The Consulting Report is pleased to announce The Top 25 M&A Consultants and Leaders of 2024. M&A transactions are pivotal moments for companies, reshaping industries and driving strategic growth initiatives. M&A consultants are essential in this landscape, offering expertise and guidance to businesses seeking to navigate intricate deal structures, evaluate opportunities, and manage risks effectively. In an increasingly competitive and globalized business environment, M&A consultants serve as trusted advisors, helping businesses to facilitate acquisitions, divestitures and mergers. These leaders bring strategic insight and expertise to the table, enabling their clients to capitalize on emerging opportunities and unlock long-term value.
Among this year’s awardees, we have Laura Miles, Partner at Bain and Company’s Atlanta office, renowned for her expertise in guiding organizations through complex merger integrations across diverse industries. Dhruv Sarda, Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, stands out for his exceptional ability to drive value creation in M&A transactions and deliver sustainable transformations for clients across sectors. Alberto Fumo, Senior Partner at Kearney, leads the firm’s Private Equity and Principal Investors team, bringing over two decades of experience in advising on acquisitions and divestitures with a keen focus on post-acquisition value realization.
Awardees were selected through a methodical nomination process and thorough consideration of each candidate’s career track record and industry contributions. Please join us in celebrating the achievements of The Top 25 M&A Consultants and Leaders of 2024.
1. Iain Macmillan
Firm: Deloitte
Title: Managing Partner and Global M&A Services Leader
Iain Macmillan is a Managing Partner and Leader for all M&A Services across Deloitte and a member of their extended Global Executive. He is a partner in the UK firm where he also leads Deloitte North South Europe’s M&A proposition. Macmillan has extensive experience on complex UK and multinational transactions and has specialized in due diligence services for more than 25 years.
Macmillan is Deloitte’s Senior Global Advisory Partner for Diageo, having previously been Global Lead Client Service Partner. He also leads the Global Financial Advisory relationships for a number of other major Corporate and Private Equity relationships. Macmillan is a qualified accountant and holds an MBA from Manchester Business School.
2. Philip Isom
Firm: KPMG
Title: Global Head M&A
Phil Isom leads KPMG’s Global M&A practice and the US Capital Advisory practice. As Global Head of M&A, Isom leads over 2,500 investment banking professionals working in over 80 countries around the world. KPMG Corporate Finance’s Global M&A platform has been ranked as the top middle market global advisory firm for over 20 years. KPMG Capital Advisory includes the US investment bank, as well as the Infrastructure Projects Advisory, ESG, Securitization and Lender Diligence practices.
Isom has over 30 years of experience in investment banking, investing, consulting and restructuring. Isom earned an MBA in finance from Loyola University, Chicago and an undergraduate degree in Finance from the University of Dayton.
3. Alberto Fumo
Firm: Kearney
Title: Senior Partner
Alberto Fumo is a Senior Partner at Kearney and currently leads the firm’s global Private Equity and Principal Investors team. He has spent more than 20 years advising corporations and private equity firms across the full transaction and transformation cycle. Alberto specializes in assessing acquisitions and divestitures from multiple commercial and operational perspectives and supporting management in the post-acquisition phase.
Alberto takes great pride in assisting his clients in completing transformational deals for their organizations and their own careers. What really energizes him is working alongside them to deliver the synergies or value-creation opportunities identified during the diligence phase. He aids clients in ensuring that the value creation becomes tangible on both the P&L and balance sheet.
It's Kearney’s dedication and relentless focus to delivering value for clients in a collaborative manner that has kept Alberto committed for so many years. Alberto strongly believes that Kearney’s unified partnership mentality and culture encourages the team he leads to successfully advise on complex transactions and deliver value creation from the early diligence stage to late implementation in a seamless way.
4. Jeff Black
Firm: Mercer
Title: Partner
Jeff Black is a Partner and leads Mercer’s Global Mergers and Acquisition Advisory Services business. With a focus on human capital’s crucial role in driving revenue synergies and realizing deal value, Jeff leads an M&A team that supports Corporate and Private Equity clients across the full deal lifecycle.
Through his nearly 30 years of experience as a trusted advisor and work on over 300 transactions, Jeff provides both strategic and financial advice to buyers and sellers on a wide variety of global people risks, including commercial due diligence, organization design and transformation, leadership development, change management, culture risk mitigation, benefits pooling and financing, and salesforce effectiveness.
Whether he’s advising on start-ups, IPOs, acquisitions, mergers, Joint Ventures, divestitures or stand ups, Jeff provides guidance and support to clients across all deal phases—from sourcing and diligence to pre-close and post-merger integrations. His thought leadership addresses critical people risks in M&A, including retaining key talent during transactions, mitigating culture risk and executing business transformation through transactions.
