Ai magazine january 2016

Acquisition International • January 2016

www.acquisition-intl.com

Weathering the Storm

We speak to Tony Chedraoui, CIO and Founder of Tyrus Capital, about how the business thrived during these turbulent times and what his plans are for the future. /8

CEO of the Year We showcase the work of some of the most dedicated and distinguished professionals and highlight how they have made their mark on the corporate landscape, including, Frank Ginsberg, Founder, Chairman & CEO of AFG&. Karan Rai, President of leading solutions provider ADS Inc. Allan McGreal, CEO of Rizon Jet. Stuart Law, founder of the Assetz group of companies and Co-Founder/CEO of Assetz Capital Ltd. Former CEO of Celsis International Ltd, Jay LeCoque. CEO of Schul International, Steve Robinson. Atlantic Subsea, Inc. President and CEO, Vinod Menezes. Menzo Havenga, CEO Batavia Biosciences.

The Medicines Company CEO Clive Meanwell. /12-31

Africa’s Economic Paradise: Mauritius We asked Neeraj Ramyead, Business Development Manager at IFS, to provide us with an insight into both his company and the unique region it operates in. /109 Crowe Horwath (MUR) Co (CHM) was founded in 1989 in Mauritius and we are a member firm of Crowe Horwath International (CHI). Today we are one among the fastest growing professional services firms in the region. /114

A.I’s Leading Advisers We spoke to Walter Wright, member and managing attorney at Trinity Law Group, on why they were dubbed “the smallest big firm” on the earth. /56

The Volkswagen Scandal: A Legal Viewpoint František Honsa, Partner in BBH, advokátní kancelář, s.r.o., a prominent Leading Actuaries of 2015 Czech law firm with an international presWe got in touch with Noor Rajah, Founder ence talks us through the scandal and the CFO of the Year of Optimizing Foundations LLC and Facul- legal implications. /108 Syncsort is one of the largest big-data ty at Columbia University, to find out more companies and oldest software companies about their practice and what makes Profiting from Risk Management in the market, drawing on it wealth of them unique. /70 Established in 2006 under the vision of experience to provide unique solutions founder and senior actuary Corwin (Cory) We invited CFO Krish Venkataraman to 2015’s Most Innovative Business Zass, Actuarial Risk Management (ARM) talk us through his role in the company’s We invited Founder and Director of Fine- has quietly developed a “21st century success. /30 fair, Kamran Naseem to provide us with a advisory consultancy firm.” We caught up insight into his unique company and the with them to find out more. /127 services it provides. /112 We also spoke to Graham Sheward of Cim Global Business who talks us through the firm and the role it plays within this growing region. /120

Contents

Editor’s Comment Welcome to the January Issue of AI Magazine.

Many businesses have started the New Year with positive growth and exciting new plans, including expansion overseas. We invited wh partners to provide us with a fascinating insight moving into Malta and why the country is becoming a poplar hotspot for firms looking to grow internationally.

Marketing is a key issue for many businesses, and as new budgets are introduced firms are increasingly looking for consultants to help them achieve a strong corporate image. We profile the leading Image Consultants in the industry and ask them to explain how their services contribute to their clients’ business success.

From Expert Witnesses to Actuaries and Advisors, when firms are trusting their business to another they need to be certain of a quality service and relevant support. As such we have profiled industry leading Actuaries, witnesses from across the corporate landscape and various other advisors to help our readers find the perfect service to meet their needs.

Additionally for anyone keen to keep their finger on the corporate pulse we spotlight the leading CEOs, CFOs and businesses from various industries who are making waves in their sector and have a bright future ahead of them.

Weathering the Storm We spoke to Tony Chedraoui, CIO and Founder of Tyrus Capital, about how the business thrived during these turbulent times and what his plans are for the future. /8

News /4 The latest news stories from around the world.

Finally we have two exciting awards programmes to showcase within this issue of AI: the Accountancy Awards and our Deal of the Year 2015 Awards.

CEO of the Year /12

The 2016 Global Accountancy Awards have been created to highlight the vital work done throughout all industries and sectors by the behind-the-scenes experts who ensure that every firm, regardless of size, reputation, geographical location or area of expertise, can be confident that the figures that make it tick are in safe hands.

Our showcase of many of the world’s the top CEOs.

CFO of the Year /28 A selection of the best and brightest CFO’s and the secrets behind their success.

Our Deal of the Year Awards showcases the skill and dedication of the businesses, individuals and departments that identify, arrange and complete complicated negotiations which have changed the shape of the corporate landscape over the past 12 months.

CEO of the Month /35 Meet some of the world’s most innovative and effective business leaders.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

Jonathan Miles, Editor Jonathan.Miles@ai-globalmedia.com

CFO of the Month /45 We find out how successful CFOs have used the recession to their advantage.

cover image: Valdis Skudre / Shutterstock.com No information contained on or in this website constitutes investment advice or an offer to invest or to provide management services and is subject to correction, completion and amendment without notice. Neither AI nor any of its associated entities are authorised to give financial advice of any nature nor are they regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

Fourth Quarter Update /85 A 2015 Year End Round-Up.

Global Accountancy Awards 2016/129

Prior to making any investment, AI recommends that any prospective investor should consult with its own investment, accounting, legal and tax advisers to evaluate independently the risks, consequences and suitability of that investment.

Winners of the Global Accountancy Awards 2016 announced.

How to get in touch AI welcomes news and views from its readers.

Correspondence should be sent to; Address/ Acquisition International, First Floor Suite F, The Maltsters, 1-2 Wetmore Road, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire, DE14 1LS. Tel/ +44 (0) 1283 712447 Email/ reception@acquisition-intl.com Website/ www.acquisition-intl.com

Find us on/

10/ Establishing Your Payment Services Business in Malta 11/ Copperstone Capital 51/ Leading Advisers 2016 62/ The Most Highly Regarded Expert Witnesses for 2015 69/ Leading Actuaries of 2015 73/ Ones to Watch for 2016 83/ Third Quarter Update 85/ Fourth Quarter Update 95/ Creating the Perfect Look in Business 99/ The Importance of IP in M&A Transactions 100/ 2015’s Most Innovative Business Leadership 104/ Doing Business Overseas (New Zealand) 105/ Family-owned Businesses: the Backbone of Jersey’s Economy 106/ Record Year for M&A in Medical Devices 107/ The Power of Outsourcing 108/ The Volkswagen Scandal: A Legal Viewpoint 109/ Africa’s Economic Paradise: Mauritius 110/ A Sunny Year for the Sunshine State 112/ 2015’s Most Innovative Business 114/ Africa’s Economic Paradise: Mauritius 116/ How Asset Based Lending is Fuelling Growth 117/ Best Emerging Manager 2016 - California 118/ Best Boutique Energy Law Firm - Canada 119/ Hungary: A Soaring Economy, Beating the Odds 120/ Africa’s Economic Paradise: Mauritius 123/ Africa on the Rise / Setting up a Franchise Business in India 125/ Best in Patent Litigation - Austria 126/ Best Criminal Law Firm - Singapore 127/ Profiting from Risk - Actuarial Risk Management

Acquisition International - January 2016 3

News: from around the world

Waterman Completes Due Diligence Advice on Sale of Grand Central Birmingham Waterman Group Plc announced in late January 2016 that they have provided engineering and environmental due diligence studies for the £335 million acquisition by Hammerson Plc of the prestigious Grand Central in the heart of Birmingham.

The exchange of contracts with Birmingham City Council was announced on Friday the 22nd January

by Hammerson. The Grand Central shopping centre, which took five years to complete, opened in September 2015. The centre provides 435,000 sq ft of high-quality prime retail space with 66 news shops, department stores - including the largest John Lewis store outside of London at 250,000 sq ft - fashion retailers, restaurants, and a multi-storey car park. The scheme was developed by Network Rail and Birmingham City Council as part of the £750 million New Street Station regeneration project.

David Atkins, CEO of Hammerson, said: “The acquisition of Grand Central, a highly-prized trophy asset in the UK’s second city, is fully aligned with Hammerson’s strategy of owning topperforming retail destinations in prime locations, as demonstrated by our recent transactions in Ireland and growing exposure to European Premium Outlets.

By deploying our expertise from Bullring, as well as

Deatonphotos / Shutterstock.com

4 Acquisition International - January 2016

other shopping centres around the UK, Hammerson is well placed to further enhance the consumer offer in Birmingham and achieve high returns through skilful management of Grand Central. We are strong supporters of the future of Birmingham and this acquisition provides us with additional exposure to the city’s fast growing economy.”

Nick Taylor, CEO of Waterman Group, commented; “We are honoured and proud to be involved in advising Hammerson on the acquisition of this major development which is transforming Birmingham into a city of regional and national importance.”

This latest announcement follows Waterman’s advice to Hammerson Plc and Allianz Real Estate on their recent EUR 1.85bn (£1.34bn) acquisition of a portfolio of market-leading retail assets in Dublin from Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (“NAMA”).

Waterman Group is a multidisciplinary consultancy providing sustainable solutions to meet the planning, engineering design and project delivery needs of the property, infrastructure, environment and energy markets. Founded in 1952 and listed on the London Stock Exchange since 1988, Waterman has grown into a leading engineering and environmental consultancy with offices throughout the UK, Europe and Australia. Waterman works with government agencies, local authorities, government-regulated industries and private sector clients to provide innovative, sustainable and economic solutions across a wide spectrum of business activities.

The firm has much experience in property and buildings, environmental consultancy, power and energy, roads, highways and rail infrastructure, urban and regional planning. Award winning teams provide professional services throughout the complete life cycle of the asset starting from initial surveys and concept planning, through to design, delivery, project management, supervision and on-going maintenance.

News: from around the world

News: from around the world

EBRD to Acquire a Stake of Around 20% Equity Stake in Ameriabank The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is investing US$ 40 million in the acquisition of an equity stake in Ameriabank CJSC. This is the largest single-ticket equity deal the EBRD has signed in the region to date.

As a first step the EBRD will acquire a stake of around 20% for US$ 30 million, while the remaining US$ 10 million will be used for future capital increases. The goal of the investment is to strengthen Ameriabank and prepare the bank for a future IPO. In the course of 2016 an independent director representing the EBRD will join Ameriabank’s Board of Directors.

Prior to a possible listing, the EBRD investment will support the growth of Ameriabank by providing additional funds for lending to large corporate and private customers, small and medium-sized enterprises and retail customers. More lending to the real sector will strengthen the growth of Armenia’s economy.

Ameriabank has grown steadily in recent years. With total capital now close to US$ 200 million, the bank’s total assets topped US$ 1 billion at the end of 2015, a record in Armenia’s financial sector. This will open new opportunities for further lending as well as for engaging in possible M&A transactions in the local market.

The decision to become a shareholder in the bank reflects the EBRD’s positive expectations for the development of Ameriabank, and recognises the important contribution that Ameriabank makes to

the growth of the Armenian economy, banking sector and society.

Mark Davis, EBRD Head of the Yerevan office, said: “We welcome the opportunity to become a shareholder in Ameriabank and see this as a further step towards strengthening and consolidating the local banking sector. Increased access to finance is key to enabling local companies to realise their potential. As a shareholder the EBRD will support Ameriabank’s development, with a special emphasis on corporate governance.”

Formula Systems and IAI Agree to Acquire TSG for US$50 Million Formula Systems, a leading software consulting services in early 2016 announced that Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Formula have entered into a definitive agreement for the purchase of TSG - a subsidiary and the military arm of Ness Technologies, engaged in the fields of command and control systems, intelligence, homeland security and cyber security.

The total purchase price in the transaction will be $50 million in cash (subject to certain adjustments), with each of IAI and Formula acquiring 50% of TSG for US$25 million (subject to certain adjustments). The consummation of the transaction is subject to, among other things, obtaining certain regulatory approvals.

“We highly appreciate this new level of partnership with the EBRD. It is a great support for Ameriabank in global capital markets, in line with our strategic goals and aspirations. I am sure that our joint efforts will promote the development of Armenia’s banking sector and contribute to economic growth in our country,” added Andrew Mkrtchyan, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Ameriabank.

TSG is a leading provider of core command and control systems to Israel’s defence organization, including the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Police, and its activity is well suited for both parties. The acquisition represents the parties’ strategic decisions to expand their scope of activities, and to preserve leading positions in the markets where they operate, through M&A activity.

Since the start of its operations in Armenia in 1992, the EBRD has invested over €1.04 billion in 148 projects in the country’s financial, corporate, infrastructure and energy sectors, with 88 per cent of these investments being in the private sector.

The parties will focus on turning TSG into a leader in its field in Israel, by maximizing the synergies between TSG, IAI and Formula and pursuing its expansion, among other ways, through mergers and acquisitions of companies that operate in complementary areas.

Joseph Weiss, IAI’s CEO and President, said: “Acquiring TSG reflects our strategy of expanding and deepening IAI’s involvement in relevant markets. The acquisition deepens our hold in the areas of command and control, intelligence and homeland defense, both in Israel and among foreign customers, and creates synergies between the products of the three companies to offer comprehensive end-to-end solutions to our customers.”

Guy Bernstein, Formula’s CEO, commented: “The acquisition of TSG, a leader in its field, adds a significant fourth leg to Formula’s portfolio, extending our reach to the defense and growing cyber security industries. This gives us a solid base on which we can build. We can think of no better partner in this acquisition than Israel Aerospace Industries and look forward to our close collaboration.”

Acquisition International - January 2016 5

News: from around the world

Opus Bank Announces Agreement to Acquire PENSCO Trust Company Opus Bank announced in January that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire PENSCO Trust Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PENSCO Services, LLC. PENSCO is a leading custodian of self-directed IRA and alternative investments headquartered in San Francisco, California. PENSCO has nearly $11 billion of custodial assets from over 45,000 clients and investments in over 40,000 unique asset types, comprised of private equity, real estate, notes, cash, and other non-exchange traded assets.

Under the terms of the agreement, PENSCO shareholders and members will receive aggregate consideration comprised of 1,698,529 shares of Opus Bank common stock and $47.25 million in cash, subject to certain adjustments set forth in the definitive agreement. The transaction is expected to close early in the second quarter of 2016, subject to certain regulatory approvals or non-objections and approvals by PENSCO’s shareholders and members, after which the company will operate as a subsidiary of Opus.

PENSCO shareholders and members have entered into voting agreements which provide for the requisite approvals when special meetings are held to vote on the transaction. Kelly Rodriques, President and Chief Executive Officer of PENSCO, will continue in the role of President and Chief Executive Officer of PENSCO, and will join Opus as Executive Vice President-Wealth Services.

our companies, clients, and employees and I’m pleased we are announcing this important strategic transaction.” Gordon added, “Having banked PENSCO since early 2014, the Opus team has a strong understanding of PENSCO’s business and sector and views this synergistic transaction as part of the continued evolution, diversification, and sophistication of Opus. In addition to placing Opus squarely in the forefront of the alternative asset wealth services business, thereby adding a substantial new source of recurring non-interest income-based revenue and contributing approximately $1.0 billion of near-zero cost deposits on to Opus’ balance sheet, we believe that several other revenue opportunities will be realized between PENSCO and Opus in the future.” Gordon concluded, “We look forward to working with the PENSCO team and their clients, of which over 17,000 are domiciled within Opus’ West Coast footprint, in order to help them achieve their financial goals.”

Stephen H. Gordon, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Opus stated: “I am excited to announce that PENSCO and its talented team will be joining Opus. We see tremendous benefit and opportunity between

Founded in 1989, PENSCO is a leading alternative asset custodian, with over 25 years of expertise in holding private equity, real estate, notes, cash, and other non-exchange traded assets. PENSCO is a preferred partner to some of the largest wealth

advisor networks and other financial institutions, serving independent-minded investors seeking to put their retirement dollars to work in alternative assets.

PENSCO is a premium fintech provider with highly scalable technology and an unmatched network of providers and third-party platforms. The PENSCO platform features leading deal automation technology as well as a service-oriented web platform and enterprise workflow engine that facilitate the initial investment and administering of the assets over their lifetime.

Kelly Rodriques, President of PENSCO, commented: “We are thrilled to join Opus Bank and are excited about the opportunities that the combined companies will create for our clients. This marriage of our growing and entrepreneurial firms is characterized by our shared institutional expertise and sharp focus on fintech innovation that will shape the future of financial services firms.” Rodriques concluded, “Investor interest in alternative assets continues to grow rapidly, and both Opus and PENSCO are at the forefront of interacting with multiple touch points in this space. Both companies share the vision of servicing clients’ alternative asset investing needs. The two firms already have similar clients entrepreneurs, business owners, individual investors, private equity firms, and investments banks - and also have a common expertise in handling real estate, private equity and technology related assets. Together, our shared expertise enables an even greater focus on creating and delivering industry-leading technology platforms that simplify and expand the way investors and business owners create and manage their wealth.”

PENSCO will continue to operate and serve its clients as a subsidiary of Opus, providing Opus with strong, recurring non-interest income based on assets under custody. PENSCO has over $1.0 billion in nearzero cost cash balances deposited at FDIC insured depository institutions, which will be brought on to Opus’ balance sheet over a short transition period and contribute further growth and spread income to Opus.

In addition, the teams at PENSCO and Opus will work to develop and realize future additional potential revenue opportunities through Opus’ Merchant Bank, Commercial Bank, Retail Bank, and Opus Financial Partners, Opus’ broker-dealer subsidiary.

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News: from around the world

News: from around the world

BPO and Technology Acquires top Provider in Marketing Communications Headquartered in New York City, Smart Source’s acquisition allows these two dynamic companies to combine best practices, services and technologies to offer the most elevated client experience in brand management, marketing and communications to clients nationwide.

Smart Source, one of the fastest growing BPO brand management and technology companies, announced the acquisition of assets of Data Supplies Inc., a top provider of marketing communications services in the Southeast.

Tom D’Agostino Jr., Chief Executive Officer of Smart Source said: “It is a pleasure to welcome Data Supplies Inc. and to see the excitement and opportunity that this deal represents for both parties,” explains “The acquisition will allow Smart Source to further increase market share in the Southeast while arming the Data Supplies’ sales team with the tools they need to continue to grow their client base in the ever changing world of marketing.”

Smart Source has a reputation for successfully servicing clients across all verticals by combining state-of-the-art brand management and sourcing technology with a network of vendors worldwide.

The Smart Source method streamlines process, reduces obsolescence and increases productivity, allowing clients to document a significant ROI. www. smartsourcellc.com

Scott Rich, Vice President of Sales of Data Supplies commented: “Data Supplies Inc. is known for our commitment to service and value. By joining the Smart Source family, Data Supplies will now be able to offer an even greater level of service and value to our existing client relationships and enhance offerings to prospective clients. The combined talent, technology and capabilities of our two organizations will create one of the largest and most dynamic companies in the industry.”

Data Supplies Inc. is a family-owned and operated company founded 50 years ago; it provides marketing communication services to medium and large organizations. The company traditionally focuses on the Southeast market and with the Smart Source agreement will now be able to provide services to customers nationwide.

The acquisition of Data Supplies Inc. will deliver an additional revenue stream to Smart Source, doubling annual revenues. “As we grow both organically and through acquisitions, we build our Smart Source team with new talent and industry expertise, allowing us continued success as a leading brand management BPO and technology provider,” concludes D’Agostino Jr.

