Co-Managing Partner, Meridian Compensation Partners
Ryan Harvey is a Managing Partner and member of the Executive Committee for Meridian Compensation Partners. He has been consulting in executive and director compensation since 1996 and had attended nearly 3,000 committee and board meetings in his career.
He works with boards and management on all aspects of executive compensation design
and analysis with extensive experience in long- and short-term incentive design,
compensation governance, employment contracts, director compensation programs,
change-in-control arrangements and retention design.
Ryan also acts as a national resource for Meridian on executive compensation issues
associated with corporate transactions including initial public offerings, spin-offs, mergers, acquisitions and start-ups. Ryan has been a partner at Meridian since it was formed, and serves on Meridian’s Executive Committee. Prior to Meridian’s founding, Ryan spent 14 years consulting in executive compensation at Hewitt Associates where he was a Principal.
His clients include large companies in diverse industries including business services, distribution, financial services and insurance, food and beverage, medical technology, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and
retailing. He also has extensive experience working with start-ups, venture capital and private equity.
Ryan has published articles on topics including change-in-control severance design, IPO issues and pay for performance.
Ryan has a B.A. Economics, Hope College and an M.B.A. Finance, DePaul University.
Ryan is located at the company’s Lake Forest, IL office.
Director, Warburg Pincus; Former Chairman and CEO, Schering-Plough Corporation
Fred Hassan is a Director with the private equity firm, Warburg Pincus. He is also a Board member of Precigen, Theramex, Prometheus Biosciences, BridgeBio, and IntegraConnect. Fred Hassan is the former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Schering-Plough Corporation. Prior to joining Schering-Plough in April 2003, Hassan was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacia Corporation – a company that was formed in March 2000 as a result of the merger of Monsanto and Pharmacia and Upjohn. Hassan joined Pharmacia & Upjohn as Chief Executive Officer in 1997. Previously, Hassan was Executive Vice President of Wyeth, with responsibility for its pharmaceutical and medical products business. He was elected to Wyeth’s Board of Directors in 1995. Earlier in his career, Hassan spent 17 years with Sandoz Pharmaceuticals (now Novartis) and headed its U.S. pharmaceuticals business. Hassan received a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology at the University of London and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Hassan has chaired significant pharmaceutical industry organizations including The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA). In 2014, a CNBC panel named Hassan to a list of those who have had the most profound impact on the world of business in the previous quarter century.
Senior Vice President, The Segal Group
Mr. Hencke is a Senior Vice President in the Segal Group’s New York office, responsible for large, strategic opportunities in the Corporate market. He has more than 30 years of total experience in many industries.
Mr. Hencke was previously a principal and strategic accounts manager across the North American Markets at Buck. He was directly responsible for large single-employer clients, account management and business development. Before joining Buck, he worked for Accenture, Hewitt and BearingPoint. He has led more than 20 HR transformations, built more than 200 shared services solutions and led the design, development and implementation of the first process manufacturing and workforce scheduling system.
Mr. Hencke holds a BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from Hiram College in Ohio.
CEO, Manna Pro Products, LLC, a Carlyle Company
John Howe is CEO of Manna Pro Products LLC, a $500 million Global branded pet care and nutrition company dedicated to nurturing the lives of pets including dogs, cats, backyard chickens, horses, indoor birds, and small animals. Under John’s leadership as CEO since 2008, Manna Pro has increased revenue more than 6-fold, driven by strong organic growth and the completion of 18 acquisitions. John was recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2016. Manna Pro is owned by funds managed by global investment firm Carlyle.
The business literature is full of advice on building a sustainable business that withstands the tests of time, on nurturing relationships that endure and crafting a team culture built over time on trust. How does a PE-Backed CEO square these ideas with the shortened time frames and inevitable change in ownership demanded by PE investors? How do you recruit great people, create alignment and instill a sense of shared mission given the accelerated pace needed? This session will explore the unique tensions faced by PE-backed CEOs but rarely discussed, along with best practices you can implement to build a strong culture in harmony with key stakeholders.
Partner, Simon-Kucher & Partners
Bhavin is a Partner at Simon-Kucher and works in our New York office, where he supports clients in boosting their top-line growth by developing and implementing growth strategies, creating value-oriented pricing concepts, and designing programs that optimize sales effectiveness.
Bhavin has extensive expertise in mergers and acquisitions and has guided management teams through complex, large-scale integrations. He serves a broad base of B2B clients and understands the environment in which B2B companies and intermediaries operate.