5. Bernd Oehring
Firm: Oliver Wyman
Title: Partner
As a Partner with management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, Bernd Oehring serves as the Lead of Corporate M&A and Carve-outs in Industrials, Services, and Consumer while also maintaining co-coverage of the firm’s multiple financial sponsors and heading up its restructuring efforts in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. He advises clients on M&A and carve-out preparation and execution, including due diligence and post-merger integration as well as strategy and business case development and overall value creation.
Before his current role, Oehring spent six years as the Chief of Staff and Chief Operating Officer of Corporate Finance and Advisory for the practice globally. Preceding his time with Oliver Wyman, he was a Senior Associate with JP Morgan handling investment banking and M&A. In his early career, he completed several internships at various financial investment institutions such as Morgan Stanley and IVC. Oehring earned degrees and certificates from several schools, including Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Universidad de Alcalá, HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, and the Otto Beisheim School of Management at WHU.
6. Dhruv Sarda
Firm: Alvarez and Marsal
Title: Managing Director
Dhruv Sarda is a Managing Director with Alvarez and Marsal Corporate Transformation Services in London. He focuses on helping create value from M&A transactions and delivering sustainable EBITDA improvement from transformations. With more than 23 years of experience, Sarda works with financial investors, corporate boards and management teams on M&A and transformation topics. He has led transformation initiatives to deliver full potential value creation plans and served in interim management roles. Sarda works with both corporates and private equity funds on buy-side and sell-side transactions.
Prior to joining A&M, Sarda was a Managing Director at Accenture Strategy, where he led the M&A practice in the UK and Ireland. Previously, he worked in M&A advisory at a European investment bank and started his career in privatization advisory in Africa. He has also served as the interim EMEA Chief Transformation Officer for a Fortune 20 healthcare and medical devices business, responsible for the planning and execution of transformation initiatives, including the integration of a $6 billion global acquisition in the EMEA region. Sarda earned a bachelor's degree in management from King's College London and an MBA from Cambridge University.
7. Steven Berger
Firm: Kearney
Title: Partner, Americas Lead, Mergers and Acquisitions
Steven Berger is a Partner and Americas Lead of Mergers and Acquisitions at Kearney. In this role, he serves as a key contributor to the executive leadership team executing large-scale M&A, transformation, divestiture and human capital engagements for Fortune 500 corporate clients, top tier PE funds and PE owned portfolio companies.
Previously, Berger was a Senior Vice President of Corporate Services at Compass Minerals and a Senior Vice President, Corporate Services at Viterra. He also served as Senior Executive at Accenture, a Principal at A.T. Kearney and an associate at Booz Allen and Hamilton. Earlier in his career, he worked with Capgemini America as a Principal. Berger earned an MBA from the Costello College of Business at George Mason University and an undergraduate degree in computer science from Penn State University.
8. James Neely
Firm: Accenture
Title: Senior Managing Director
James Neely is Senior Managing Director for Mergers and Acquisitions within Accenture Strategy. He is responsible for building Accenture’s global M&A client service capabilities and working with clients on major M&A efforts to address the critical issues facing their businesses.
9. Nicholai Tandrup
Firm: Implement Consulting Group
Title: Senior Partner
Nicholai Tandrup is based in Munich where he serves as the Managing partner for Implement Consulting Group in Germany. He also co-leads the Global Strategy and M&A Practice. Implement Consulting Group is one of the fastest growing consultancies in Europe, founded in Copenhagen, now with more than 1,200 consultants in 6 countries.
Through more than 20 years Tandrup has supported both industrial and private equity clients through all parts of the M&A deal cycle – from M&A strategy, through due diligence, post-merger integration, to exit preparation and divestiture. He has supported numerous transactions – majority in Scandinavia, but also in other parts of Europe as well as the US and China. Most of Nicholai’s work has been focused on Industrial B2B, Building Materials, and Transport & Logistics sectors.
Prior to joining Implement Consulting Group Tandrup was a Partner with Kearney where he led the Copenhagen office. He also spent 8 years in industry, among others as Head of Strategy and M&A with Danfoss, a Global leader in energy & climate solutions and Denmark’s largest industrial manufacturing company.
10. Jay Milliken
Firm: Prophet
Title: Senior Partner
Jay Milliken is a Senior Partner in Prophet's Hong Kong office. Milliken has assisted many global companies with the development and execution of customer-driven growth strategies with specific emphasis on leveraging customer relationships, strategic brand assets and an understanding of customer behavior. Some of his recent Prophet clients include Cisco, Monsanto, Samsung, Cargill and Wal-Mart. Milliken has specialized in developing new content related to the firm's marketing practice, with a special emphasis on the firm's brand valuation IP.
Prior to joining Prophet, Milliken was a Principal in the retail and consumer group with Mercer Management Consulting and a Manager of Retail Strategy at Sears, Roebuck. Milliken received a bachelor’s degree from Queen's University at Kingston and an MBA from the Eller School at the University of Arizona.