Air Liquide’s Acquisition of Airgas on Track Air Liquide, world leader in gases, technologies awebsite here.nd services for Industry and Health, and Airgas the leading supplier of packaged gases and associated products and services in the United States, announce the date of the special meeting of Airgas’ shareholders to approve Air Liquide’s pending acquisition of Airgas. This special meeting is scheduled to take place on February 23, 2016.

The transaction, which was unanimously approved by each of Air Liquide’s and Airgas’ Boards of Directors prior to its announcement, is expected to close following approval by Airgas shareholders, receipt of necessary antitrust and other regulatory approvals, as well as additional customary closing conditions. Both companies are pleased with the progress made to date and the pending transaction is progressing as expected.

On January 22, 2016, Airgas filed its definitive proxy statement relating to the special meeting of its shareholders to obtain approval of the acquisition (a simple majority of the outstanding shares of Airgas is required). The special meeting is scheduled to take place on February 23, 2016.

Both Air Liquide and Airgas are actively engaged with the US Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC”) in connection with the proposed acquisition of Airgas. The parties are cooperating fully with the FTC’s investigation, including by providing information requested in the FTC’s “second request”.

Assuming timely receipt of the required regulatory clearances and satisfaction of other closing conditions, the parties continue to expect to complete the merger in the second or third calendar quarter of 2016.

The bridge financing, initially underwritten by Barclays Bank PLC and BNP Paribas, has been syndicated among a large group of international banks, who have longstanding working relationships with Air Liquide. The loan agreement was signed on December 17, 2015.

Airgas files annual, quarterly and current reports, proxy statements and other information, including the principal documents relating to this transaction, with the SEC. Acquisition International - January 2016 7

AI 1

Weathering the Storm 2009 was only a year after the global financial crisis sent shockwaves throughout the corporate landscape. However, it was during this period that Tyrus Capital launched their flagship fund, the Tyrus Capital Event Fund, with $1.5bn making it the biggest hedge fund launch of the year. We spoke to Tony Chedraoui, CIO and Founder of Tyrus Capital, about how the business thrived during these turbulent times and what his plans are for the future.

Company: Tyrus Capital Name: Tony Chedraoui

Tyrus Capital started ‘day one’ with 12 employees who had previously worked closely with Chedraoui in his capacity as Global Head of Event-Driven Strategies at Deephaven. The Tyrus Capital Event Fund is a continuation of the Deephaven European Event Fund, and what helped make it so successful, according to Chedraoui, “was that the Deephaven European Event Fund generated returns of more than 15% for investors in 2008, while importantly retaining the portfolio’s high liquidity structure”. Achieving such impressive results in the height of an economic downturn - unsurprisingly - led to strong interest from many investors.

The Tyrus Capital Event Fund looks to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns through an equity based event-driven strategy, with an emphasis on announced deals in developed markets. The Fund seeks to implement an investment strategy that is not dependent on the general economic environment, but to produce returns that are correlated to specific event trades rather than to broader markets and therefore the Fund tends to be less impacted by major volatility moves. The team’s focus is on portfolio construction in order to try to avoid the Fund being affected by dislocation in tough markets and aims to build a portfolio that limits downside risk, whilst creating upside optionality linked either to a specific event or to a more general theme. Chedraoui explains that, as CIO, he has overall responsibility for portfolio construction. “I typically structure the portfolio with a limited number of positions at any point in time to enable the team to monitor the portfolio closely and to limit correlation within it. I use daily proprietary reports to monitor and analyse various risk factors, and tools, created by the Firm to spot trends and stock movements. The portfolio management system provides numerous risk monitoring tools, including the ability to stress test the portfolio on a regular basis. Stop loss limits are used where deemed appropriate and liquidity of individual positions is monitored, which helps to ensure that exposure levels can be increased or reduced rapidly. Typically, we use minimal leverage”.

When discussing the Tyrus Capital Event Fund, Chedraoui firmly believes that structured trades are unique to the Firm and set the team apart from many other event-driven specialists by offering upside optionality, while protecting the downside risks, and remaining liquid. “In particular we seek to capture upside optionality from mispriced companies that boast a global franchise, but are tarred with a peripheral European valuation. Both the analysis and negotiation for these trades rely heavily on the Firm’s internal legal specialists who have built up considerable experience over the years. We have

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closed over 20 of these transactions since 2006, and I believe that we have never lost money on any”.

Each of the individuals involved in the investment process brings an important set of skills to the team and to the review of potential opportunities. Detailed knowledge gained from experience in corporate finance, investment banking, law, regulation, derivatives and equity and debt investing ensures that the team is able to assess and structure trades that are designed to meet the required criteria.

Today, Tyrus Capital has 34 employees across offices in Monaco and London and is probably the largest equity event-driven fund in Europe with an AUM of c. $2.5bn. The Tyrus Capital Event Fund has a proven independent track record of over 6 years, and a team that has worked together for a number of years on both the investment and business side, which Chedraoui believes is “key to our success”.

“In addition, at Tyrus Capital, we offer co-investment opportunities to existing investors in the Tyrus Capital Funds, allowing them to potentially enhance their returns from their relationship with the Firm, and we have a Private Equity Secondaries Fund targeting asymmetric risk-return opportunities in PE, with limited downside targeting attractive secondary PEreturns but with a much shorter investment horizon” says Chedraoui.

Chedraoui has always believed in investing in the Firm’s operational infrastructure and as a result Tyrus Capital has built a top-tier award winning institutional business platform which has impressed many operational due diligence experts. Mark Madden (COO) and his team, set out from launch to deliver an infrastructure which not only gives the investment team all the relevant capabilities that they need, but that is also robust enough to survive almost any realistic business continuity event. The team uses its intellectual capital to build proprietary systems around the traditional vendor portfolio management systems to provide automated reconciliation tools.

These create alerts enabling the operations team to focus on exceptions, trade breaks and operational risks in real time, while screen-based dashboards give the transparency needed to monitor every relevant aspect of the business, including the IT and operational infrastructure. “This is something that is constantly evolving and improving at Tyrus Capital with a high level of investment in this infrastructure” says Chedraoui.

On his hiring plans, Chedraoui says “Tyrus Capital hires very selectively, looking for individuals with commitment, hunger for success, motivation, a

Weathering the Storm

positive attitude, good ethics, expertise in a specific area and a thrill for excellence who above all are good team players”.

· · ·

“I am continuing to build out the investment team based on my conviction that investment banking skills offer a critical advantage when analysing announced deals. Therefore we generally hire people who have worked in investment banking and who are known to us for a long time - most of them will also have had experience of working in well-established funds. In keeping with my focus on legal analysis and determination to build a robust compliance framework, I have added further lawyers to both the business and investment teams, and Tyrus Capital now counts no fewer than 8 lawyers among its 34 staff”.

Looking forward into 2016 and beyond, Chedraoui says “My focus this year will remain on the Tyrus Capital Event Fund and on continuing to produce attractive risk adjusted returns for our investors, whilst building out the team further. We will maintain the pace of development of our state of the art IT technology – it is our ambition to set a new level of excellence in the industry in this area. On the client side, we will further our strategy of seeking select investors to partner with over the long term, investors who are looking for exposure to a differentiated product, including structured trades, which we believe that we provide”.

When asked what his philosophy would be for choosing funds to invest in, Chedraoui says he would look for the following attributes: · A proven track record · No significant negative performance years · No large drawdowns

Capital commitments from key employees Team continuity, low staff turnover Willingness to build a partnership with investors over the long term

“Tyrus Capital will continue to place a strong emphasis on maintaining a high quality business with best in class operational infrastructure, risk management systems, client service and a commitment to ethical standards and to a culture of compliance to complement its differentiated investment activities”.

Acquisition International - January 2016 9

Establishing Your Payment Services Business in Malta AI 83

Company: wh partners Email: ruth.galea@whpartners.eu Web: www.whpartners.eu Address: Level 5 Quantum House, 75 Abate Rigord Street, Ta’ Xbiex XBX 1120, Malta Phone: +356 20925100

Establishing Your Payment Services Business in Malta Over the years, Malta has established itself as an ever-growing financial services hub having attracted major players in the business of investment funds, fund managers, investment service providers, insurance captives, and forex trading. More recently, Malta has been consolidating its name on the map within the payment service industry. As with the rest of the financial services sector generally, this is primarily the result of a combination of winning ingredients: a robust legal framework, the business-sensitive approach of the Malta Financial Services Authority (‘MFSA’), an attractive taxation regime and the cross-border reach of a financial licence via the European passport regime.

Businesses proposing to carry out payment services in or from Malta require a licence from the MFSA. Payment service providers (‘PSPs’) are regulated by the Financial Institutions Act (‘FIA’) which transposes the European Payment Services Directive (‘PSD’) into Maltese law, by the MFSA Financial Institutions Rules and partly by a Directive issued by the Central Bank of Malta which implements the substantive parts of the PSD.

The activities licensed under the FIA, including payment services, are considered ‘quasi-bank’ in nature and whilst the legal regime to which they are subject is rooted in that applying to credit institutions, it enjoys certain flexibility and is less onerous.

Whereas the initial and ongoing requirements imposed on an authorized PSP will vary depending on the nature of the payment services being carried out, certain minimum requirements will invariably apply, in particular: the ‘four eyes’ principle (i.e. at least two individuals must effectively direct the business of the PSP in Malta), the satisfaction of the ‘fit and proper’ test by qualifying shareholders and persons who direct the PSP business, satisfaction of initial and ongoing capital requirements, the segregation of user funds and compliance with applicable anti-money laundering obligations.

Once the PSP has obtained a licence from the MFSA, it may exercise a European right to provide payment services in another Member State either through the establishment of a branch or under the freedom to provide services.

A licensed PSP may benefit from Malta’s corporate tax regime and in so doing be taxed at a standard corporate tax rate of 35% with the possibility of shareholders to receive a tax refund thereby potentially bringing the tax exposure in Malta down to 5%. Additionally, persons employed with the PSP holding senior positions may benefit from a special tax program which entitle the beneficiary to be taxed at a flat rate of 15%.

In a digital era the importance of ensuring safe and efficient online payment transactions is at the forefront of any regulatory debate. In this spirit, in October 2015 the European Parliament adopted a revised PSD - PSD2 – with the objective of enhancing consumer protection and providing a level playing field for all market players. By implementing these set of rules, Malta will continue to develop its legal framework to cement its role as a leading destination for PSPs across the globe.

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Copperstone Capital AI 129

Copperstone Capital manage wealth for high net worth individuals and institutions and provide advisory services. Copperstone brings together a unique combination of international asset management expertise and a highly professional team with proven investment capabilities and extensive knowledge of Russian business environment.

They assist their clients in following areas: • Investment management; • Personal Net-Worth Management; • Advisory Services.

Company: Copperstone Capital Name: David Amaryan Email: for general questions, please use: anna.kaibysheva@ copperstonecapital.com Web: www.copperstonecapital.com Address: Russia, Moscow, 115035, Sadovnicheskaya St., h.16, bld.1 Telephone: +7 (495) 988 00 10

Copperstone Capital is an investment management firm founded in 2010 in Moscow, Russia by David Amaryan. For several years the company has been managing private and pooled foreign accounts of its clients and in 2012 has successfully launched its flagship Copperstone Alpha Fund. Since its launch, the Fund has had a solid performance track record and established an impeccable reputation of highest integrity, trustworthiness and transparency.

Copperstone Alpha Fund received “The Best Russian Hedge Fund Award (since inception)” in 2015.

David Amaryan – Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer is responsible for the investments management process of the Fund and day-to-day operations of the Investment Manager, and gives an interview on how the firm stands out from the competitors and what the future holds for the firm.

How do you think you stand out from your competitors?

In our investment activities we generally seek a broader mandate with little restriction to a particular region or asset class. And though our main focus is equity investments in Russia and the CIS, it allows us to be much more flexible, looking for value in various markets around the world.

This advantage becomes critical during prolonged periods of distressed economic conditions, similar to what we’ve managed to observe last year in our country. In this particular case, it allowed us not only to timely switch our investment focus to Global markets and avoid major losses, but also to considerably outperform our Russian peers.

The fund’s performance is a result of thorough analysis with careful and consistent risk controls. We strive to provide the best possible risk-adjusted return by exploiting our proprietary asset valuation models in line with a pro-active portfolio management approach.

The Fund employs a complex set of risk analytics on investment and operational levels, specifically designed to face the unique aspects of risk management for the Fund, where the ultimate goal is to create risk transparency and solid support on each step of the investment strategy realization, making the investment process better structured and consistent.

It takes more than just in-depth understanding of local markets to identify trends and undervalued businesses with high growth potential. It also requires a good network of connections within specific industry circles. Our broad network of industry and government contacts allows us to do regular sanity checks of any critical information we are planning to use in our decision-making process.

As we are not part of any large financial group, we are much better suited to make precise and objective investment decisions.

What is it like to be a business working in your industry and environment at the present time?

The Russian financial market is constantly evolving

and we hope that in the nearest future it will start to occupy an increasingly prominent place in the portfolios of most global and international investors.

However, in order to successfully operate in the Russian market, its peculiar features and weaknesses should always be taken into consideration, while making most of the business and investment decisions.

Additionally, Russian capital markets still face a number of artificial obstacles – largely the consequence of government interventions.

Other well-known factors include: • Excessive policy volatility and instability of the legal regime • Swollen bureaucracy and inefficient legal framework • Barriers to foreign entry • In many fields counter-productive tax laws, including excessive taxation of foreign residents • Weak tax incentives for individuals to save for retirement What have been your biggest and most significant achievements over the past 12 months?

Not only we have managed to survive the extremely turbulent Russian markets and showed consistently positive results, but also considerably increased the number of our new partners and investors.

CAF was one of the best performing funds in Russia in 2014.

What does the future hold for Copperstone Capital? Do you have any plans for the next 12 months?

We have big plans for the nearest future.

As we are constantly seeing more and more international investors ready to share our investment philosophy and excited to get better acquainted with our business approach, we are currently actively working on opening our offices in London and New York. That will also be a major step to becoming a truly global hedge fund.

We are planning to launch a fixed income fund and a distressed Russian debt fund specially tailored for investors with low –to-moderate risk appetites.

Does working in your region throw up any specific challenges or opportunities?

Hedge funds have been formally authorized for qualified investors since 2008 in Russia. However, Russian legislation has very slow developments in this field and therefore most of the Russian hedge funds tend to operate as a more active alternative to mutual funds.

That is the main reason why the financial performance of majority of Russian hedge funds tends to strongly correlate with the market developments.

The ability to de-correlate the fund performance from the broad market recessions, while continuing to find investment opportunities in most of the economic sectors and always stay 100% transparent for all partners and investors we consider as our biggest challenge and, at the end, an advantage from the very first day of the company.

Acquisition International - January 2016 11

d

CEO of the Year Many of the world’s top CEOs have faced tough challenges and fierce competition over the course of 2015, and have had to draw on every ounce of their experience and business acumen to ensure their continued success.

Over the following pages we showcase the top CEOs who have worked tirelessly to overcome challenges that would have felled lesser corporate players to ensure that they remain at the very top of their industry.

CEO of the Year, California AI 129

Ghost Systems, Inc. (Ghost) was formed in January 2014. They are a privately held, Nevada company headquartered in Incline Village, Nevada, with offices in Nevada, Washington, California, Utah and Virginia. Their founders have over 475 years combined experience developing leading edge security solutions between them.

Their Mission: It is their responsibility to authoritatively develop future-proof cyber-security technologies and services that are robust and secure no matter how much money is spent or computing power is used in an effort to break them.

Company: Ghost Systems, Inc. Name: Don Ritzman Email: don.ritzman@ ghost-systems.com Web: www.ghostsystemsinc.com Address: 917 Tahoe Blvd, Suite 204; Incline Village, NV 89451 Telephone: 775.298.4145

Their Vision: Because of the technologies that Ghost Systems builds and deploys, today’s Internet users will be secure when communicating information across the network and that ultimately, The Internet of Things (IoE) will become a robust, secure and ubiquitous network of connected things which enables the World’s data moving across it to be “safe” from cyber-thieves.

Ghost’s Primary Business Model includes several major components: • They implemented a Build, Buy, Partner strategy for both technology and business. This strategy provides Maximum Flexibility in ley areas of our business.

• They adopted a Multi-Tiered Pricing Strategy that includes; Subscription Services (SaaS), Product Sales w/Annual Renewal, Enterprise Licenses Where Applicable and we adopted a Multi-Channel Sales Strategy including; Strategic Partners, Resellers, OEM’s, and the Internet.

• Their tactical target markets represent a combined revenue opportunity of over $645M in 2016 and our longer-term strategic target markets represent combined revenue opportunity of between $2.5 - $4 trillion according to several major US and international research firms.

In an interview with Ghost Systems’s Don Ritzman, he reveals the fundamentals of his firm’s mission as well as his own role as a business leader. He also lifts the lid on the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the cyber security technologies industry at present not to mention what the future holds for his firm.

Please give us an insight into your role as CEO of your company?

My role as CEO is to provide vision for the organization, to make sure I have talented people who can take vision and turn it into functional solutions for our customers, and then to represent that vision and the specific work that we are doing to accomplish that vision to the industry.

As a business leader, how do you ensure that your visions are executed across all sectors of your company?

A key to successful execution is smart, hard-working people in key leadership roles within the organization.

With the right people in the right positions, the organization functions like an efficient machine and we are able to successfully execute programs that meet our customer’s requirements and grow the organization.

Tell us about your firm’s mission. What techniques do you use to achieve this?

We intend to change forever the fundamental dynamics of the war between cyber criminals and the good guys, making the Internet or any other

private or public network a safer place for people and businesses to interact, having a positive impact across the World.

What would say are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing your industry at present?

Security architectures largely grew organically over the past ten years as organizations addressed a variety of new threats and tactics. This has resulted in an army of new deployed technologies like firewalls, IDS/IPS, network proxies, gateways, sandboxes, endpoint suites, etc. Over time, this patchwork approach has become more difficult to manage and significantly less effective at blocking legitimate threats. Existing cyber-security problems telegraph what’s needed for security in the future. Specifically, enterprises need a comprehensive solution that offers scalability, protects against both known and unknown threats, automates manual processes, and replaces a patchwork of ineffective tools with an integrated set of security services.

When working in an industry that is constantly changing, what does your firm do to ensure that they are at the forefront of any emerging developments?

Ghost has a world-class business and technology team including several of the finest developers of cyber security technologies in the world today. Several distinguished technology team members include; the author of the NSA’s Orange Book, a distinguished cryptography and identity expert, the designer of the first-ever distributed OTP and a noted former CIA cryptography expert. We work closely with major universities and national and international research labs and continually review new technologies as they are developed so that we are always aware of the latest emerging technologies and trends in the industry.

How do you develop and maintain the standards you set for yourselves?

Primarily we use Six Sigma however, we complement that with internally developed processes that are more directly applicable to our specific business that are not readily addressed by the six sigma process.

Tell us about your approach to hiring your staff. How do you attract the best talent in the industry to your firm?

We tend to attract our key talent via word of mouth.