He has coached the management teams of leading companies to transform their businesses and increase their profitability by formulating corporate and business unit strategies, simplifying product portfolios, optimizing channels, and developing pricing and monetization strategies. Bhavin’s commercial strategy work has also supported sales teams in increasing their effectiveness and commercial performance through pragmatic solutions.
Before joining Simon-Kucher, Bhavin worked at a consultancy where his primary focus was on pre-deal and integration planning for mergers and acquisitions. He is a regular speaker at pricing conferences and a frequent guest lecturer on pricing and marketing topics for Columbia Business School’s MBA program. He graduated with degrees in economics and finance from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia (US).
SVP and Head of Capital Markets, Nasdaq
Robert H. McCooey, Jr. is Nasdaq’s Global Head of Capital Markets and a Senior Vice President of Nasdaq’s Listing Services unit. He is responsible for Nasdaq’s relationships with the financial sponsor and investment banking community. Additionally, Mr. McCooey manages Nasdaq’s new listings efforts throughout the Americas and the Asia Pacific region.
Partner, Simon-Kucher & Partners
Brad Soper is a Partner and Member of the Global Board of Directors of Simon-Kucher & Partners, the global market leader in consulting on pricing for organic growth. Brad co-leads the firm’s global PE practice, leads the firm’s North American Industrials / B2B pricing practice and heads the Atlanta office. Brad has many years of deep experience helping companies to transform and accelerate their top line and spends approximately 50% of his time helping PE firms to accelerate the top line of their holding companies.
Prior to joining Simon-Kucher, Brad worked for three years as a PE operations executive focused on accelerating the top line of middle market portfolio companies. Earlier in his career, Brad worked for The Boston Consulting Group base out of Atlanta, GA and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Brad has a Bachelor’s of Science from The United States Naval Academy and his MBA from Harvard Business School. Brad spent the first nine years of his professional life flying F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft for the US Navy including combat tours in the Middle East.
Executive Director, Global Transaction Advisory Group, Alvarez & Marsal Data Intelligence Gateway
−Business strategy, product development of deal idea generation, investment thesis validation, platform discovery, add-on acquisitions and pre-acquisition market intelligence service offerings
−Managing overall operations and resources
−Setting strategic goals including data exploration and understanding
−Connecting client objectives to technological capabilities
It’s an age-old question: how do you best identify new deal ideas and add-on acquisition opportunities? This workshop will help you identify levers you can pull based on better use of data. Questions we’ll explore include:
What insights are available when using open source intelligence?
How can you make the deal identification process systematic and consistent?
How can you tap the value of mapping market and analyzing value chains and relativity of companies?
Chief Executive Officer, The RepTrak Company
Kylie Wright-Ford is the CEO at The RepTrak Company (RepTrak), the global leader in corporate reputation data and insights. Headquartered in Boston, and private-equity backed by Catalyst Investors, RepTrak is a data-as-a-service (DaaS) company that operates in 10 countries and tracks reputation, brand and ESG performance across 60 countries.
Kylie has been the CEO since 2018 and has transformed the business model, rebranded the company, launched multiple patents, doubled the growth rate, significantly increased the company’s fortune 500 client base, and built a world class team.
Over the last decade, Kylie has worked alongside 5 different private equity and venture investors and has participated in multiple liquidity events and capital restructures including during her 7 years at NY based GLG (formerly Gerson Lehrman Group). Kylie is a diversity champion and passionate culture-builder, she has worked across the globe and brings these experiences to the teams she leads. Kylie has been rated a top 50 mid-market CEO by Comparably and RepTrak was rated as a “best company for diversity” and “best company for women” in 2020.
The first 10 years of Kylie’s career was spent in finance. She is the co-author of The Leadership MindSwitch, sits on the board of The Equine Network, and is a member of the Page Society and the American Australian Business Council. Kylie completed her MBA at Oxford University in 2006 and has an Honors degree in Economics from Melbourne University.
PE-funded business are a different breed with a unique set of objectives to grow revenue and profit in a specific timeframe. We’ll tap into the experiences of a veteran CEO who will share her best strategies for reinventing business models, transforming culture, managing PE stakeholder dynamics, and making the hard decisions to double your growth and execute a winning playbook.
What insights are available when using open source intelligence? How can you make the deal identification process systematic and consistent? How can you tap the value of mapping market and analyzing value chains and relativity of companies?
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