11. Greg Stinson
Firm: KPMG UK
Title: Partner
Greg Stinson is the lead for KPMG in the UK’s Accounting Advisory Services (AAS) practice, supporting his clients with deals across the world, he has advised on the M&A requirements in a number of jurisdictions. Working buy and sell-side, Stinson specialises in the Technology, Media and Telecom, and Life Sciences sectors.
With over 20 years’ experience, his advice is often sought throughout the deal lifecycle. He has led and provided deal critical advice across many projects. His expertise supports clients in the areas of deal structuring, deal model review, identification of deal value impacting accounting, financial health analysis, separation and carve out, financial track record preparation, ESG reporting maturity and post deal completion, such as the Purchase Price Allocation and GAAP conversion.
Stinson is the host of a successful webinar series on topical finance and reporting issues which sees significant attendance and also features regularly on KPMG’s Building Confidence podcast series. He provides deep insight on a range of topics including financial and non-financial reporting, governance and what is happening in the marketplace.
He is a Chartered Accountant with the ICAEW, graduated with a First-Class degree in Accounting and Financial Analysis and spent four years earlier in his career working in Australia.
12. Angus Hodgson
Firm: Kearney
Title: Partner, M&A
Angus Hodgson returned to consulting in 2007 and has been helping clients solve their biggest problems ever since. His background made him a natural choice to pursue transaction work when he joined Kearney, where he is a Partner leading M&A and merger integration capabilities in Europe. Working across the full M&A cycle, he supports clients across industries, and has supported deals worth more than $40 billion.
Previously, Hodgson was an associate in mergers and acquisitions at Merrill Lynch and a consultant at Accenture. Hodgson earned an MBA in strategy and finance from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management and an undergraduate degree in business administration and management from Carnegie Mellon University.
13. Vish Narayanan
Firm: McKinsey and Company
Title: Partner
Vish Narayanan is a Partner at McKinsey and Company and leads McKinsey’s Software Private Equity service line. He advises executives in the high-tech industry and private equity sponsors on investment strategy, including support on M&A, portfolio strategy, and growth acceleration topics.
Narayanan is a leader in McKinsey’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications Practice where he helps companies make investment and corporate strategy decisions. He works closely with software and IT-services clients to help proactively redirect their resources appropriately to fuel sustainable growth. Narayanan coleads McKinsey’s work at the intersection of software and private equity—where he serves a broad range of sponsors on buy-side, sell-side diligence as well as portfolio company transformations—and coleads McKinsey’s work at the intersection of software and M&A.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Narayanan spent several years working at a major consulting and technology services company focused on digital strategy and application program management. Narayanan graduated from the NYU Stern School of Business with an MBA in strategy, finance and marketing and from Rutgers University with an undergraduate degree in economics, information technology and informatics.
14. Ryan Baker
Firm: FTI Consulting
Title: Managing Director
Ryan Baker is a leader within FTI’s Transactions practice, and he specializes in providing financial due diligence and other consulting professional services, e.g., quality of revenue/earnings, working capital, debt & debt-like, free-cash-flow modeling, and general financial statement analysis, in conjunction with mergers and acquisitions, equity/debt issuances, and other capital transactions. Mr. Baker’s clients are a mix of private equity and other alternative investment firms, investment banks and corporates. He has almost 20 years of experience, covering companies in the technology, healthcare, retail & consumer and industrial products industries. He has worked on more than 100 transactions with enterprise valuations ranging from USD $50M up to $2B.
In his current role at FTI, Mr. Baker is the go-to Managing Director in FTI’s Transactions group for the largest and most complex and technically challenging projects. Whether its software or healthcare revenue recognition, complex cost accounting for multi-stage manufacturing, carve-outs of fully integrated business units, or transactions involving multi-national entities with complex intercompany transactions/consolidations and multiple functional currencies, Ryan has the technical aptitude and organizational skill-set to efficiently and effectively analyze the financials.
Before joining FTI Consulting, Mr. Baker was a Director in RSM’s Transaction Advisory practice in San Francisco and a key member of its sell-side practice. Baker graduated from Drexel University with an MBA and from University Of California - Davis with an undergraduate degree in managerial economics.
15. Elizabeth Kaske
Firm: EY
Title: Americas Strategy and Transactions Buy and Integrate Leader
Elizabeth Kaske is an executive with more than 20 years of experience focused on Strategy, M&A transactions and large scale business transformations. She is a partner in EY’s M&A Practice and the America’s Buy and Integrate Leader. Her experience comprises M&A due diligence, integration, strategy, business process design, and intellectual property management.
16. Laura Miles
Firm: Bain and Company
Title: Partner
Laura Miles is Managing Partner and Senior Partner of Bain & Company's Atlanta office. She is a leader in the firm’s Global Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance practices, which include corporate diligence and merger integration. She is also an expert in the firm's Consumer Products practice. Miles has been with the company for more than 25 years.