We don’t openly advertise and generally don’t use head hunters as they tend to find the “secondlevel” capable candidates. Once we identify a prime candidate, we take a long time to explain our vision and then through the interview process we review how much of the vision stuck with the candidate. If more than less stuck, we send that candidate through the extended process to arrive at the best possible employee in each key position within our company.

What are your plans for 2016 and beyond?

In 2016, we expect to finalize our infrastructure such that our global footprint is worldwide and gamechanging. Once we have that in place, we will begin implementing our phase II land & expand strategy. By 2017, we expect to be the major player in our sector.

Once we have achieved our primary objectives, we expect to grow the business into markets which we are not currently targeting.

Acquisition International - January 2016 13

CEO of the Year - Wisconsin AI 106

WEC Energy Group, Inc, (NYSE: WEC) is one of the nation’s premier energy companies, serving 4.4 million electric and natural gas customers in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota. The group, a component of the S&P 500, has nearly $29bn of assets, 8,500 employees and approximately 55,000 stockholders of record.

We invited Gale E. Klappa, the firm’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, to provide us with an insight into the new firm and his role in the company’s success.

WEC Energy Group was formed in June 2015 through the acquisition of Integrys Energy in a transaction valued at $9 billion. The transaction creates the leading electric and natural gas utility in the Midwest.

Company: WEC Energy Group Name: Gale E. Klappa, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Email: gale.klappa@ wecenergygroup.com Web: www.wecenergygroup.com Address: 231 W. Michigan St., Milwaukee, WI 53203 Telephone: 414-221-2345

With your merger with Integrys, how do you make sure culture stays at the forefront?

The most direct and influential way we are working to ensure that our existing culture and focus remain at the heart of what we do is through the selection of the new leadership team for the combined company.

We were fortunate in that we were able to work our way through approvals for the acquisition in four states – Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota – and two federal agencies, all in just 53 weeks. We were fortunate to move through the process that quickly.

As we sought these regulatory approvals, we also developed a new organizational structure for the combined company. Shortly before we closed the transaction, we selected proven leaders for the top 70 positions in the combined company.

I believe this was the most direct and immediate way to maintain our culture – because every one of those leaders has proven they have the right focus.

What impact will these two organizations coming together have for the future?

At $9 billion, this acquisition was the largest nonbank acquisition ever made by a Wisconsin company.

The benefits that we believe we can deliver from the acquisition are two-fold: First, we are in an era of low demand growth. And as costs for infrastructure continue to rise, companies like ours need to have scale and scope, a broad reach and technical depth to successfully participate in what is likely to be a consolidating industry going forward.

This acquisition gives us all of those things. We are now serving 4.4 million customers across four states; we are the eighth largest natural gas distribution company in America; and in terms of investor-owned utility systems, we are one of the 15 largest in the United States.

This gives us a strong platform of geographic reach and depth that we need to be one of the best performing utility systems in the country.

Secondly, the acquisition gives us a real opportunity to continue the investment growth we have experienced over the past decade for our shareholders.

For example, with the infrastructure needs of this company and the company we have acquired, capital spending will probably be in the range of $1.5 billion per year for as many years going forward as the eye can see. That is more than double the investment opportunity that Wisconsin Energy had stand alone.

Going forward, will all energy companies need to have substantial scope to survive?

Over time, the smallest players will have more difficulty being cost-competitive for their customers because there are so many fixed costs in our business. In a low-growth environment, we have to find a way to spread those costs over a broader base of customers.

This was very much a part of our thinking. For example, we have said publicly that in Wisconsin alone, we think there will be more than $1 billion of cost savings for customers over the next decade from this acquisition.

How critical is it to maintain a service business mentality?

It is at the core of everything we do – so important that I will personally take customer calls if there is a concern.

All success in our business is local. All success in our business derives from customer satisfaction.

14 Acquisition International - January 2016

CEO of the Year AI 114

Pollmann are experts in the design, manufacturing and implementation of combining metals and plastics to create electrical and mechanical products.

We spoke to Gregory Harriman, CEO of Pollmann North America, who took time out to speak to us about running this highly innovative company.

Company: Pollmann North America Name: Gregory Harriman Email: gharriman@ pollmann-na.com Address: 950 Chicago Tube Drive, Romeoville,IL 60446 Telephone: 815-834-1122

With our products, we enable our customers to create new solutions that integrate multiple components, increase efficiency, reduce weight, reduce number of components in assemblies and realize new technologies.

Forward). We have implemented Gate reviews and KPIs that monitor how well we perform to each of these topics. Each Gate Review cannot be signed/ passed unless we reviewed what we have done and have lessons learned.

As CEO, I am responsible for the growth, longevity and profitability of the North American plant. In addition to the oversight of the daily operation, a good portion of my focus is to provide strategic guidance to my team and the global organization through the understanding of the markets we are in and the global economic trends of technology demands. As part of this growth, we will mature from 23 million a year in sales to 30 million by 2020.

Pollmann International has a motto that states “Innovation with Precision.” We are constantly looking for new ways to do old things. To look forward to the next generation of the product while developing the current generation. In order to achieve the high standards we set for ourselves, we start with safety first, then quality and then work our way down. If we can maintain these first two, we find that the rest want to intuitively follow. Any member of our team can stop – call – and wait for help to arrive. From my perspective, if we are all thinking the same way we can effect change rapidly.

In order to ensure that we reach this target, we have Key Performance Indicators (KPI) which we report out weekly and in quarterly employee meetings. The vision is clear and tracked by management as well as being posted for all employees to view themselves.

Additionally, each employee has the ability to earn a quarterly bonus based on how well the company does with its KPIs. Having these highly transparent performance indicators is paramount, and I have worked heavily with my team to revamp our KPIs. Through this process we have eliminated items that are not inline, and brought my senior management in to the process to improve clarity and gain team buy in. We now use these KPIs as our short list and guiding principles. As a result, each department manager is fully responsible and accountable for the goals of the company and reports out in our management meetings.

However, it is also important that we take these past the department leads and to every employee of the company. I have implemented an employee incentive/bonus program that is updated weekly and posted throughout the plant. These KPIs that go to the employees are items that the employees have the ability and responsibility to control. I have also instilled the responsibility to every employee that if they see someone affecting the goals in a negative way, it is their duty to eliminate this.

From my experience, attracting and keeping the right talent has never been easy. I believe that you have to make an environment where people are challenged and want to come to work every day. Furthermore, an environment where conflict and growth are desired and not shied away from is also important. All employees having a voice in the company is crucial, not just for them being able to say things, but to be empowered to say and do them is the key.

Our industry encompasses a number of challenges and opportunities. Perhaps our biggest challenge is to be cost competitive when manufacturing in the United States, but we believe that this can be overcome with ingenuity. As a global company, we find that each region has their own way of doing business, and even though our customers are global customers and strive to have global commonality, they still have tendencies to act as separate organizations with different costing structures. We also find that our customers say that they want local for local and that they do not look at products as commodities, but when it comes to sourcing they look at the cheapest solution and treat our products as commodities. As for opportunities, our largest is trying to stay up with current automotive demands, which are the highest in years and which is a nice problem to have.

Despite working in a highly competitive environment, we believe that we have a number of attributes that distinguish us from our competitors. We are a highly automated company, and that is probably the biggest difference. We do things that many companies either shy away from or feel are impossible. We don’t mind change, not for change sake rather for the value in it.

Looking further ahead, we are confident that we will be able to reach the goals we have set ourselves for the coming years. Once we have achieved these, we will certainly not rest on our laurels, but forge our way on to the next goal and beyond.

In terms of our ethos, we are guided by the principles of “Ever Forward” and “Communicate”. To be the best, you have to learn from your mistakes. The expectation that I drive is that every time we do something, we learn from it and make it better (Ever

Acquisition International - January 2016 15

CEO of the Year - New Jersey AI 106

The Macaluso Group (“TMG”) is a technology and data driven company focused on pioneering co-pay and financial payment solutions. We invited CEO and Founder Joe Macaluso to provide us with a unique insight into the firm and the services it provides.

The Macaluso Group (“TMG”) is considered a pioneer in the payments industry and was the first to utilize the financial payment networks for pharmaceutical co-pay programs. TMG has been deemed by our clients to be the Gold Standard in medical claims processing.

Company: The Macaluso Group Company Headquarters 100 Passaic Avenue Suite 245 Fairfield, NJ 07004 973-244-9110 Specialty Product Division 2500 Broadway Building F Santa Monica, CA 90404 310-450-9966 www.macgroupcard.com

The majority of the firm’s work has been focused on the pharmaceutical space, where we have been creatively solving healthcare product marketing and regulatory compliance challenges since 2001.

Through innovating with our clients and specialty pharmacies, we have developed solutions, that help alleviate the financial barrier for patients gaining access to their medication at the most opportune time of payment.

Many of our solutions have been built to support challenges that the healthcare industry has been facing. A recent example has been the challenge of ensuring that patients participating in co-pay programs, are not enrolled in state and federally funded programs. Several service providers have developed solutions to address this issue, however, based on the criteria that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued in September of 2014, these solutions do not seem to be fully viable.

Our firm has assessed this challenge over the last few years, related it to past solutions that we have delivered, and launched the Guardian Verification Solution. This unique real-time electronic process approaches this challenge in a very different way, and is fully compliant within our industry.

TMG’s overall mission is to build leading edge business solutions by creating the connective tissue linking best-in-class proven technologies, which, when seamlessly connected provide a totally new technological solution to a seemingly impossible to solve marketing obstacle.

I challenge myself and my team to think about how we may make extinct our current products and services through our innovations. This helps us to be aware of the marketplace and to be in a position to introduce new offerings at the right time.

As the CEO and founder of The Macaluso Group, my role and top priority is to attract, develop and retain a talented team. To accomplish this, I foster a culture that is rare in today’s business world: one that it is built on mutual respect, trust, dedication and where employees are empowered to run their business and are rewarded for A-Team performance.

It is imperative that I develop and share a clear vision for the organization and set the tone for a culture that works in concert to support our valued clients.

For example, one of the areas which I view as vitally

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important is statistics, as these provide the evidence that our solutions are working properly. You will find weaved into our company materials, the statement “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”.

With this mantra driven from the top of the organization down, TMG has been able to factually and intellectually communicate results internally and with our clients. We have invested in tools that provide this information in a timely and meaningful manner.

I have found that it is key to communicate, communicate and communicate even more, with my team, in order to share this vision and gain a sense to how it is being embraced. It’s also critical that I am open to their feedback, and that I am willing to refine the vision. This is accomplished through scheduled meetings as well as informal interactions.

I make it a point to speak to my employees every day, as this allows me to see the team in action, hear and participate in business situations, and to get an overall pulse for the business.

We also have structured weekly meetings with leaders and contributors within all disciplines of our organization. This enables us to prioritize items and issues, set a plan to address them, and monitor progress. Each employee has a critical voice and their opinions are valued.

We engage in collaborative work across the industry to ensure that our services are at the forefront of emerging technology and industry developments. We have enjoyed strategic partnerships with top financial card providers since 2001. This gives us the ability to offer our clients a most robust portfolio of services that includes selecting a financial processing platform that is best suited for the needs of a particular program.

Moving forward, we have developed a rolling five year plan to ensure continued success of our work. In 2014, we completed both our major move into our new headquarters and installed the framework for our launch of the Payment Card Division in 2015 which is expanding our footprint beyond the health care industry. Our plan for 2016 is to make the Payment Card Division as large as the Health Care Division thereby strengthening our stability by diversifying our revenues while utilizing the same solid I.T. infrastructure and systems.

CEO of the Year AI ??

Delta Network System Ltd. is the core entity of DNS group, with the vision of providing best solution for advanced networking and integration solutions and services.

Company: DNS Group Website: www.dnsgroup.com.bd

During the last 18 Years of business, DNS has created not only customer loyalty but also a perfect blend of technical and managerial skills. As a result, DNS has developed confidence for exploring new areas in IT/ ITES sector taking poised steps forward in the IT field.

commitment, dedication and high motivation which have become embedded in their employees.

This has provided the firm with the strength to fulfil mission critical projects on turnkey basis.

The firm is dedicated to ensuring their clients find the software solution to meet their needs. It has assisted many to transform information into power of competitive advantages through technology and needful solutions whether by developing computer network, telecommunications, satellite connectivity, software, telemedicine, internet or any complex computing.

Lead by the Managing Director, Mr. Rafel Kabir, the firm’s team is made up of industry experienced, dynamic people who all share the passion for technology. The team chemistry is strong and the collaboration between the content team, development team, NOC Team and marketing team is totally integrated, producing maximum output within minimum time.

The firm’s founders have the vision of maintaining the work environment, as a pleasurable experience for her employees. This is brought to fruition by their

Acquisition International - January 2016 17

CEO of the Year - Texas AI 49

CEO of the Year, Texas IDC’s resources include civil engineers, planners, architects, civil designers, CADD specialists and program/construction management professionals.

IDC staff has been involved with over 400 projects of note in and around the state of Texas. Their projects include: building facilities, site work, education facility projects, urban and rural freeways, toll roads, transitways, city streets, county roadways, drainage, hydrology and hydraulics, water and wastewater facilities, and other infrastructure improvements.

Company: IDC Inc. Name: Jim Gonzales Email: jimg@idcus.com Web: www.idcus.com Address: 11111 Wilcrest Green, Suite 250, Houston, Texas 77042 Telephone: (281) 703-3527 or (210) 842-4008

IDC Inc. is a leading Texasbased infrastructure development consulting firm providing Civil Engineering, Planning & Program Management Services. IDC maintains a staff of professionals with the technical expertise and proven experience to provide planning, preliminary engineering, final design and program and construction management services for public works, transportation and building facilities for both public and private clients.

CEO Jim Gonzales has more than 29 years of professional consulting and management experience, including serving as Vice President for two of the largest engineering firms in the United States. Mr. Gonzales has been involved with infrastructure planning and project development activities with numerous cities, counties, school districts, colleges, toll and transit authorities, state and federal agencies, and other government entities. He maintains an active role with review and approval of client projects at every stage. Mr. Gonzales has been involved with infrastructure planning and project development activities for major bond issues and has led the successful development and implementation of more than $8 billion in major capital projects and over $300 million in fees.

His involvement with diverse communities and groups has proven to be invaluable in bringing about successful capital improvement plans for both large and small communities. He has led IDC to be consistently ranked among HISPANIC BUSINESS “100 Fastest Growing” and “500 Largest” Companies in the U.S., and he and his company have been featured in other national publications including: HISPANIC, EXECUTIVE, and AMERICAN BUILDERS QUARTERLY. Most recently Jim Gonzales was selected as “CEO of the Year” by ACQUISITION INTERNATIONAL, and IDC was ranked as one of the “Top Businesses in America” by DIVERSITY.COM for their business achievements.

CEO insight As President & CEO of IDC Inc., Jim Gonzales strategically oversees the company’s operations, marketing, finances and human resources. He leads IDC’s corporate development associated with project planning, engineering and program management services the firm provides. One of Mr. Gonzales’ major responsibilities is to represent the firm in the community. In doing so, he works with numerous elected and appointed officials, and reinforces IDC’s company reputation for competence and reliability in the field of Planning, Engineering, and Program Management Services.

Mr. Gonzales has served as a leader in numerous professional engineering and community organizations and associations for almost 30 years.

He gives generously of his time to a myriad of community initiatives designed to advance IDC’s client-partner’s initiatives, and improve the general business climate, and economic development in Texas where IDC operates. Mr Gonzales’ vision for the firm is to be an industry leader in carrying out IDC’s mission, which is “Excellence in all that we do”.

Jim Gonzales oversees the company’s direction and services with an emphasis on quality and

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integrity. Mr. Gonzales leads policy-level discussions concerning IDC operations, procedures and staffing.

Jim Gonzales leads the development of IDC’s annual and strategic plans. He develops the underlying strategy for any sales initiative IDC undertakes, and participates as the Principal in Charge with oversight of all the firm’s projects. In addition, Mr. Gonzales oversees the company’s finances and leads the strategy and development for IDC’s continued growth.

Recent projects and clients IDC recently completed work on a $249 million Program Management assignment with LCISD, and has taken on a new $454 million Program Management assignment with Houston Community College (HCC). IDC is serving HCC by managing Architects / Engineers and General Contractors implement a comprehensive building program which includes work on six campuses located throughout the Houston Area. In addition to being selected to implement the City of San Antonio’s largest mobility bond project (Design of the Presa Ramps along IH-10), IDC is also serving as the Program Manager & General Planning Consultant (GPC) for VIA Metropolitan Transit in San Antonio, Texas.

IDC is currently leading a team of Consultants on seven (7) Task Orders which include the development of a 22 mile Transit Corridor. While much of IDC’s Civil Engineering Services focuses on Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) assignments, they also perform those services in conjunction with local government entities like Fort Bend County, by designing two major roadway widenings on FM 2759 & FM 762 to accommodate growth in the Fastest Growing County in the United States. IDC will soon be performing final design engineering improvement projects on US 290 & IH 610, SH 36, IH-10, Austin MOPAC, and other assignments for TxDOT, including a Statewide Schematic contract.

Challenges and opportunities facing the industry Among the biggest challenges and opportunities in the Civil Engineering industry is competing with other interests for limited public funds while the costs of construction continues to increase for needed Infrastructure to keep the US economy moving. In addition, the need to attract qualified staff, adapting to regulatory changes, and adjusting to the ongoing fluctuations in the US economy in which the industry is tied, continues to present both near and long term challenges and opportunities.

IDC maintains a commitment to keep pace with trends and to monitor legislation and emerging developments affecting our industry. IDC remains active with local economic development entities, participating in industry forums, training conferences, and advocating for federal, state and local funding initiatives to support our clients and industry.

What makes IDC unique is our leadership and relentless commitment to excellence, quality and responsive service in the work we perform. Our client partners know that they will have Principals of the firm working on their assignments, and can trust the owners will be involved to ensure IDC fulfills its vision of “Performance Today for Tomorrow’s Projects”.

CEO of the Year - Rhode Island, Industry Maritime Services AI 49

Founded 43 years ago, the Oyster Group combines Oyster Yachts and Southampton Yacht Services (SYS) and is one of Britain’s biggest, most successful builders and restorers of luxury sailing yachts.

Renowned as among the very best performance ocean cruisers, encompassing great comfort and practicality, the Oyster range of semi-custom, hand-built yachts now spans 47 to 118 feet. Larger yachts are also tended to by the expert custom restoration and build division, SYS.

Company: Oyster Yachts Name: David Tydeman Email: kate.porteous@ oysteryachts.com Web: www.oysteryachts.com Address: Saxon Wharf, Lower York Street, Northam Southampton, Hampshire, SO14 5QF Telephone: +44 02380 831000

The Group employs just over 400 staff and annual turnover exceeds £40 million. Each individually commissioned and extensively personalised Oyster yacht is a showcase of craftsmanship and yachts are priced between £650,000 and over £10million pounds, with consequently very high client expectations. It’s an expert, multi-discipline business with extensive in-house skills and trades split between the Group’s two sites, Southampton on the south coast, Wroxham on the east coast.

David Tydeman joined Oyster as Group CEO in 2008, “I knew the founder very well over about a 30-year period.

