Advisor · Consultant · Builder
I've advised it, run it, and built it from scratch.
Twenty years between McKinsey, an agency group, and running an AI company as COO and then CEO. I work with investors, boards and founders on technology, AI, and the value that's meant to come out of both.
Engagements
Years
Continents
Languages
What I work on
Four things people call me about.
- 01
AI and value creation
Agents don't make a slow company fast. They make a precise company faster and an imprecise one busier. Almost everything I do in this area comes out of that one asymmetry, and almost none of it is about which tools you buy.
- 02
Due diligence and M&A
A diligence is worth paying for when it changes what you do — the price, the structure, a condition, or the first three hires after close. Mine is written to be argued with in an investment committee, not filed.
- 03
Value creation
Most value creation plans are a list of ambitions with no organisation behind them and no money attached. The ones that work name what the company will stop doing, put a number and an owner on every line, and get reported the same way every month.
- 04
New businesses
Most advisers have never started anything. I've built a bank inside a holding company, stood up an insurance brokerage in a new market in under a year, and put together a joint venture between a bank and an insurer. I've also founded and run two companies of my own, which is a different job and teaches you different things.
Selected work
I can't name clients. Here's everything else.
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Financial services
A bank, built from the holding company
Commercial offering, technology and operations, through to a live product competing with incumbents.
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Insurance
A brokerage live in under twelve months
Stood up from nothing for a new market, including the technology and the operation around it. Separately, a joint venture brokerage between a bank and an insurer.
-
Software
A turnaround, from the chief executive seat
170 people to 70, €6M of operating cost out, facilities and vendor contracts renegotiated, and a sale process prepared and run.
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Telecoms · Banking
€2.5B+ of contracts renegotiated
Four procurement programmes across an international operator, an international bank, a European operator and a Latin American bank.
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Retail
AI in the operating core
Put AI into the daily decisions of a European retailer, inside the systems the business already runs on.
Client names aren't mine to publish — the engagement terms don't allow it. Sector, scale and the nature of the work are accurate, and nothing here claims a result the record doesn't support. References on request, to boards and funds in a live process, with the client's consent.
The full list
Sixty-nine engagements, published.
Rather than promise references, the whole list is on the site — sector, geography and scale for each one. It's the fastest way to see whether I've done your situation before.
Something has to change and there's a date on it?
Send me the shape of it. If I'm not the right person I'll say so, and I can usually point you at who is.