17. Curt Gendron
Firm: Crowe
Title: Partner
Curt Gendron is a Partner in the Advisory Services Group at Crowe. He specializes in mergers and acquisitions and strategic transformations. Curt has spent more than a decade helping strategic and sponsor acquirers assess opportunity and risk pre-close and subsequently capture that value post-close through a portfolio of solutions.
18. Josh Benn
Firm: Kroll
Title: Managing Director
Josh Benn is a Managing Director and Head of the New York Corporate Finance practice at Kroll. He serves as both the Head of Americas M&A advisory, leading the firm’s global Consumer Corporate Finance practice, and as the Head of US M&A Advisory and US Restructuring Advisory, overseeing the Distressed and Special Situations practice. Benn leverages more than 25 years of investment banking experience.
19. Edward Jenkins
Firm: Teneo
Title: Managing Director
Edward Jenkins is a Managing Director in Teneo’s M&A team with a focus on Good Book and Accelerated M&A, which involves working with both sellers and buyers to secure successful outcomes from standard M&A processes or in situations where a full traditional M&A process may not be possible. Jenkins has worked on a wide range of transactions advising a variety of stakeholders including lenders, corporate clients, private equity and MBO candidates.
20. Rob Silverman
Firm: Booz Allen Hamilton
Title: Executive Vice President
Rob Silverman is Booz Allen’s primary integration officer and subsidiary chief executive for new corporate acquisitions. He works across Booz Allen enterprise operations, corporate development, and client teams to leverage mergers and acquisitions to complement organic investments with important innovation technologies acquired through inorganic investment. Most recently, Silverman has served as integration officer and chief executive for the firm’s Everwatch Solutions and Liberty IT Solutions acquisitions. He has also served on the Board of Directors for several joint ventures.
During his Booz Allen career, Silverman has worked in every primary market—including serving as director of strategy and operations for Defense and Civil businesses and serving clients in those markets and commercial, international, and US state and local. He’s also worked in multiple capability and innovation teams, primarily in analytics and consulting. Before joining Booz Allen, Silverman worked for LMI. He earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematical sciences and economics and a master’s degree in systems analysis for public decision making from Johns Hopkins University.
21. Amanda Scott
Firm: Willis Towers Watson
Title: Managing Director, Global M&A Leader
Amanda Scott is a Managing Director and Global M&A Leader at global insurance firm Willis Towers Watson. As a connector internally and externally, she is responsible for leading a global team that helps clients evaluate and address the critical people-related issues, assets, liabilities, risks and opportunities surrounding corporate transactions. As a Global Client Relationship Director, Scott is responsible for managing, growing and strengthening successful client relationships with global companies.
22. Ray Yalenghadian
Firm: Atos
Title: SVP, Group Head of M&A
Ray Yalenghadian is a Senior Vice President and Group Head of M&A at Atos, a digital transformation company with 95,000 employees and annual revenue of €11 billion. He joined Atos as a Vice President of M&A in 2020. Atos specializes in cybersecurity, cloud and high-performance computing, providing tailored end-to-end solutions for various industries in 69 countries.
23. Michael Keating
Firm: CGI
Title: Senior Vice President
A CGI member since 1996, Michael Keating leads the company’s mergers and acquisitions function worldwide. In this role, he collaborates with leaders across CGI’s global operations to execute the company’s Buy Strategy to evaluate prospective companies that meet its growth objectives and support the integration of mergers.
24. Candice Turner
Firm: Grant Thornton
Title: National Managing Principal
Candice Turner is the National Managing Principal of the M&A Tax Services group. Turner has more than 20 years of public accounting and private industry experience. She has advised clients with respect to all US and international tax matters. Turner has represented funds, sovereigns, foreign pensions and consortiums on investments, acquisitions, re-financings and exit strategies across various industries, including infrastructure, real estate, private equity and public capital markets.
Prior to joining Grant Thornton, Turner was a Principal in the M&A practice of KPMG. Turner was previously a Partner at the law firm Davies Ward Phillips and Vineberg, a Trial Attorney with the Department of Justice Tax Division in Washington, DC, and an Attorney with Shearman and Sterling. Turner received a Juris Doctorate and masters of laws degree from the New York University School of Law and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and English from the University of Alabama.
25. Janelle Hill
Firm: Gartner
Title: Vice President
Janelle Hill is a Vice President in Gartner's Executive Leadership of Digital Business team, primarily contributing to the M&A and Corporate Development research. Her research focus emphasizes evolving enterprise business operations to support digital ambition and strategy, including mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Hill primarily works with the CIO and executive leaders on their business transformation initiatives. She regularly speaks with CEOs, COOs, Chief Digital Officers and CIOs.