I’d also been involved in private equity, refinancing and restructuring companies in the construction industry over the 10 years or so before Oyster. With bankers having bought Oyster from the founder in 2008, it seemed like a good combination of my skills to try and take the company to the next phase.”

David’s background marked him well for the post.

“I’m a naval architect, chartered engineer and MBA. I began my career as a marine surveyor at Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, then worked for Occidental, Hamilton Brothers and British Gas on large North Sea construction projects. In 1995 I became Technical Director at the American Bureau of Shipping. In 1997 I was recruited by Vickers (later Rolls Royce) and became the Managing Director of a global maintenance business unit. Prior to that, I held various Executive and Director-level positions in large capital projects.

“In the early 90s I was MD of Beneteau UK, developed the Melges 24 Class across Europe [both significant yachting concerns] and was CEO of the Construction Division of Skanska UK, part of one of the world’s leading construction groups.”

Throughout David’s entire career he has been a passionate yachtsman, racing offshore for most of his life and was Rear Commodore with the Royal Ocean Racing Club for a while.

At Oyster David has implemented much change.

First came the complete turnaround from employing contracted yacht building yards to acquisition and outright ownership of all construction facilities. Then came the shifting of head office down from the east coast to Southampton. And all along the way, the sympathetic evolution of range and product offering accelerated and further extended into the superyacht scene without losing sight of the introductory end.

“Typically we keep our owners with us as they increase the size of their yachts,” says David. “We now have owners on their fourth, fifth and even sixth Oyster yacht. Keeping not just abreast but ahead of the market, we maintain generally a two new-boat development programme. Depending on yacht size it might be two to four, even five years from first thoughts to eventual launch. It’s a lengthy and very

involved process from design through engineering to final fitting, rigging and finishing. Major capex with significant balance sheet impact.”

That consideration has taken other British yacht builders over the brink while Oyster maintains a market lead. The company has always worked closely with owners and, unusually so, at the point of conception.

“We design the boats very much around the type of sailing our owners like to do,” says David. “We tease out the formula that we think is a good, efficient way of delivering a combination of needs. The owner can then concentrate mostly on refining the layout, finding a balance, for example, of the cabin spaces for himself, his guests and his crew, choosing the fabrics and furniture, and we can engineer a platform for him to then customise.”

Oyster divides the range into three sections. Up to around 60ft with four models mostly run by family and friends. Then 60 to 80 feet when you begin to see professional crew aboard. But it’s not until 80 feet and above that there’s space for crew to have enclosable galley and own discrete quarters.

“What we find,” says David, “is that people will jump from below 60 feet up into the professionally crewed boats. We have about 30 per cent a year moving up from a 55 or 60-footer into an 80-footer.

That’s adding 20 feet and a bit more luxury for the eight guests with a professional skipper or chef and deckhand. And then of course there’s the new 118-footer for ten-twelve guests and crew of six. With the midrange boats, there’s an interesting pattern.

Here they’re often first time to Oyster. We position the three categories of boats very much with the owner’s use in mind. The mid-range tends to be younger owners. Two-thirds of our business is English/ American and expats around the rest of the world.”

From day one of tenure, David has confronted the outfall of the global financial crisis. Many areas of luxury goods have suffered. Yacht building is one.

Yet Oyster thrives. “It’s not easy,” says David, “but we adapt. We also have a good operating model.”

While serving as CEO across all Group concerns, David has a strong team around him with design, engineering and finance all running out of head office at Saxon Wharf in Southampton’s still industrial docklands where all Oyster yachts beyond 70 feet long are built. Here also is associate group company Southampton Yacht Services, renovating and refurbishing superyachts considerably longer. Both share infrastructure, both create a flow of shared skills and capacity. Elsewhere, the Wroxham facility, close by the Norfolk Broads, has its own dedicated yet co-joined top management team building from 47 feet to this division’s current largest, a new 67-footer set to launch during 2016.

All this combines into a formula that works.

Throughout the crisis the workforce has remained mostly level. In early 2016 with a growing order book, Oyster recruited a further 50 staff. The order book has consistently filled. Another good year for Oyster.

It’s not easy, but it is good.

Acquisition International - January 2016 19

CEO of the Year for the Biotech Industry AI 1

Company: Celsis International Ltd Name: Jay LeCoque Email: Jay@rivageventures.com Web Address: www.celsis.com

Celsis is a world leader in rapid methods serving the pharmaceutical, home & beauty, dairy, beverage and food industries, with over 800 installations in 65 countries around the world. We invited former CEO Jay LeCoque to provide us with a unique insight into the company and the services it provides.

Founded in 1992 in Cambridge Science Park, UKbased Celsis International Ltd. also has offices in the United States and Continental Europe, plus field employees and distribution partners spanning the globe, making it a truly global operation.

within its customers’ organization to assess the financial benefit of adopting a rapid method, establishing implementation and validation parameters with benchmarks and support continued growth.

The firm provides a broad range of rapid microbial detection kits across a variety of industries. Every day, millions of consumers around the world trust in brands- in the kitchen, bathroom, laundry and medicine cabinet- made by companies that rely on Celsis to ensure the safety and quality of their products. Celsis utilizes proprietary enzyme technology coupled with rapid diagnostic detection systems to test goods at all stages of the production cycle, from raw materials and packaging materials through to bulk in-process and finished goods.

“My role as CEO was fairly straightforward. I hired the best people I could find and incentivized them very well to grow the business. I also stayed involved in the customer details of the business.”

Increasingly over the past two decades, top companies have relied on Celsis technology to screen their products faster, allowing them to ship more quickly and confidently. In addition to more efficient manufacturing operations, shorter lead times also benefits customers with increased market responsiveness.

Additionally, by reducing micro hold time, Celsis eliminates days from an items production cycle, decreasing product lead times and reducing inventory and the working capital that was necessary to fund that inventory. This reduces the cost of manufacturing, and freeing up significant working capital.

What makes Celsis unique is that it is the only company dedicated solely to rapid detection methods for industrial applications, and has evolved its approach by partnering with manufacturers to deliver maximum value at all stages of the production cycle.

This entails working with a multi-functional team

“I originally joined Celsis as a Cambridge Science Park based start-up in 1995 in a global business development role, so my knowledge of the customer base very much kept me plugged into the business as CEO. By the time I became CEO in late 2000, we had already built an impressive global sales and marketing team that was focused on developing global corporate multi-site roll outs of Celsis technology. Additionally, as Celsis had very strong gross margins, my primary focus was always to grow the top line knowing most of that revenue would fall straight to the bottom line as profit.”

“Another important aspect of my role was to keep reinforcing the financial value of using Celsis technology. We had a saying that we engrained into our team: “we aren’t selling instruments and reagents, we are selling financial value”. I believe that this message was the main reason so many of our customers, including many industry leaders across our market segments, adopted Celsis. The technology was great, but ultimately no one adopts new technology if there isn’t a cost benefit to doing so. Some of our larger global customers have saved tens of millions of dollars using Celsis throughout their worldwide manufacturing base. It was my job to keep reinforcing that message.”

“Our mission has always been to convert the global industrial microbiology market (that was very comfortable using the same type of agar plates that Louis Pasteur used to detect microorganisms), to adopt a faster and more precise method to detect microbial contamination in consumer and pharmaceutical products.”

“When we first started in the industry our method was new and exciting, and also had enormous cost saving potential, so we needed to get in front of the right people. You would think that would be in the lab, but we had the most resistance from those the lab who felt no need to change and didn’t want to pay more for a more rapid method because they didn’t always understand the working capital savings.”

“When we pulled in the operational and financial people, they quickly understood the value of Celsis technology. We truly believed it was our job to convert an industry and after 20 years in the business, we have done just that. Everyone now accepts Celsis as a leader in rapid microbiology and the majority

20 Acquisition International - January 2016

CEO of the Year for the Biotech Industry

of consumer product manufacturers in our market segments now use Celsis to test their products.”

“As a business leader, my role as we continued to expand and grow the business was to make sure that that our employees and new staff all shared the core mission of Celsis. In our early and even later years, we maintained an almost missionary approach to selling financial value through rapid methods. If that vision was ever compromised or people went off reservation, they didn’t last long at Celsis. It wasn’t personal, we were just moving too fast for people who didn’t get it.

growth has always been a key driver of our business.

When China slows down, we slow down. When Brazil has an economic issue, we see sales slow. We do well when economies are growing and larger global companies are acquiring small local companies.”

“At Celsis, we have always looked at ourselves as a truly global organization because our global customers implemented Celsis in their facilities around the world. We view everything with a global lens, and have to work around the various changes within the global markets.

When people did get it, they told me that working at Celsis was the greatest job they’ve ever had. When people say that, you know you have something special. And when that happens, when people share the core vision and really care about the business, your company can achieve anything.”

Over the past 20 years, the emergence of less developed countries into more developed countries has meant the creation of over 1 billion people moving into a larger middle class, and one that now buys consumer products. The manufacturers or those consumer products have a huge financial incentive to test their products using Celsis.”

“Over the years we have seen a number of exciting opportunities and challenges, which have helped shaped the firm and the way it operates. Global

“The biggest opportunity is in the pharmaceutical industry is that there is now a growing awareness of the benefits of rapid testing methods across the

industry. Regulators are now supporting the use of rapid methods rather than challenging their use.”

“Ultimately, Celsis is unique because we see ourselves as a company that is changing the way the world tests its products. We all have that missionary zeal, and we truly believe that using Celsis can save our customers significant amounts of working capital no matter how big or small their operation is. We still view the primary competition as tradional agar plates.

Our rapid method competitors are either selling inferior products at a cheaper price, or are selling technology that can’t compete with ours, which is the reason we have risen to the top of our industry.”

In July 2015 Celsis was acquired by Charles River Laboratories for $212 million. “I am confident the Charles River acquisition is part of the continued evolution of Celsis as a world leader in the rapid microbial detection industry, providing the firm with an exciting future. I personally intend to take some time out from the corporate world with my wife and our two year old son before finding myself an exciting new challenge.”

Acquisition International - January 2016 21

Pharmaceutical CEO of the Year - New Jersey AI 49

At the Medicines Company, it is our vision to be the leading provider of technology solutions in three key areas: acute cardiovascular care such as treatments for heart attacks and strokes; surgery and perioperative care such as pain and anaesthesia; and treatments for serious infectious diseases such as hospital superbugs which have shown resistance to currently available antiinfective drugs.

Company: The Medicines Company Name: Clive Meanwell, MD, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, Email: clive.meanwell@themedco.com Web Address: www.themedicinescompany.com Address: 8 Sylvan Way, Parsippany, New Jersey 07054 Telephone: 973-290-6064

The company distributes and sells its products primarily in the U.S., with a smaller organization and a range of emerging partnerships distributing and selling our products in Europe and Asia.

Our main focus as a company is on improving outcomes for very sick patients in hospitals and improving the performance of those professionals who care for them.

Historically, value has received less focus in our industry, though we take this quite seriously and have been recognized for our position on providing value in the solutions we offer to our customers. We have been investing since the early 2000s in order to understand how customers value medicines, and to develop best practices and technology to demonstrate that value.

This is a deeply motivating idea for many of us, especially those with prior personal experience of friends or relatives in hospital care, or from the experiences we have had as healthcare professionals. We are fortunate to have great leaders and an enormous amount of talent here at the company that can work across functional boundaries and influence a positive change in patient care.

These practices have been integrated into our early decision-making process for developing products, and then applied all the way through to price setting when products reach the market. We routinely use premarket modelling and post market economics outcomes research to verify and quantify our products benefits and cost savings. Wherever possible, we structure our clinical trials to provide information about whether the product can deliver its intended value, starting in Phase 1.

As such, my primary role as CEO is to stay constant through the storms, to sense and respond to changing conditions, to ensure we maintain competence, consistency, transparency and mutuality, through good times and bad. Our company, our customers and our shareholders have a right to expect this. Leadership also starts with envisioning what’s possible, and then getting others to see it and act on it.

Delivering authentic healthcare innovation is more challenging and complex than ever. It demands a sharp focus on what customers really need.

Ours is a highly competitive industry with some amazing companies offering incredible technologies.

We recognized early on that the proportion of GDP expenditures on healthcare in leading countries such as the U.S., Germany, China and Japan would be limited going forward, so we knew that as we developed our solutions, we had to focus on the value equation.

For us, it is simply a question of business model sustainability and delivering both medical and economic improvements that not only improve outcomes for patients and their families, but also contribute to the efficiency of hospital systems, and ultimately, managing the cost of care.

What sets The Medicines Company apart from other similar firms is our focus on acute and intensive care medicine. We have developed a strong knowledge of acute care pathways for heart attacks, lifethreatening infections and surgical care. We are also very aware that while we are developing products that improve outcomes for patients, we also have to prove that our products create net value for the health care systems and hospitals where they are used.

22 Acquisition International - January 2016

Over the last few years, we have clearly moved from being a successful hospital-focused specialty pharmaceutical company to being a drug development company with some of the most innovative and important drugs potentially coming to the market in the near future. This has presented its own challenges in an already challenging environment. We remain committed to our vision and mission and are addressing all of the business, organization and leadership issues inherent in this shift of focus. We have the opportunity to deliver powerful new solutions to our customers and patients - solutions which can profoundly and positively impact outcomes. This is an exciting time to be at The Medicines Company. We are working everyday with the knowledge that the work is important and the stakes are high for those we serve.

With this in mind, our future is very bright as we are launching a number of innovative new drugs which we feel will unlock the doors for growth in the firm.

In addition to the new drugs we are launching into U.S. hospitals at present – one for heart attack procedures, two for serious infections, and one for pain management, we are also developing four potentially ground breaking drugs: two have the potential to profoundly change the course of treatment and outcomes for people with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease; one could be the first new and potentially safer anaesthesia agent in nearly 30 years; and one has the potential to add a powerful new drug to the arsenal of treatments for deadly gram-negative resistant superbugs.

These activities will carry us forward into 2016, when we anticipate a wide range of exciting milestones for our products and rapid growth of our top line.

DEEP & FAR

Attorneys-at-Law 13th F1., No. 27, Sec. 3, Chung San N. Rd. Taipei 104, Taiwan, R.O.C. Tel: +886-2-2585-6688 Fax: +886-2-25989900/25978989 email@deepnfar.com.tw Deep & Far was founded in 1992 and is one of the largest law firms in this country. The firm is presently focused on the practice in separate or in combination of all aspects of intellectual property rights (IPRs) including patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, unfair competition, and/or licensing, counseling, litigation and/or transaction thereof.

Since this firm edges itself into the IPRs field, the firm quickly comes to fame. As an illustration, this firm often is one of the largest sources from which foreign filing orders originate.

The fascinating rise of this firm begins from the founder of Deep & Far attorneys-at-law, C. F. Tsai, who is the one first patent practitioner in this country who both has technological and law backgrounds and is qualified as a local attorney-at-law.

The patent attorneys and patent engineers in this firm normally hold outstanding and advanced degrees and are generally graduated from the top five universities in this country and/or the university in the US. Our prominent staffs are dedicated to provide the best quality service in IPRs. As a proof, about one half of top 100 incorporations in this country have experiences of seeking patented their techniques, but more than one fifth of the top 100 incorporations are/were clients of this firm.

Furthermore, Hi-Tech companies in the science-based industrial park located at Hsin Chu play an important role in booming the economy of this country. About one half of which have experiences in seeking patented their techniques, and out of more than 60% of the patent-experienced companies in that park have ever entrusted their IPR works to this firm.

We have experienced in seeking IPR-protections for our clients in more than 100 territories all over the world.

We have thousands of IPR-cases respectively prosecuted before official Patent Offices of major industrialized countries. This firm not only is the most competent in IPR-related matters in this country but also is very familiar with IPR-practices in major industrialized countries. As a matter of fact, this firm oftentimes tries and makes precedents of new claim-drafting styles. While we might have become wonderfully famed locally with remarkable appreciation and respects, we would like to extend our services for internationalized or quality service-requiring foreign conglomerated giants, corporations or individuals.

We strongly believe that we will win more applause from clients all over the world.

www.deepnfar.com.tw

CEO of the Year, Austria AI 49

Vienna International Hotelmanagement AG looks back on more than 26 years of success, during which time it has focused on building and expanding its portfolio of hotels in the 3- to 5-star segment. CEO Rupert Simoner talks us through the group and the vast hotel portfolio it has built up during its 26 year lifetime.

Vienna International Hotelmanagement, repositioned in 2016 as Vienna House, has established itself as Austria’s largest hotel group with its 38 hotels, four hotel lines and 2.200 employees operates in ten countries: from France to Russia, from the Polish Amber Coast up to the Austrian Vorarlberg. Among them top tourist destinations such as Berlin, Bratislava, Bucharest, Coburg, Carlsbad, Krakow, Lodz, Munich, Neckarsulm, Trier, Paris and Prague.

Company: Vienna House Name: Rupert Simoner Email: info@viennahouse.com Web: www.viennahouse.com Address: Dresdner Straße 87 1200 Vienna, Austria Phone: 0043 1 333 7373 0

In September 2014, I took over the helm of VI with the goal of repositioning the company, establishing a clear brand strategy and putting into action all the necessary changes in order to do so. Along the way, we started by repositioning ourselves from the inside out, bringing the staff on board from the beginning, and so laying the foundation for future growth and continued commercial success.

My business strategy revolves around the lobby of each individual hotel. I know if a concept works out with one glimpse into the lobby. The lobby is the heart of a hotel.

When a hotel lobby, or a restaurant or bar, are full of people making lively conversation, enjoying a relaxing drink or just passing the time, then the concept works.

Everyone knows that a hotel has rooms, but the decisive difference lies in those areas where people come together.

Additionally, a new corporate culture only works when it is accepted and lived from the inside. All the employees were informed about the development steps from the beginning and kept up-to-date with regular news from myself and my management board colleague, hotel directors and direct management in open feedback discussions. National and international workshops provided additional support for the process.

We developed a “roadmap” for our new self-image of Vienna House which translates our core values into daily actions and in a simple and understandable way explains what optimal guest feedback, employee conduct, work environment and management understanding looks like at Vienna House.

Currently, the hotel market is in a state of flux which is providing us with a number of challenges. One of the most recent and already largest “hotel” providers, Airbnb, today has not appointed a single receptionist or housekeeper. In exchange, it offers supposed transparency and authentic, individual experiences at a favourable price.

Today’s guests have excellent access to the most up-todate information. Their thinking and actions are global, local and mobile at the same time, and they have a steadily increasing selection of options to choose from.

At the same time, people’s understanding of value is undergoing a transformation. Traditional values such as luxury, in view of expensive status symbols, star categorisations and standards, are being replaced by personal, unique and, above all, one-of-a-kind

24 Acquisition International - January 2016

experiences. People’s self-image has become more value-conscious than status-oriented.

As such we have had to fight back, developing strengthening our Quality Management division creating new guidelines and standards. Derived from this is the new Touch Point Guide that specifies a small but well-reasoned number of new standards for the hotels.

Furthermore rating portals are being analysed and documented in a professional and transparent way and linked to concrete actions.

We always question our actions and our conduct towards the guests and whomever we are facing (stakeholders, clients, partners, owners, media).

All changes systematically derive from the guests’ perspective – this is what we do.

This rebranding is due to be fully implemented by 1st February this year. A transformation process of this magnitude is implemented in steps. The first step was to define so-called flagships; the flagships have been remodelled, renovated and adapted. Other hotels are then remodelled in succession. Besides controlling costs and protecting the investment, this procedure has the advantage of adjusting concepts to the market and truly aligning all activities to the various requirements of the guests.

All changes systematically derive from the guests’ perspective and include e.g. free high-speed internet access, mobile check-in/check-out as well as a personalised reception culture and an open lobby with living room or lounge. The meeting areas are being modernised with new interiors and creative, multifunctional spaces. The new restaurant, bar and breakfast concepts will focus on rationality. The issue of mobility is being addressed through bike stations, e-vehicle stations and car sharing stations. Top-quality room amenities, a kids’ world, as well as new and simple building services and modern technologies, such as charging stations at all tables or web-based concierge services, are just some of the additional guest-oriented changes.

Therefore, the future for our firm looks exciting, as we endeavour to ensure that our guests receive a top quality service and that we remain at the top of the ever changing hotel industry.

Technology Driven Solutions for Marketing Healthcare Products for the Pharmaceutical Industry

www.macgroupcard.com

2015 CEO of the Year, California AI 1

Electric Visual Evolution, LLC is a global, premium, sport and lifestyle accessory brand rooted in southern California’s rich action sports, music, art and customization cultures.

Company: Electric Visual Evolution, LLC Phone: 1-800-958-6556 Address: 1001 Calle Amanecer San Clemente, CA 92673 Web: www.electriccalifornia.com

Founded in 2000 in California, Electric makes quality products that enhance active lifestyles, offering ‘Style that performs’. By building upon what has stood the test of time, Electric reengineers classics. The firm’s unrelenting approach to the elevation of style, quality and function in its products has earned the brand a renowned position.

The brand designs and markets sunglasses, snow goggles and helmets, watches, backpacks, luggage and accessories. They can be found throughout the Americas, Europe, Japan, China and Australasia in Lifestyle boutiques, department stores, sports shops and online, including Electric’s own e-commerce websites.

Electric is part of the Kering Group, a world leader in apparel and accessories which develops an ensemble of powerful luxury and sport and lifestyle brands.

In 2014, Electric completed the refresh of its instore display fixtures; delivering over 2000 displays worldwide with an immediate positive effect on sell through. Electric’s ecommerce business also continued to grow according to plan in the U.S., and launched in Canada and Europe.

Additionally, Electric expanded its watch product line offering to include digital and digital tide, which was nominated for SIMA Accessory Product of the Year.

Electric’s restructured sunglass offering includes ambassador inspired collaborations, limited edition

26 Acquisition International - January 2016

premium acetate frames, and more; all featuring Electric’s signature melanin-injected lens. Electric successfully launched its inaugural line of protective snow helmets and a new patent pending snow goggle technology to the market called Press Seal, initially in the EG3 model.

CEO Eric Crane started his career in graphic design and advertising in 1993 with a position with Arnette Optics. Having quickly earned recognition at Arnette within the action sports community, he joined the San Francisco based Astro Studios in 1998.

In 2000, Eric partnered with Electric to launch the brand by designing the identity, and maintained the brand’s image until 2003. In 2007, Eric joined Nixon, Inc. as the brand’s first Global Vice President of Product and Design, before coming back to Electric in 2012 as Chief Commercial Officer and was soon after appointed CEO in 2013.

Looking to the future, Electric will continue its expansion plans in new geographies and channels, working with new distribution partners. Electric’s premium collection of eyewear, watches and small leather goods will be marketed to premium Lifestyle boutique and department store channels, while its technical and Sport driven products will be targeted towards its existing action sports, premium Sporting Goods and outdoor channels. Electric’s female focus will also be expanding with new colours in existing styles, smaller watch and goggle sizes, and a communication plan dedicated to women.

CEO of the Year AI 1

The Telair Cargo Group is the global leader in the design, manufacturing and support of priorietary state-of-the art aircraft on-board cargo loading and restraint systems for the global aerospace industry.

Stefan Schuetzinger is the CFO of Telair Cargo Group with over 25 years of Financial Experience under his belt, primarily in senior positions and a number of different industries. He has a strong background in different industries ranging from critical infrastructure technologies (Emerson Network Power), water treatment plants (Thyssen), building industry (Eternit) to auditing (Interfides).

Company: Telair Cargo Group Name: Stefan Schuetzinger Email: sschuetzinger@telair.com Web Address: www.telair.com Address:Bodenschneidstrasse 2, 83714 Miesbach, Germany Telephone: +49 8025 29 1003

“Different businesses mean different challenges to a company and to the role of a Finance Executive” according to Schuetzinger. “I have also a broad experience in successfully leading projects (all phases of M&A-projects, Engineering Project Management, IT-Implementations, etc.). I believe this background is very helpful in making the Telair Cargo Group a better company” he stresses.

How the firm has changed over time Since Schuetzinger started working with Telair Cargo Group, the size of the business has more than quadrupled and has grown from a break-even business to an industry leader in terms of profitability.

The success of our company he firmly believes is built on: • Strong customer orientation and particularly with the OEMs Airbus, Boeing and Bombardier; • Innovation – the firm have been the driving force of innovation in their specific market; • Human Resources – they are a very successful company because they have excellent, well trained, talented, inspired and highly motivated people.

“We have grown the Telair Cargo Group mostly organically, but through complementary and selective acquisitions, too” he says. “Our focus has been high reliability as a partner to our customers, what means excellent delivery performance and quality. Constant productivity improvements and sound management of our currency risk have been important factors for our success. We are in a USD business and a large portion of our costs are denominated in Euro currency. We are setting the industry standard with Sales per employee of more than USD 500 thousand” he continues.

In terms of Telair Cargo Group’s financial performance in 2015, it has been enormously successful. “We have ended our Financial Year in September and it was a very successful year” said an upbeat Schuetzinger. “We have managed our currency exposure and Working Capital very well and were able to further improve productivity.

We have achieved excellent OTD-levels and were successful with the ramp up of a new product line.

For the current Financial Year we will benefit from our volume increase and better pricing” he enthused.

Regarding the 2008 financial crisis it is worth considering here what impact this had on Schuetzinger’s firm back then. The question is, how did his firm weather this storm and continue towards prosperity? “It was very difficult for us to weather the financial crisis, because the Aerospace Industry was hit very seriously” Schuetzinger stresses. “We have some flexibility in our remuneration / working hours model, we were well protected against the fluctuations in the currency swings and we were able to win our vendors do contribute their share to prevent from worse difficulties” he adds.

Emerging developments When working in an industry that is constantly evolving, what measures does Schuetzinger’s firm take to ensure that they are at the forefront of any emerging developments? “The Telair Cargo Group cultivates a spirit of impartiality, what we believe is a fertile ground for new ideas” explains Schuetzinger. “We have a very generous employee invention system. Whenever an employee invention is brought to the market, the respective employee-inventor will get an attractive remuneration for his/her innovation” he went onto say.

Lifting the lid on the ethos behind his firm, the question posed was is there a certain culture that defines his company and how does Schuetzinger ensure that these values are maintained across all areas of his company? “Besides the high standards, which we maintain throughout our organisation in terms of compliance with international ethical standards, the driving force behind all our efforts is strong focus on our customers. We have a strong focus on reliability to the outside and within our organisation” Schuetzinger replies.

When asked what makes their company unique and separates them from their competitors, Schuetzinger underlines that they “are driven by the requirements of our customers and to permanently improve our product. We heavily invest into innovation and try hard to keep the highest standard of product quality and on time delivery.”

Looking ahead Schuetzinger concludes: “We will continue to focus on customer satisfaction, improve and innovate our product, explore future opportunities like getting on additional platforms, make smart acquisitions and think out of the box.

“We are building our future on the following three pillars: Price / Productivity / New Products.”

Acquisition International - January 2016 27

CFO of the Year As second in command CFOs have a lot of pressure to deliver strong financial results and support their CEO, challenges which have been exacerbated in 2015 with various external issues which have continued to cause problems in the corporate landscape.

As such these dedicated professionals can be seen as the true drivers of the business market, and we have compiled a selection of the best and brightest and invited them to provide us with the secrets behind their success.

CFO of the Year AI 49

Worldwide Express was founded in 1995 to give smaller companies the same shipping options and cost saving perks extended to the Fortune 500. CFO Rob Rose provides us with an insight into how the firm has worked tirelessly to achieve this goal.

Headquartered in Dallas, Worldwide Express has franchise and corporate-owned offices in more than 150 markets across the United States.

Today, the global logistics company is one of the largest authorized resellers of express shipping for UPS and a trusted freight partner to more than 60 carriers. The firm also handles millions of package and freight shipments for 30,000 small to midsize businesses.

Company: Worldwide Express Name: Rob Rose Email: rrose@wwex.com Web Address: wwex.com Address: 2323 Victory Ave, 16th Floor, Dallas TX 75219 Telephone: 214-720-2400

As CFO of Worldwide Express, in addition to handling the obvious functions of accounting and financial reporting, I manage many other aspects of the business as well.

I also manage the marketing and PR efforts including social media and communications. Finally, in our current strategy, most of my time is spent managing our M&A activities, which will entail several $100M over 2015 and 2016.

The firm’s financial performance over the past year has been unusually impressive. In addition to excellent organic growth in revenue and EBITDA, we have begun an aggressive acquisition strategy of buying back franchise groups across the US. Since completing our most recent private equity transaction toward the end of 2013, the company has more than doubled in profitability, with 2016 earnings expected to exceed $40M. Our approach of providing outstanding customer service to mid-size companies across the country has fed our growth as one of the largest 3rd party logistics companies in the country.

This success is particularly impressive considering that during the latter half of 2015 and into 2016, our industry has faced softening demand and weak shipping volumes. Coupled with historic challenges to fuel prices, profitability within the industry faces fundamental struggles. Consolidation within the industry is both a challenge as competitors become larger and more capable, as well as an opportunity for those companies positioned to take advantage of the window.

Worldwide Express’s strong financial performance highlights the fact that we are uniquely capable of achieving this and overcoming these challenges. Our firm is unique within the industry as it is the largest and most capable transportation company for small to mid-size business in the US. We can handle every shipping need a customer might have, from small package shipments with UPS to less-than-truckload through to full truckload and even ocean and freight forwarding internationally. If it needs to be sent, we can handle it. In addition we provide the expertise that smaller businesses need to compete effectively in the global economy.

Despite our strong performance, we understand the need to remain ahead of our competitors, and as such we invest heavily in technology advantages, employing the expertise and capabilities of industry leading firms with specific expertise. Technology plays a pivotal role in the business model of Worldwide Express. We act as an intermediary between carrier partners and customers to provide a suite of solutions depending on the type of shipment being sent. Therefore we spend millions each year on our technology systems, both external and internal, with a staff of several dozen programmers, project managers, and support team members.

Our other approach to staying ahead of our competitors sees Worldwide Express hire outstanding talent from around the industry to assist in the continual evolution of our company. We are never satisfied with what we have accomplished in the past and always challenge ourselves to consider our shortcomings and improve upon them.

Moving forward we are keen to continue with this programme of improvement, and 2016 holds the promise for us to eclipse the $1B revenue mark in short order. We will continue to add to our acquisition strategy and improve our position as one of the largest transportation companies in the United States.

Most importantly, we will continue to provide significant value to our carrier partners through proving ourselves to be trustworthy and interested in their success as well as our own. Our employees and franchise partners understand the importance of making sure we always treat our partners with the same respect we expect in return.

For a number of years, we have provided an aggressive bonus plan for all of our employees to participate in the growing profitability of the company.

This generates quite a few opportunities to reward excellent work throughout the year, and we are looking to continue with this tradition in the future.

We are also very aware of the need for continued development of our employees, both personally and professionally. Recently, we opened Worldwide Express University, a large repository of current training videos and content to train both new and current employees in hundreds of areas of performance across all job positions, which will help our employees to better understand our business and move further ahead in their roles.

Acquisition International - January 2016 29

AI 49

Syncsort is one of the largest big-data companies and oldest software companies in the market, drawing on it wealth of experience to provide unique solutions. We invited CFO Krish Venkataraman to talk us through his role in the company’s success.

Company: Syncsort Name: Krish Venkataraman Email: kvenkataraman@ syncsort.com Web: www.syncsort.com Address: 50 Tice Boulevard, Suite 250, Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, 07677

At Syncsort, we provide enterprise software that allows organizations to collect, integrate, sort and distribute more data in less time, with fewer resources and lower costs.

Our unique software solutions are used by thousands of customers in in more than 85 countries, including 87 of the Fortune 100 companies, use our fast and secure software to optimize and offload dataprocessing workloads.

Powering over 50% of the world’s mainframes, Syncsort software provides specialized solutions spanning “Big Iron to Big Data,” including next-gen analytical platforms such as Hadoop, cloud, and Splunk.

The firm offers fast, secure, enterprise-grade products to help the world’s leading organizations unleash the power of big data. With Syncsort, clients can design their data applications once and deploy anywhere: from Windows, Unix & Linux to Hadoop; on premises or in the Cloud.

Additionally we offer the world’s most popular sort, with our products helping clients to move the same sort job between Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms with full backward compatibility.

Alongside this Syncsort is the market leader in providing high-performance sort for z Systems, and our flagship product in this area, Syncsort Ironstream, makes it simple to securely collect and forward mainframe log data into Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud, providing a real-time, 360-degree view.

With these strong product offerings and our more than 48 years’ experience, Syncsort’s software and expertise is able to dramatically improve performance of our clients’ data-processing environments, while reducing hardware and labour costs.

During our 40 plus year history, we have been able to anticipate key innovation trends and build capabilities around it. Under its new direction and leadership, the firm is going to accelerate its investment in its organic and inorganic initiatives.

Over the last two years, our investment in our organic initiatives has driven over double-digit growth and a 50% increase in profitability. By focusing on our core principles of building world-class enterprise software that allows organizations to collect, integrate, sort and distribute more data in less time, with fewer resources and lower costs, we believe we can continue on our long journey.

As an executive my role is new within the corporate world, as I act as both the CFO and COO, meaning that I am responsible for both financial stewardship and company operations.

Therefore I lead the traditional finance activities like treasury, control, banking/ debt relations and M&A,

30 Acquisition International - January 2016

but also corporate functions including renewals, internal IT and legal.

Over the last two years, I drove a massive reengineering of our organizational structure and operations that resulted in a 50% increase in profitability and the highest revenue achievement in the firm’s long history. I also manage the firm’s inorganic growth strategy and 75% of the firm’s revenue. These efforts culminated in a very successful acquisition by California-based Clearlake Capital at an EV of 100% or more over previous bids.

Prior to my role at Syncsort I held global leadership roles at some of the world’s best-known firms, from NYSE Euronext and its iconic New York Stock Exchange to Lehman Brothers, Amex and Deloitte.

Currently I serve on the board of electronic trading solutions firm SR Labs (an Insight Venture Partners company). I also hold an MBA from Cornell University and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Through these various roles I have been fortunate to gain a tremendous amount of expertise in financial services, technology and big data.

I have managed billion-dollar profit segments, expense lines in excessive of $600 million, capital expenditures in excess of $400 million, and revenue lines that account for more than 80 percent of a firm’s revenue.

At my 2014 hire, Syncsort CEO Lonne Jaffe touted my “20-year track record of consistent execution, including turning cost centers into profit centers and exceeding Wall Street’s growth expectations quarter after quarter, even during a recession.”

In previous roles, I served as CFO and CAO of global information technology for NYSE Euronext, CAO of equities liquid markets for Lehman Brothers, financial strategist for Amex, and as an M&A expert at Deloitte.

Among my career highlights, I worked on what was then the largest financial-services merger in U.S history and helped one of the largest payments firms expand globally.

Over the last year Syncsort achieved one of the most profitable and highest revenue results for our dataintegration business, driven by a greater than 200% increase in YOY revenue from new products related to Hadoop, Splunk and the IBM z Systems mainframe, and record revenue for the company, as well as a more than 30% growth in fourth-quarter bookings.

Given the segmentation of the business and investment in both new organic and inorganic channels, Syncsort was able to drive significant value creation for our shareholders, customers and employees.

The firm has a history of succeeding even in tough economic climates, and during the 2008 recession Syncsort was able to sustain its revenue because our products are in mission-critical systems. Customers

CFO of the Year

use Syncsort’s software and expertise to dramatically improve performance of their data-processing environments, while reducing hardware and labour costs.

Another key factor to our success has been the firm’s ability to anticipate trends and identify emerging developments in the industry. In order to stay ahead of the curve, we take our customers’ feedback into consideration to identify any pain points they’re experiencing. Discussing those opportunities directly with the customers enables us to improve upon our current software, or recognize a gap that needs to be filled with an entirely different solution.

This strong relationship with our clients is at the foundation of our company, and we work with companies that are both well-versed in big data, as well as those that are just starting out in their big-data journey. We look to identify the pain points of each individual company, and work with them to provide a solution that helps facilitate their big-data initiatives.

These clients come to our firm because they see that we are completely different to our competitors.

Many of the companies offering solutions around data analytics are new to the game. The advent of cloud computing over the past decade has brought tremendous innovation and opportunity to our market, and that’s a good thing.

However our experience, rooted in the dawn of the information age, is what sets us apart. Syncsort has been working and evolving with mainframe computers since the late 1960s. Over the course of nearly five decades, we have managed to stay current to the needs of our customers and the market and bring the longstanding experience and legacy technical expertise that comes from our maturity and time in the business. This is a competitive space. Syncsort offers innovation with consistency and stability.

Moving forward, as adoption of big-data technologies accelerates within the enterprise, customers will be looking to Syncsort to help them take advantage of their most critical data assets. We are using our momentum to continue to drive value for our customers by investing in our state-of-the art organic initiatives and driving an expanded focus on M&A. As CFO I am especially focused on growing the business through acquisitions, looking for high-value, highly differentiated solutions with high barriers to entry that are in adjacent spaces that will be applicable to our existing customer base. We have completed two in the past two years and have a large pipeline of additional targets.

Organically, we will continue our course – helping companies improve their Mainframe operations and lower costs, while focusing on the company’s growth in big data, helping liberate data from legacy platforms so companies can do more advanced bigdata analytics projects in industries like healthcare, self-driving cars, and the Internet of Things.

We will also look to improve our product capabilities with emerging technologies, especially with regard to real-time analytics, where we’re seeing an increased demand in industries such as financial services, healthcare, telecommunications and retail.

Acquisition International - January 2016 31

Company: The Plaza Companies Name: Tom Evans Email: Tom@ evanscommunications.com Web Address: ThePlazaCo.com Address: 9401 W. Thunderbird Rd., Suite 200, Peoria, Arizona 85381 Telephone: (623) 972-1184

The Plaza Companies is a full-service real estate firm specializing in the management, leasing and development of medical office, commercial office, technology and bioscience facilities, mixed-use properties and senior housing facilities throughout Arizona. Founded in 1982, Plaza Companies has earned a reputation as a leader in the commercial real estate community. Plaza provides a full spectrum of services, encompassing development, construction, property management and brokerage services.

Originally hired as Corporate Controller in 2005, Mr. Pinalto was promoted to VP of Finance after six months; SVP in January 2006; and to EVP/CFO/COO in 2009.

His primary responsibilities include: Planning, management, analysis and oversight of the company’s operations; negotiation and placement of all acquisitions, construction, semi-permanent and permanent financing through various banks, insurance companies, institutional partners and conduit facilities; oversight of property and asset management of as many as 100 facilities comprising 3.5 million square feet; investor reporting and equity funding relationships; oversight of the accounting department, information technology, cash management, contract review, corporate and litigation matters.

In essence, Mr. Pinalto runs Plaza’s day-to-day operations. The operating company is a family-owned business with total assets in excess of $750 million under management.

Prior to joining the Plaza Companies in 2005, Mr. Pinalto served as the Chief Financial Officer for Parker Properties, Sqribe Technologies and as the Vice President and Corporate Controller for Birtcher Properties. During his tenure at Birtcher his responsibilities included the financial oversight of a national portfolio of commercial, retail and industrial real estate encompassing in excess of 4 million square feet.

In addition, he held final responsibility for all SEC reporting and an investor services group that reported to over 29,000 limited partners. Over his career, Mr. Pinalto has had working relationships with Smith Barney, CalPERS, UAW, USAA, Healthcare Trust of America, Mission Viejo Company, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation and the Los Angeles Raiders to name a few.

Mr. Pinalto is a Certified Public Accountant, licensed in Arizona and California. He earned his B.A. in Business Administration from Southern Oregon University and gained his audit and real estate experience while working with Deloitte in its Los Angeles office (formerly Touche Ross & Company) and Ernst & Young’s Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group in its Newport Beach office.

According to Sharon Harper, Plaza’s President and CEO, “We have become a company that is more calculated, cautious and consistent as a result of Larry’s addition to our firm. The company has been transformed from a service firm focused mostly on its own investments to an institutionally favoured broadbased service provider focused on better decision making both internally and for our clients.”

32 Acquisition International - January 2016

She added that, “Plaza just came of its second best year on record in terms of financial performance. Our company has been at the forefront of the economic turnaround in Arizona with the development of Skysong 3 in 2013 and with Skysong 4 which is currently under construction. SkySong, the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center, is home to a global business community that links technology, research, education and entrepreneurship to position ASU and Greater Phoenix as global leaders in the knowledge economy.”

SkySong is a 1.2 million square-foot mixed-use development located on a 42-acre campus in Scottsdale structured as a joint venture among ASU, the ASU Foundation, the City of Scottsdale and the Plaza Companies--one of the finest examples of a public/private partnership in the country. It is home to both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies, and just about everything in between.

When asked about how the company fared in during the 2008 financial crisis, Mrs. Harper said, that under Larry’s guidance, “Plaza Companies experienced three of its best years after 2008. It was Mr. Pinalto’s foresight into the pending market collapse that caused the company to change its mix from “development mode” to “services mode”. As a result, the company partnered with a large REIT for management services five months before the collapse. Plaza never missed a beat.”

Currently, Plaza is focused on growing its property management portfolio. After Plaza was awarded the prestigious Accredited Management Organization (“AMO) designation from the Institute for Real Estate Management (“IREM”) for excellence in property management services, it has credible validation of operating at a level only few can match.

According to Mr. Pinalto, “Based upon our reputation of excellence, our development services are being pushed to the point of more growth. Several projects are now in process or in the pipeline, including a senior-living facility in Honolulu—our first endeavour in Hawaii. We have been the recipient of more awards for our development projects than we can name including “Best of NAIOP, RED Awards, and several TOBYs to name a few. As a result, demand for our development expertise has been fierce. Now we need to take advantage of our AMO designation.

Our future is extremely bright for all of our platforms.”

When asked about the company’s employment practices, he said, “In terms of recruitment we look for honest, hard-working smart people. We can teach a smart person how to do a job well. We have plenty of experienced personnel to provide a platform for growth and guidance. One other rule

CFO of the Year

when hiring, hire the strongest candidate you can find. Surrounding yourself with intelligent people elevates everyone’s performance. We like people who question everything.”

“As the industry is constantly evolving we stay involved in our communities, in Arizona and at the national level. It keeps our ear to the ground on new projects and it keeps our company on other’s minds. We also emphasize continuous training and self-improvement. In addition to training courses, workshops and conferences, we offer in-house sessions with outside specialists relevant to current topics. The more we empower our employees, the stronger we get.”

“Finally, we have an emphasis on honesty. It may not always be what people want to hear but we insist on honesty in everything we do. If it’s not ethical, we don’t engage. All of our clients understand this about us.”

Plaza takes advantage of being small and nimble. It prides itself on its ability to scale up or down quickly and seamlessly. In Mr. Pinalto’s words, “Clients of Plaza already appreciate our history, our ethics and our dedication to hard work. We strive to underpromise and over-deliver and are always mindful that we are a service provider. We give advice, not orders.”

When asked about Plaza’s future, he said, “We are confident and upbeat. Our current workload includes the potential development of a large masterplanned community in Phoenix, the Skysong master plan, three senior living facilities and we plan to increase market share with regard to our property management portfolio. Sustainable, measured growth will be key for the next few years.”

Acquisition International - January 2016 33

CFO of the Year AI 104

Connecting Capital is a privately owned Swedish investment company that conducts operations in the form of a limited liability company with no time constraints on its investments. CFO Tomas Ståhl gave us a tantalising glimpse into the working practices of this dynamic and innovative company.

Company: Connecting Capital Holding AB Name: Tomas Ståhl Email: tomas.stahl@ connectingcapital.se Web: connectingcapital.se Address: Wallingatan 2, 111 60 Stockholm, Sweden

At Connecting Capital we focus on establishing productive and long-term relations as a foundation for long-term industrial generation of value through active and committed ownership.

As CFO I actively search for new investment opportunities, as well as managing existing investments.

As such a great deal of my time I spend on asset management of our capital investments. We have outsourced one part of this process and in-house we also have assets under management which are invested in stocks and bonds, primarily in the Nordic region. I have great help from our investment council that have regular meetings discussing current market conditions and actions forthcoming period.

When selecting new investments of majority stakes we evaluate numerous prospects throughout the year, and when it comes to due diligence I perform this task personally, using external advice when necessary to understand when to back off and to understand the business for future growth. Internal controls and a capable finance department is essential for building for growth. Establish KPIs and

hands-on grey matter.

management reports that helps us monitor and develop the business is also a key factor for future success.

Keeping up to date on external factors is also an essential aspect of my role. In order to do this I have a network with contacts from audit firms, law firms and asset management firms, all of whom provide me with the latest industry understanding. Additionally I make sure I read around my subject, and in my work itself I often deal with cases which bring to light the latest industry developments.

Moving forward the plan is to acquire majority stakes in two more platform entities, ie entities that will need add on acquisitions and grow, and of course to further develop our existing investments organically and to find add on acquisitions. I personally feel that four platform entities is sufficient for us and we will be able to manage them with our current organization, but this acquisitions still represents an exciting step forward for the firm.

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34 Acquisition International - January 2016

d

CEO of the Month It’s no coincidence that at the helm of the world’s most successful companies sit innovative and creative business leaders. With the consistent stream of challenges thrown at them over recent years, leading and innovative CEOs have never been more deserving of recognition.

Over the follwing pages, we have collated a series of articles, showcasing the work of these dedicated and distinguished professionals and highlighting how they have made their mark on the corporate landscape.

CEO of the Month - UK AI 34

Southwest 66 Credit Union is a member owned financial cooperative with the mission of delivering quality products and services, along with financial literacy to our communities. We got in touch with their CEO, Sean M. Cahill, to find out his philosophy on leading a major company.

Company: Southwest 66 Credit Union Name: Sean M. Cahill Email: Sean.cahill@ southwest66.com Web: www.southwest66.com Address: Po Box 12010 Telephone: 432-363-6600

Sean Cahill firmly believes that leadership is both a choice and a responsibility. In his role as CEO, he believes that leading a business involves becoming a role model for your employees and mentoring them along the right path. “I believe I have been given a gift in terms of the experiences I have had in my career,” says Cahill. “With this in mind, I feel that now is the time to give back to all of those around me, in the same way that others have done for me. My greatest advice to any leader is to get a mentor, and be a mentor. It really will change your life.”

According to Cahill, leadership is all about establishing a level of trust between yourself and those that you are trying to influence. “You need to need to trust your leaders in order to execute your strategic and tactical plan, and give them the support they need to do their job,” says Cahill. “And of course, we also verify our work through dashboards and other metrics in order to ensure that the ship is headed in the right direction.

In this regard, engagement is the key, and if you can engage your leaders and staff to where they become advocates for your brand, you have already won. Wins beget wins.”

As well as a high level of engagement, attracting a high calibre of professionals has also played a pivotal role in Cahill’s success. From his experience, the culture and mentality of the company is the key driving force behind attracting and keeping hold of top professionals.

“You can pay top dollar for the right talent, but unless you find other ways to engage your leadership, you will eventually lose them to the person that pays just a bit higher” says Cahill. “I believe this is done through a

commitment to development and succession planning.

Having each leader’s best interest in mind, and understanding where they want to grow demonstrates your commitment to them. I also believe that you need to have a solid mix of performance and potential, as performance alone does not tell the entire story about an employee.”

When it comes to consistently delivering for their clients, Cahill’s approach is quite straight-forward. “We simply do the right thing for our members every single time,” says Cahill. “We build relationships with them in the same way you would do with a doctor, where you trust the diagnosis and remedy suggested. Many members will rank their financial health as more of a priority than their physical health, which is always interesting to me.”

When asked what Southwest 66 Credit Union’s unique selling point was, Cahill’s response is simply that they are company that truly cares about their clients. “We are out in our communities making them better every single day,” says Cahill. “We use “sweat equity” to volunteer as an organisation every chance we get, and we create programs that better our community.

For instance, we created an affinity debit card for our local schools and churches that is completely free to them. Every quarter, we donate a portion of our swipe interchange back to the school or church for them to use as they choose for the benefit of the organisation.

We know that so many wonderful things are being done by these organisations, and I am just so happy to say that we have helped a little.”

Cahill’s experience is quite substantial, and continually adds value to his current role as CEO. “Prior to Southwest 66, I spent over 20 years in the industry, working for both credit unions and banks. I also spent some time in the technology industry, and that assists me in identifying trends and possible opportunities where we can merge financial services and technology.”

As well as the many opportunities in their industry, Southwest 66 Credit Union are also facing a number of challenges that they need to overcome. “Energy prices are down, and as a company working in a market primarily driven by oil development you can see the impact,” says Cahill. “In this environment, layoffs are common, and our members really are struggling. This makes our job even more important to find ways to help them in their time of need.”

Nonetheless, Cahill is optimistic about the future of the company in 2016 and beyond. “We really do have an incredible team working for the credit union, and our members are being served in bigger and better ways than ever before with new, remodelled locations that feature a true retail experience,” says Cahill. “Our communities are growing, and we listen and respond to what they have to say. We look forward to the next year and beyond and are equipped to continue building our business into a model that others can follow.”

36 Acquisition International - January 2016

In the world of business aviation, Rizon Jet is a hybrid business, and, unlike many of its competitors, has achieved results across a range of different areas in their industry. Their ability to be versatile, intuitive, perceptive and at times controversial, is what has really kept the business alive for so many years.

Pulling the strings behind this innovative business is Allan McGreal, and he spoke to us about his holistic approach and how he views himself as more than just a CEO.

Company: Rizon Jet Name: Allan McGreal Email: Allan.mcgreal@rizonjet.com Web: www.rizonjet.com Address: Churchill Way, London Biggin Hill Airport, Kent, TN16 3BN, United Kingdom Telephone: +44 1959 543 100

In only four years of operation, Rizon Jet has achieved remarkable success winning three internationally acclaimed awards as the Number 1 Business Aviation facility in the EMEA and Russia. Going forward, the business strives to be an international gateway to and from London by virtue of offering VIP flight services as a luxury Fixed Base Operator (FBO – a VIP Terminal for Business Aviation). Their clients have included some highly influential figures such as Heads and Ministers of State, as well as many well-known celebrities. Nonetheless, Rizon Jet places the same level of importance and dedication to each and every one of its clients.

Alongside maintaining large corporate aircrafts such as the Bombardier Global Express and Challenger family, Rizon Jet also manages the arrival and departure of aircraft, crews, passengers and all of the associated needs and desires of the modern business traveller. In providing such a diverse range of services, Rizon Jet exploits every aspect of its award winning facility. This can range from intimate product launches and society dinners, to huge 3,500 seated BBC Concerts that are broadcasted across the globe.

According to McGreal, ‘diversity’ is a word that defines their company and is what truly distinguishes them from their competitors. “Rizon Jet is breaking the mould in modern business aviation’s reliance upon its core business of engineering and operations to fund the business into growth,” says McGreal.

“The facility design, completion, and operability was achieved to allow the greatest diversity of use possible, for three main reasons. Firstly, to provide a greater return on the investment. Secondly, for improved access for clients to exploit the space, their aircraft and use. And lastly, for vast gains in PR and marketing to celebrate the industry, the investment and its potential.

“The team of people who deliver such diversity are remarkable in their own right and truly are an eclectic collection of talent,” says McGreal. “Each and every one of them contributes to making sure that the capacity, creativity and competence of the business is maintained for the next four years, ensuring that another 23,000 passengers, 17,000 aircraft and 13,000 visitors can be safely and profitably received through the hangar and VIP terminal.”

Unsurprisingly, the day-to-day running of a company such as this encompasses a wide a range of responsibilities, where McGreal may have to go beyond the typical tasks attributed to the role of CEO. “I could be called many things throughout my time as the business leader of Rizon Jet, and ‘CEO’ is not always the most accurate description,” says McGreal. “Although I’m sure that this is also true for many of my peers, I always find it enjoyable to

occupy a different role in the company whenever the opportunity arises. I have found that this occurs more often than not, but in any case it’s a rewarding experience to have access and to experience the roles of others in the company.”

As Chief Executive and given that commercial aviation is one of the most heavily regulated of environments, McGreal has a truly significant set of responsibilities. “I am accountable across the normal corporate and fiscal responsibilities as any executive might be,” says McGreal. “But there are additional and significant responsibilities to state regulators typically from the US FAA, UK CAA, EASA, Cayman, Bermuda, Aruba and Qatar States. These regulations are all implemented for the safe and efficient management of aviation services, engineering and flight.”

As well as these obligations, McGreal is also in charge of providing sufficient resources to run the business to enable directors and management. “As an independent Aviation Company, we don’t rely on a network of sibling organisations to generate business,” McGreall explains. “As a result, we rarely develop strategies that are outside of the regulated business but we are not inclined to follow convention.

For example, my role looks primarily at the three main profit generators: engineering, operations and hospitality. Each of these allow for a growth in ideas, but I find that the real benefit of my role is to provide a positive signal of safety and compliance while also giving them enough space to act in safeguarding the political and economic climate affecting the business.

“Although my role can be quite different from the typical CEO, there is an equally important aspect to my job which many of my peers in this industry would recognise immediately. This, of course, is one of political competence and of being a good neighbour. Airports is as a business, where we live and unfortunately, such places are where others live too who are to a greater or lesser extent reliant upon the airports. This modern necessity can instil volatile reactions and managing these is becoming an increasingly important and very necessary role.”

Prior to Rizon Jet, McGreal began his career in aviation in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, serving aboard Aircraft Carriers. Throughout his career, he has worked across a variety of areas in the aviation sector, and believes that this has given him a distinct advantage in his role today as CEO of Rizon Jet. “The main value of my experience is that I have at least touched on almost every aspect of flying, which includes military service, production and test with British Aerospace (BAE SYSTEMS), as well scheduled airline engineering involving design and repair authority and fleet management with British Airways.

Acquisition International - January 2016 37

CEO of the Month

“Over the years, I stepped up to corporate management as Group Head of Quality control with Hamble Aerostructures, then as Hamble was acquired by Dowty Aerospace, as General Manager with Repair Stations. This took me directly into business aviation as part of the group’s growth strategy.”

Alongside experience, personality is also key according to McGreal. “I’ve learned through this experience that taking ownership of the task is crucial, and each position I’ve held has completed its goals and led via merger or acquisition to the next.

Furthermore, a sense of humour helps, and an ability to see over the hedge has thankfully saved me from a number of imperfect decisions.”

According to McGreal, Rizon Jet’s versatility is no accident and touches not only on the fabric, functionality and capacity of the building, but also on the resourcefulness of their staff, their agile product range as well as their highly empowered management team. “I enjoy an informed day and utilise a range of information tools from across the media platforms within and outside the industry,” says McGreal. “The distribution of these not only informs the business, but introduces new perspectives, commentaries and opinion. With all of these combined, the vision and strategy is equally informed and therefore it’s easy for me to keep the vision in clear view of my company. As a result, keeping the various business strands connected is essential to maintain an even and efficient execution of the vision.”

Another major challenge in their industry is that Rizon Jet survive on low volumes but with a very high service quality. “It’s never easy to set a bar high and then jump clean over it, but we must always endeavour to do this,” says McGreal. “However, you need to be prepared to fail and if you have little or no capacity to fail, especially operating at our level, then outcomes will be far more damaging. In this sense, we are quite brave in our approach but at the same time are fully prepared to continually test our service levels well before our clients do.”

38 Acquisition International - January 2016

Historically however, providing this high level of service has not always been the case. As McGreal explains: “Some FBO’s have delivered a volume business with very low quality thresholds. Networks particularly were guilty of this and it has led to a much diminished FBO service offering when compared to the US and emerging ME market level of service and facility.

“This inadequate investment in modern, efficient and environmentally savvy facility has added to the poor growth of the EMEA market and contributes to the slow recovery to 2007 levels of activity. Unless this is addressed, alongside the addition of improved service level at scheduled airlines, the ability of the FBO as a viable part of the value chain will disappear.”

Consequently, the level of investment thus far in Rizon Jet of £29m has been successfully translated in three ways. Firstly, there has been investment in a modern, future proofed facility with integrated engineering and operational capability. Secondly, they have been recognised by industry peer group as best in class, and last but not least, they are now driving competition to meet or exceed their design and operational standards.

“Through adopting the Rizon Jet facility model,” says McGreal. “The decline in service quality and stubborn use and acceptance of poor facilities is now no longer viable, and customer value is now recovering to more acceptable levels. However, there still remains some resistant aspects of the industry who hold a very short term view on service levels and extract value from short term business rather than look long term to underpin more significant investors in aircraft and operations.”

For Rizon Jet, the challenge remains to provide a quality led service which answers the challenge of clients and airline premium travel. Alongside this, the service safely stimulates the competition to meet or exceed our levels while at the same time securing sufficient competitive difference to allow Rizon Jet to grow and prosper in its sector.

“We firmly believe that diversified services are the saving grace of investment in new state of the art facilities,” says McGreal. “Rizon Jet has admirably demonstrated that the exploitation of a well-designed facility to meet the needs of typically the entertainment and film industry, not only eases the dependence on core operations to meet the budget expectations, but also drives another industry previously viewed in abject diffidence by an inclusive and at times secular business aviation market.

“There are two outcomes I especially enjoy as a result,” says McGreal. “Firstly, the new industry of hospitality and entertainment drives a much more expansive marketing strategy, and reaches a number of sectors not previously available to the business aviation sector. Secondly, the PR impact is astonishing in how it lets people know who we are and what we do, which not only better informs our existing clients, but also romances others.”

Looking towards 2016 and beyond, Rizon Jet will continue to build and sustain their reputation as leaders in their industry. More specifically, their growth will also involve attracting a lot of new investment. “We are ready for new investors as the start-up phase is now complete,” says McGreal. “As a company that has achieved three industry awards in their first four years as well as providing diversity all across the business, we will need investment to exploit this growth to expand and diversify our services even further.”

CFO of the Month AI 66

ADS Inc. is a leading solutions provider that proudly serves all branches of the U.S. Military, federal, state and local government organization, law enforcement, first responders, foreign governments and the defense industry. The company is focused on solving customers’ challenges through the largest product and service selection, the broadest array of procurement and contract options, world-class support and logistics solutions and legendary customer service.

Company: ADS, Inc. Name: Karan Rai Email: krai@adsinc.com Web: http://adsinc.com/ Address: Lynnwood Plaza, 621 Lynnhaven Parkway, Suite 400 Virginia Beach, VA 23452 Telephone: 866 845 3012

ADS actively seeks out customers’ equipment and logistics challenges to deliver innovative and costeffective solutions that help them complete their mission and maintain readiness. ADS equipment and support solutions include C4ISR, Combat Support, Medical, Operational Clothing and Individual Equipment (OCIE), Weapons and Optics as well as Special Missions, including CWMD, CBRNe EOD, First Responders and Maritime Operations.

covering defense and aerospace companies in the leverage/acquisition finance group. Rai holds an MBA from Yale University’s School of Management.

The company ADS are a team of dedicated professionals, veterans, and retired government personnel with unmatched knowledge of suppliers, products, procurement, budget processes, supply chain management, and logistics. Their veterans have over 1,000 years of collective service and can provide your organization valuable expertise.

“Karan and I have been working together daily for the last two years,” said Jason Wallace, ADS CEO. “I am confident that our continued partnership will make ADS a stronger, healthier company in the years to come. He is the right person to help develop and execute our company’s long-term strategy, as well as keep our financial house in order.”

They know what’s at stake and they take it as seriously as you do. Bring ADS your mission requirement and they will help you identify the best solutions to meet it. If the right solution doesn’t exist, they’ll leverage their expertise and work with their partners to create it. They will offer you a range of contract vehicles for procurement, manage the entire supply chain, and get your equipment to you when and where you need it – without fail.

Rai said, “I am excited about the opportunity and am grateful for the trust the board has placed in me.

I look forward to working with Jason and the rest of my teammates to make ADS the strongest, bestpositioned firm to tackle the challenges and leverage the opportunities ahead.” Rai will continue to serve as the Company’s Chief Financial Officer supported by our capable and very experienced Finance team led by John Dunn, our Vice President of Finance.

Karan Rai, ADS President and CFO In March 2015 ADS announced the promotion of Karan Rai to President, designed to strengthen the company’s leadership team. Luke Hillier, Executive Chairman of the board of directors named current Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Executive Vice President, Karan Rai, President of ADS. Rai joined ADS in August 2012 as its Director of International and Strategic Business Development. He also served as the Vice President of Corporate Development before being promoted to CFO, March 2013.

ADS Enters into Agreement with Theodor Wille Intertrade In September 2015, ADS announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with the shareholders of Theodor Wille Intertrade (TWI) to acquire all of the outstanding shares of TWI. TWI, headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, with operating subsidiaries in Germany and the United Arab Emirates, is a global provider of integrated supply chain solutions to customers primarily operating in the United States European Command (EUCOM) and the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) regions.

“This transition represents the entire board’s view that Karan has and will continue to add value to our organization both as president and continuing as CFO,” said Hillier. “In his expanded role as president, the board and I will be looking for Karan to increase his level of internal and external engagement. We want him to help us evaluate long-term business development opportunities, identify new markets for our product and service offerings and strengthen his relationships with our top customers and vendors,” Hillier added.

During his tenure at ADS, Rai has brought innovation and strategic focus to his role as CFO. In so doing, he has made a significant impact on the company’s capital structure and investor relations. Prior to joining ADS, Rai was a vice president at JPMorgan’s Investment Bank where he spent seven years

“I look forward to working with Jason and the rest of my teammates to make ADS the strongest, bestpositioned firm to tackle the challenges and leverage the opportunities ahead” – Karan Rai, President and CFO, ADS commented.

TWI delivers construction materials, equipment, hardware, food and food services as well as provides logistics and transportation management services to the U.S. military and other large government contractors.

“Acquiring TWI immediately combines the global capabilities of ADS with the deep local market expertise of TWI in Europe, the Middle East and Central and Southwest Asia,” said Karan Rai, ADS president and CFO. “TWI’s existing business and pipeline is highly complementary to our portfolio of contract vehicles and provides sound cost and revenue synergy opportunities. This acquisition will also allow us to accelerate growth in an efficient and disciplined manner.”

Acquisition International - January 2016 39

Grubesa & Partneri Importanne galleria Iblerov trg 10/V 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia T: +385 (0)1 4550 010 F: +385 (0)1 4615 398 M: +385 (0)91 251 5528

gordana.grubesa@zg.t-com.hr www.grubesa-partneri.hr

CEO of the Year - Virginia AI 66

ThunderCat Technology is a systems integrator that brings an innovative approach to solving customer problems in and around the data-center by providing strategies for data storage, networking, cyber-security, and applications. We spoke to Tom Deierlein, CEO of ThunderCat Technology, to get his insight into running a major company and the philosophy behind his success.

Company: ThunderCat Technology Name: Tom Deierlein Web: www.thundercattech.com Address: 1925 Isaac Newton Square, Suite 180, Reston VA 20190

I once heard that the role of the CEO is to simply set the vision, hire the right people, and keep money in the bank. I certainly do adhere to this approach, and play a large role in setting the vision and strategy, and work hard to establish and maintain the right culture. However, for the most part I think it is equally important to stay out of the way. I have hired the right senior leaders, who have the expertise, experience necessary to make the company successful. They are empowered to make the right decisions, and I wholeheartedly embrace the concept of servant-leadership. As such, I work for my employees to provide them with the resources, opportunities, and challenges they need to be successful.

When enforcing anything in the company, the first step is to have a vision and document it clearly and concisely in writing. The second is to communicate it to senior leaders and discuss with them ensuring complete agreement, and the third is to share with the entire team. Finally, continually revisit and discuss. This last step of repeating over time and reinforcing is the key. Across the board, everyone should know what they should be doing and is constantly reminded of that.

In my case, I have a written Personal Leadership Philosophy that lets people know how I intend to lead, what my values are, what my expectations are, and what people can expect of me. This is shared in writing with all new employees on their first day, and is published in the employee handbook. Most importantly, I sit one-on-one and discuss it with them in their first 30 days with ThunderCat. As for our approach towards implementing our technology, we are objective and independent and rely on our elite group of talented engineers and account managers who hold multiple technical certifications across numerous disciplines. Our mission is to be a trusted Top 100 provider of information technology to the Federal Government, Fortune 500 companies, and various commercial accounts. Broadly speaking, the Purpose of ThunderCat Technology is to make the United States a better and safer place for all Americans.

While we do have a handful of commercial clients, the majority run across all areas of the US Federal Government from Defence and Intel to Civilian agencies as well. They include Department of Homeland Security, US Army Corps of Engineers, Health and Human Services, FBI, Navy, and the Veteran’s Administration.

working hard along our clients to ensure that our nation’s infrastructure is secured against everything from common criminals and teenage hackers to sophisticated attacks and rogue nation states.

In order to achieve our success, we focus on our niche market, which is serving the agencies of the US Federal Government, FedIT. Alongside this, we are very focused on ethics and compliance. Thirdly, we emphasize training and professional development across all functions, especially our engineers and sales professionals who need to keep up with latest and greatest technologies and maintain proficiency and certifications with our key partners.

As a company working in an industry that is constantly evolving, we implement a number of measures to ensure that they are at the forefront of any emerging developments. Awareness and acknowledgement that we are living in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world is key. Especially for technology, because new approaches, companies and technologies are constantly popping up. The trick is to be active in the marketplace with clients and prospects so you hear when something different and better is out there.

Then we evaluate the technology, the company and. when appropriate, partner and bring it to the market.

This can be extremely hard since every new widget rep knocking on your door truly believes theirs is the next game changer. As such, I always have my very best and brightest evaluate any new players.

Despite the many challenges facing us at present, I am very confident about the future of our company.

We recently completed a strategic planning exercise called TCAT 2020, where we explored our approach to the next five years. We completed a set of goals for the company which included revenue and profit obviously, but also explored different markets and the impact of trends like cloud and mobile applications.

Moreover, we have some aggressive growth planned and have laid in the necessary infrastructure and processes to step on the gas. Overall our plan is to continue to bring the best technologies to the FedIT market including a focus on data, cyber, while keeping our eyes on the mobile and cloud future.

But, the most important goals and plans that came from that exercise honestly have nothing to do with dollars and cents, markets or technology. The most important initiatives were how to ensure we take excellent care of our team through work environment, benefits, training, development, and challenges to keep them engaged and growing personally and professionally.

Furthermore, we sell various technologies in and around the data center, including a lot of data storage, networking, along with various applications.

But, just like many others our rapidly growing business practice is cyber-security. We are Acquisition International - January 2016 41

AI 1

Company: AFG& Name: Frank C Ginsberg Email: fginsberg@afg1.com Web: www.avrettfreeginsberg.com Address: 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, NY 10017 Telephone: 001 212 832 3800

While other agencies scramble to reverse engineer themselves for the age of collaboration, AFG& was born with collaboration at its core. They started life as a small, street-smart collective called Avrett Free Ginsberg, which became an icon of the original New York creative revolution by realizing that the more voices they could include in this thing, the louder they could shout.

Frank Ginsberg, Founder, Creative Chairman & CEO Frank Ginsberg is an advertising guru. Over the years, a lot of other labels have been affixed to him too: founder, chairman, entrepreneur, icon and legend. But the one title Frank has always been most comfortable with is the one he started with– art director. His singular style, distinguished by its differentiating power, has helped build brands like Purina Cat Chow, Friskies and Fancy Feast Cat Food, U.S. Trust, Financial Times, Clear Eyes Eye Drops, Goody’s Pain Relief, Monistat, Nair, Enterprise RentA-Car, Bacardi, Van Cleef & Arpels, St. Regis Hotels and Tumi Luggage.

Frank sits on the boards of directors of the 4A’s Creative Committee, The American Hospital of Paris Foundation, The Acting Company and the Children’s Hearing Institute, which honored him with the Jule Styne Humanitarian Award. He also serves on the dean’s boards of the Boston University College of Fine Arts and the New York University College of Arts & Science.

AFGEurope AFGEurope is a full-service, fully staffed network of people and offices throughout Europe and Russia, created to serve the needs of their global clients.

They’re now at work in 39 markets and are hubbed in London. The beautiful thing about The Ultimate Partnership is that it’s an idea that speaks every language, for it includes afgasia and afgbrazil as well.

Cannes Lions 2015

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NYU Student Studio Through an innovative partnership with the NYU Steinhardt School, AFG& creates teams of talented students who work together as an agency-withinthe-agency to bring their clients new ideas and fresh perspectives. They call it the AFG Student Studio, and it’s an amazing and invaluable learning experience. (For the students, too.)

Diversity At AFG&, they operate as a whole – made up of many. They are not defined by race, culture or religion, but by experience, outlook and intellect.

Their backgrounds and lifestyles mold them as people and inspire the unique work they provide for their clients.

At AFG& they embrace difference because it leads to greatness. They believe that in order to really harness the power of unlimited partnership, they must bring their whole selves to the table and embrace, celebrate and leverage their unique differences to make themselves a better whole.

The firm is active in the following: • Asian Heritage Group • Somos – Hispanic/Latino Heritage Group • Women’s Leadership Network • BEN – Black Employee Network • IPGBLT – Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,Transgender and Allies Group • IPG Multicultural Resource Groups

CEO of the Month

Launch event for Reb’l Fleur Acquisition International - January 2016 43

CFO of the Month Recent years have been dominated by a recessionary climate characterised by economic uncertainty, low-confidence and under investment. CFOs have had to readjust by cutting costs and exploring alternative areas for growth, however successful CFOs have used the recession to emphasise the importance of their skills at board level and have made changes in strategy in order to maintain growth.

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Solis Mammography is a specialized healthcare provider focused exclusively on providing women an exceptional mammography experience. Solis provides a complete range of highly specialized services including screening and diagnostic mammography (2D and 3D), computer-aided detection, breast ultrasound, stereotactic biopsy, and ultrasound-guided biopsy. The entire business is centered around a unified purpose – providing women with a Peace of Mind Mammogram™ with such an exceptional experience that they will not avoid getting the mammogram they need. We invited Mano Mahadeva, Solis’ Chief Financial Officer, to provide us with a deeper insight into the company’s work.

Company: Solis Mammography Name: Mano Mahadeva, CPA, MBA, ABV Email: MMahadeva@ SolisMammo.com Web: www.SolisMammo.com Address: 15601 Dallas Parkway, Suite 500, Addison, TX 75001 Also find the company on: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest

Headquartered in Addison, Texas, Solis Mammography operates 30 centers serving five major markets in North and South Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, and Arizona. The company operates through both whollyowned facilities and successful joint ventures with hospital partners. Regardless of location, the Solis team is committed to our promise of providing an exceptional Peace of Mind Mammogram™ in every market we serve. This is equally as important to the women we see in our centers as it is to the referring physicians who entrust us with their patients’ care.

Solis has instituted the use of several innovative technologies to help facilitate patient engagement at key touchpoints, including scheduling, registration, and the prompt delivery of results. We understand that a breast exam can be a highly anxious time for women, which is why we strive to make patients as comfortable and relaxed as possible before, during, and after their visit.

Putting patients first has been our mission for nearly 30 years. Our story began in Plano, Texas, when Dr. Timothy Freer opened the first Women’s Diagnostic Center. His passion for patient care and breast health helped the business grow. With the goal of bringing his same level of patient-focused care and breastimaging specialization to a larger population, the business evolved in 2005 to become the Solis brand.

As Chief Financial Officer of Solis Mammography, I serve as a senior member of the company’s executive management team and contribute to the overall strategic direction of the business from a financial perspective. Hired in January 2013 as part of a newly assembled leadership team, my key objectives are to ensure that the company’s capital structure, cash flow, financial systems, controls, and forecasting models support our anticipated growth and expansion goals.

In this role, I work closely with our CEO, Board of Directors, and senior management team as a trusted advisor in providing strategic operational planning support, as well as financial accountability, management, and reporting. Further, I help champion the improvement of financial results by envisioning and developing plans that enhance and extend the business model’s profitability and by ensuring that we meet financial goals.

In my first two years with Solis, I played a major role in doubling EBITDA. I have also: • Helped negotiate critical joint venture agreements to partner and manage nine breastscreening facilities for two of the largest hospital systems in the U.S. We are on target to add a third system by late 2015.

• Increased the company’s flexibility and available cash by refinancing its debt, tripling the credit facility, and locking in significantly lower rates.

• Added stability to our capital structure and secured investment capital necessary to fuel growth and expansion by recapitalizing the company in 2015.

Prior to my role at Solis Mammography I worked for the U.S. Oncology Network, a subsidiary of McKesson Corporation, one of the nation’s largest networks of community-based oncology physicians and researchers.

My role was to help support U.S. Oncology’s vision of expanding patient access to high-quality, integrated cancer care by directing the operations, finance, and performance of the North Texas Region—recognized as the organization’s largest regional contributor.

In order to achieve this, I helped render comprehensive strategic, financial, and operational oversight, serving as a critical partner to corporate

46 Acquisition International - January 2016

CFO of the Year

and physician leadership in driving the strategic planning, policy definition, and program development and rollout vital to ensuring strong performance and achievement of business objectives.

The experience of working in the healthcare industry over the past 30 years has provided me with a unique understanding of this market. Most of us acknowledge that the information technology arena is constantly disruptive in innovation. I would argue that, today, health care is equally disruptive, as we see new models and new offerings surface daily! It has long been discussed that health care in the United States is expensive, relative to other developed nations, in terms of value per dollar spent. There is also the trillion-dollar liability that faces this nation in terms of unfunded health care for present and future Medicare recipients. The Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act (PPACA) of 2010 is in its early stages of life.

All of these events continue to create new dynamics within the healthcare system that create both disruption and opportunities to help improve access to patient care, quality of service, and affordability..

which will create a gateway for easy and accurate compliance measurement and follow up. These and many other innovations in our process were built based upon direct feedback from our focus group research, all cantered around how we can make the experience better – so that women won’t avoid getting the mammogram they need.

By the end of 2016, we plan to have all centers equipped with the latest screening technology, including 3D mammography (also known as tomosynthesis). The PPACA has made breast screening a required provision of health plans, and in 2015, The Centre for Medicare and Medicaid Services established a new CPT code (current procedural terminology) to help pay for the use of this state-of-the-art technology.

Looking to the future, Solis Mammography is keen to continue its strategic vision to be the national leader in breast imaging services, helping women achieve and maintain optimal health and quality of life. This will require a continued commitment to building and sustaining alliances and partnerships with health systems across the country in order to extend patient access to our network. We are involved in ongoing discussions with healthcare providers in select markets nationwide that have been identified based on specific criteria such as market demographics and need. This mutually beneficial collaborative model will serve not only our company, but our physicians, patients, and communities now and into the future.

Even though the nation faced a financial crisis in 2008, the healthcare sector did not suffer as compared to most industries as, unless elective in nature, people typically need health services without delay. As one of many key leaders in health care across this nation, it is important for me to stay abreast of changes by reading prominent journals, interacting with other key leaders, attending conferences and seminars, listening to critical webcasts, and continuing my education. All of these activities enable me to be proactive in innovating better business solutions, and have further cultivated in me the capacity for anticipating what’s around the bend.

Solis Mammography created the Peace of Mind Mammogram™, a patient-centric approach to breast health services. Extensive proprietary market research—with women and referring physicians— into the psychology of mammography compliance helped Solis create new procedures and supporting technologies to reduce stress and anxiety throughout the entire screening process. From fast, reliable, and easy online scheduling and tablet registration to delivery of results within 24-48 hours through secure emails, the mammography experience at Solis is proven to offer greater comfort, convenience, and peace of mind for the women we serve.

This service involves creating a warm and caring, home-like atmosphere with warm colors and soothing music at our centers. Our team members are highly trained in providing outstanding patient care. In addition, we respect our patients’ time—getting most in and out of our centers within 30 to 45 minutes. Understanding the anxiety associated with symptomatic patients, we get our diagnostic patients scheduled within 24 to 48 hours, if not at their center of first choice, then at a Solis center nearby. We have also introduced schedule flexibility at some locations, including later hours and Saturday appointments to expand availability to those who cannot take time off during the work week.

We offer a team of dedicated Client Relations Specialists who help expedite the referral process and follow-up services with our referring physician community. This further reduces patient anxiety and increases compliance for our physician partners.

In addition, we are building a new physician portal, Acquisition International - January 2016 47

CFO of the Month AI 70

Company: Revlon Consumer Products Corp Name: Roberto Simon Email: roberto.simon@revlon.com Web: www.revlon.com Telephone: 212 527 4000

Roberto Simon is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at REVLON INC has amassed a tremendous breadth of Business, International, Finance and ERP/SAP Business skills which are as follows: • Extensive experience in the Global Market (Europe, North America, South America and Africa); • Successfully set up key objectives and goals in the Finance and Supply Chain and to implement business oriented strategies that met and exceeded objectives; • Ability to lead cross-functional corporate projects across multiple Business Units/Countries; • Expertise in Mergers &Acquisitions, having experience in numerous projects internationally; • Extensive knowledge of ERP/SAP and Business Intelligence implementations; • Ability to effective use resources, especially under cost constraint periods and start-up organizations; • Longstanding relationships with all key functional areas of an organization; • Refinancing current shareholders sub loan to prepare private equity exit strategy.

As CFO of REVLON INC from October 2014 to the present, his current duties concern reporting to the CEO, managing responsibility over for all Finance and IT: Corporate Finance, SEC filing, Taxes, Internal Audit, Operations Finance, Commercial Finance, M&A, Integration, SAP and IT. His achievements as CFO of REVLON INC include: • Implementing SOX and started GRC compliance in the new acquired The Colomer Group; • Launching a long term tax project to optimize future cash tax payments and minimize income tax provision; • Responsibility for the Integration process of the two companies merged: finance, share services and IT; • Leading M&A process; • Responsibility for all Commercial Financial Controllers for both professional and consumer across the world; • Managing all Operations Finance, including 6 manufacturing plants; • Continuing deployment of SAP within all Consumer divisions. Responsible for organization and process changes within the roll outs.

About the company Revlon was founded in 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the “L” in the REVLON name. Starting with a single product - a nail enamel unlike any before it - the three founders pooled their meager resources and developed a unique manufacturing process.

Revlon is a global color cosmetics, hair color, beauty tools, fragrances, skincare, anti-perspirant / deodorants and beauty care products company whose vision is Glamour, Excitement and Innovation through High-quality Products at Affordable Prices.

Revlon® is one of the strongest consumer brand franchises in the world. Revlon’s global brand portfolio includes Revlon® color cosmetics, Almay® color cosmetics, SinfulColors® color cosmetics, Pure Ice® color cosmetics, Revlon ColorSilk® hair color, Revlon® beauty tools, Charlie® fragrances, Mitchum® anti-perspirant / deodorants, and Ultima II® and Gatineau® skincare and its products are sold in over 100 countries across six continents.

Websites featuring current product and promotional information can be reached at www.revlon.com, www.almay.com and www.mitchum.com.

Since 1932, Revlon has developed a long-standing reputation as a trendsetter in the world of cosmetics,

48 Acquisition International - January 2016

skin care, fragrance, and personal care. Revlon’s vision is to provide glamour, excitement and innovation through quality products at affordable prices.

At Revlon, integrity and trust are critical to everything that they do. They are committed to maintaining the highest standards in corporate governance, and they believe that good business practices and an organizational culture of strong ethics are the underpinnings of a strong and successful company.

Corporate Social Responsibility Framework The company’s Corporate Social Responsibility Framework (the “Revlon CSR”) is disseminated to all of their employees worldwide. The Revlon CSR is monitored and overseen by two of their most senior executives, their Chief Science Officer and Chief Administrative Officer.

• The Revlon CSR includes the Purpose, Standards and Measurements in each of the key areas of Safety, Social, Ethical, Regulatory and Environmental.

• The stated purposes are as follows: • Safety: Provide their consumers with highquality, safe and efficacious products and their valued employees with a safe workplace.

• Social: Enhance women’s lives through their products and philanthropic efforts.

• Ethical: Conduct business in an ethical manner.

• Regulatory: Ensure that their products and operating facilities meet or exceed all applicable standards, globally.

• Environmental: Reduce the environmental impact of their operations.

Commitment to safety Revlon is committed to providing their consumers with the highest quality products that are safe and effective. All ingredients used by Revlon and all products manufactured and sold by Revlon to consumers, under all their various brands, either meet or exceed the safety and regulatory standards set by the 120 countries around the world where their products are sold, including those set by the United States Food and Drug Administration (the “FDA”) and the European Union (the “E.U.”).

Revlon is extremely proud to have been at the forefront of safety innovations in their industry.

Through their consistent and meticulous use of safety methodology, they are confident that their products maintain the high levels of safety and efficacy that their consumers deserve.

As they expand their business, bringing new products and brands into their portfolio through acquisition, they ensure that they conform to Revlon’s exacting standards within a reasonable timetable following the acquisition based on R&D, regulatory, manufacturing and other commercial considerations. Specifically, in connection with their acquisition of the professional products business from The Colomer Group, they have implemented a plan to integrate all formulas and ensure they meet Revlon’s safety standards, a process they expect to be completed by 2016.

Diversity Revlon is dedicated to the goal of providing equal employment opportunities for all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, handicap/ disability, sexual orientation, marital status, citizenship or veterans status and to affirmatively seek to advance the principles of equal employment opportunity. Affirmative action will be taken to employ, advance in employment and otherwise treat without discrimination women, minorities, qualified disabled individuals and veterans.

Bernice de la Rosa Spanish Arbitration

cpdelarosa@yahoo.com

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Leading Advisers 2016 Legal support and consultancy services form the backbone of corporate culture, ensuring that clients are advised at every turn to ensure major problems do not appear, and that if such issues do arise they are dealt with swiftly and professionally.

In their own words the top businesses and the individuals behind them explain the role they play within their sector and the services they provide.

Leading Advisers 2016 AI 95

Cabinet NYEMB is one of the leading law firms in West and Central Africa, widely recognized for providing its clients with innovative and integrated solutions to complex local or multijurisdictional matters. We invited Jacques Nyemb to provide us with an insight into the vital role of a tax advisor within the company.

Founded in 1996 by myself, Cabinet NYEMB has achieved regional prominence, regularly representing local and international clients including governments, corporations, banks, public entities as well as international financial institutions such as the World Bank.

Company: Cabinet NYEMB Name: Jacques Nyemb Email: nyembj@cabinetnyemb.com Web: www.cabinetnyemb.com Address: 227 rue de l’Hotel de Ville de Bonanjo, P.O Box 4163 Douala, Cameroon Telephone: 00237233434141 - 00237233434101

As a Founding Partner I am responsible for preserving the firm’s reputation and ensuring its continuity over time. My other duties include guaranteeing the quality and readiness of the services delivered to clients and maintaining the firm’s prosperity and growth.

We tend to come across tax issues as part of larger corporate and litigation matters. And, in the context of privatizations, PPP projects or business litigations, our clients - family businesses or multinational corporations - often expect us to provide bespoke tax advice based on our multidisciplinary expertise and deep industry knowledge.

authorities in the region. In addition, our lawyers receive frequent training through seminars including in tax law to ensure that the service we provide to our clients is of the best possible quality.

Alongside this, I believe that the success of Cabinet NYEMB lies in its values of excellence, creativity, collaboration and timeliness. Throughout the firm’s almost 20 years of existence, it has maintained its position at the top of a very competitive legal market, a fact which is largely due to our strict adherence to our core values.

Looking to the future, our economy is becoming increasingly sophisticated and integrated. As our clients are keeping up with this new reality, our firm has to as well. Therefore, we plan not only to expand our advisory practice to new areas (finance, public policy advisory, etc.), but also to increase our presence on the continent and all over the world in varying dimensions, including partnerships with other law firms and also universities.

We work hard to provide this, and as such, our firm is constantly staying up-to-date on fiscal developments, especially legal changes or new positions from tax

Grant Pearson Brown Consulting Ltd is a respected specialist communications adviser. We invited Ewan Pearson to provide us with an insight into the firm and the services they provide.

A core part of the work we do at Grant Pearson Brown Consulting Ltd is to advise top management on the content, delivery, team dynamics and question handling aspects of their key communications to investors, analysts, the media and their colleagues.

We advise primarily individuals and firms on how to communicate more effectively, how to win more business e.g. through pitching and tendering, how to negotiate, and handle the media. We work predominantly in the UK, but also in Europe, North and South America and further afield.

Company: Grant Pearson Brown Consulting Ltd Name: Ewan Pearson Email: e.pearson@gpb.eu Web Address: www.gpb.eu Address: 4 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1 A 2RP Telephone: +44 20 7831 1000

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Our firm is unique in using scientific analyses of voice, visual and content components, which makes our coaching more effective, faster and cheaper.

We are fortunate that our uniqueness is easy for our clients to see and understand, as we are the only firm in the world that has applied scientific analysis to whole scope of spoken and written communications – the vocal, visual and content elements. The measurements are objective, verifiable and robust.

We combine the science with an appreciation for the artistic and creative elements that go into making a piece of communication highly effective.

As such our financial performance is up 50% this year, which is owing to our unique services but is also due to hiring additional staff, who have now completed their in house training and are adding to the fee base that we have. This success comes from a combination of improved recruitment and training programmes.

The biggest driver of growth we have witnessed is in the technology sector, followed by professional services such as management consulting, accountancy, financial businesses such as private equity, and more recently legal services. The pharmaceutical industry continues to grow at above average growth rates too. Flat markets include banking and utilities and declines are seen in manufacturing.

Looking to the future we are keen to continue to expand by hiring only the best qualified people. We plan to continue to stay out of the limelight, as our focus is entirely on our clients and on helping them “to be themselves at their best, even in the toughest situations”.

Acquisition International - January 2016 51

Leading Advisers 2015 - the USA AI 97

Company: Fortaleza Capital Partners, LLC Name: Jose J Rodriguez David Millan Email: jrodriguez@fortalezacp.com dmillan@fortalezacp.com Web: www.fortalezacp.com Address: 250 Ponce de León Avenue, Suite 1003, City Towers San Juan, PR 00918 Telephone: +1 (787) 749-4770

Felix Lipov / Shutterstock.com

Fortaleza Capital Partners (“FCP”) is an investment banking boutique headquartered in San Juan (Puerto Rico) focused on serving U.S. middle market companies and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Founded in 2012, FCP provides M&A and investment advisory solutions to its corporate and private investment clients, and, with over $100 million in assets under advisory, we actively pursue direct private investments. Our firm grew revenues by over 80% this past year, thanks to a disciplined process centred on structuring customized solutions for each engagement.

We leverage our networks of business owners, investors and managers as well as our research capabilities to understand emerging developments and how they translate into business and investment opportunities. Our team excels at guiding our clients through the risks and complexities of the capital markets with both technical and strategic advice. Our intellectual and financial capital makes the difference when executing our projects.

Current trends in the American business market With the growth in the U.S. Hispanic market, there is tremendous opportunity in financing and advising companies that target that market. Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States growing from 1990 to 2010 at a compounded annual growth rate of 3.9% and forecasted by the US Census Bureau to continue growing at a rate of 2.1% p.a. over the next 20 years, well above the national average of 1.1% and 0.8%, respectively.

By 2030 one out of five United States residents will be Hispanic, and by 2050 one out of four will be Hispanic.

We also expect further growth in the renewable energy sector, particularly in solar photovoltaics.

Recent extension of the investment tax credit program for investments in renewable energy projects will continue the industry’s momentum during the next few years, while the Paris global climate agreement will drive the industry’s growth during the foreseeable future.

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Opportunities for overseas investors In our view, there are tremendous investment opportunities in renewable energy projects and in companies targeting the U.S. Hispanic market. Our advice to overseas investors is to start by properly modelling buy versus build scenarios to ensure capital is used efficiently and risks are mitigated.

FCP supports businesses and individuals in identifying, analysing and structuring investments and acquisitions.

Cross border transitions - cultural differences Our team is currently working on a cross-border deal between a U.S. buyer and a Latin business owner. During discussions, the acquiring company communicated its concerns about cultural and language differences between the two firms. We are helping the buyer alleviate the concern by identifying and interviewing U.S. business owners that had successfully integrated an acquisition in that market as well as key personnel in the target company that could manage critical areas through the transition.

The future We plan on opening a Florida desk in Tampa during the second quarter this year to further pursue opportunities in the growing U.S. Hispanic market while positioning our Company to service the Central Florida market and the projected increase in trade between Cuba and the U.S.

Leading Advisers 2016 AI 66

Lifang & Partners, founded in 2002, is headquartered in Beijing and have three offices in Guangzhou, Wuhan and Seoul. We provide dispute resolution as well as non-contentious services centred on intellectual property and extending to antitrust, corporate and commercial law offerings. Lifang is ranked among top intellectual property law firms in China according to several league tables.

We practice in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean, and we have also established long-term collaborative relationships with leading international law firms, aiming at providing legal services without time zone, jurisdiction or language barriers.

Company: Lifang & Partners Name: Guanbin XIE Email: guanbinxie@lifanglaw.com Web: http://www.lifanglaw.com Address: A1105, Nan Xin Cang Business Building, No. A22 Dongsishitiao, Beijing 100007, PRC Telephone: 8610 64096099

Practice areas Intellectual property law: We are consistently recognized among the top firms in China in the areas of patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets and other areas of intellectual property, experienced in dealing with complex intellectual property matters. Many members of the practice have double background of legal and technical education, some taking positions for years in the Chinese central government and court system before they started their private practice. Such an integration of various background and experience helps us quickly understand our clients’ complex legal, business and public policy challenges and accurately define practical legal solutions.

Antitrust law: We advise clients on antitrust law compliance with regard to business structure, distributor management and joint operation, as well as providing consultancy in merger and establishment of joint ventures, and assisting clients in negotiation with China’s antitrust authorities. We also represent clients in antitrustrelated investigation procedures and in dispute resolutions. We were involved in almost all major NDRC investigations relating to lateral price fixing conspiracy such as the one against LED suppliers, vertical price-related monopoly such as those against Maotai and Wuliangyee, and Standard Essential Patent-related abuse of dominance investigations such as those against Interdigital and Qualcomm. We also represent clients in litigation involving antitrust disputes including China’s first ever anti-monopoly judicial case relating to abuse of dominant market position, and the high profile Qihoo 360 v. Tencent case heard by China’s Supreme Court which is dubbed “China’s No.1 Internet antitrust case.”

Corporate and commercial law: Lifang’s corporate commercial practice covers a broad range of transactional and advisory work. Taking advantage of our experience and expertise in intellectual property practice, our corporate and other commercial law practice thrives in industry sectors where intellectual property is intensive. We work closely with clients at every stage of their technical and business development, offering them valuable advice on industry policies and latest developments in Chinese law, to avail them with best options to further their business goals.

Current trends in the Chinese business market China is now in deep water of economic restructuring.

As the economic growth rate slowing down, lawsuits are on the rise. Right holders shift more to enforcing their intellectual property. Significantly in the TMT sector, leading Chinese companies are transforming to be right holders with better developed intellectual property portfolio. These trends drive growth for intellectual property specialist firms like Lifang.

Opportunities for overseas investors looking to move into China China remains a huge market for quality goods and advance technology. As China’s economy has come

to the current stage of development, there have been increasingly more incentives and less resistance to strengthening IP protection. As advice to overseas investors, first, it is worth noting that intellectual property is mostly territorial. New comers into a market need to acquire the relevant rights to avail themselves of brand and technology protection.

Second, as intellectual property is relatively a new area of law in China, in case of any dispute or litigation, it is important to work with experienced IP professionals. A previous research on IP litigation in China by Lifang indicates that more than half of the failed actions were due to incompetent representation by lawyers who did not specialize in IP matters.

The firm’s financial performance We are doing well this year. Firstly, we have expanded our patent and trademark prosecution teams and acquired a team specialized in filing intellectual property complaints to China’s administrative enforcement organs. These developments have enabled us to provide a fuller spectrum services relating to intellectual property.

What makes us unique?

As a law firm dedicated to intellectual property over the years, we have some advantages that have given us distinction and fame in this practice area: 1) Combination of the law and technology: Most of our patent litigators have duel education background in law and technology. Not only are they dually licensed as patent attorney and attorney at law, they actively practise in both areas, which means they have good grasp of technology issues of clients and they can enable the judges to have good grasp of both technology and legal issues in dispute.

2) Good government relations and good understanding of industry policies. Most of Lifang’s partners and consultants previously worked for China’s central government or in the court. They are legal counsels for several government departments and are often involved in industry policy making and important legislation processes.

3) Good communications with the court and administrative departments. We have established good working relations with judges and government departments over the years, and our professionalism and dedication has also won their respect.

4) We are especially known for our ability to handle high profile and difficult intellectual property litigation. We handled many cases that involved complicated technology or thorny legal issues, which were often elected into the yearly top 10 cases by various Chinese courts. Some of Lifang’s representative cases have become exemplar cases designated by the Supreme People’s Court as guidance to lower courts, thus bearing major implications for the related industries.

Plans for 2016 and beyond Client demands are increasingly composite and interdisciplinary. Firms like ours that are deep rooted in intellectual property and corporate law are better positioned to meet client demands. We will continue providing specialized yet all around services for corporate clients.

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Leading Tax Adviser AI 95

At PwC, our fully integrated tax and legal services cover all aspects of taxation as well as a full range of legal services.

Company: PricewaterhouseCoopers Legal & Tax Consultants Ltd. Name: Mr Somboon Weerawutiwong (Tax Lead Partner) Email: somboon .weerawutiwong@th.pwc.com Web: www.pwc.com Address: 15th Floor Bangkok City Tower, 179/74-80 South Sathorn Road, Bangkok 10120 Tel: (66) 2 824 5000, 344 1247 Fax: (66) 2286 2666

Our experienced team has in-depth industry knowledge in Thailand and, combined with our global network, this allows us to deliver appropriate tax and legal solutions, formulate tax strategies and planning, and help you to manage implementation and risk.

Our business law practice in Thailand comprises highly qualified Thai lawyers with extensive experience delivering quality legal services to major Thai and foreign corporations. We offer a comprehensive range of legal services, from general advisory work to full transactional support and the structuring, restructuring, documentation and implementation of large-scale commercial projects.

Legal advice can be provided either independently or in conjunction with specialist tax, financial and other business advisory services.

Legal services • Corporate and Commercial • Corporate Secretarial • Dispute Resolution and Litigation • Employment • Intellectual Property • Legal Mergers and Acquisitions

Key tax services • Tax Compliance Services • Tax Dispute Resolution • Tax Mergers & Acquisitions • International Tax Services • VAT (Indirect Taxation) • Transfer Pricing Services • Outsourcing Services • Investment Promotion: BOI services • International Assignment Services

RubinowaDama / Shutterstock.com

54 Acquisition International - January 2016

2015

Leading Corporate Adviser of the Year South East Europe

info@eurofast.eu | www.eurofast.eu

Eurofast:

Your Regional Business Advisory team Who we are

Eurofast is a regional business advisory organisation operating in South East Europe and East Mediterranean offering various services such as M&A and Transactional Advisory, Business Restructuring & Insolvency, Market Entry Services, Banking and Financial Services, Outsourced Payroll and Employment Solutions, Citizenship & Residency Services, Corporate Services, Transfer Pricing, International Tax, Tax Planning & Tax Compliance, and Accounting.

We Specialise in M&A & Transactional Advisory

We, take pride in our dedicated team of professionals, specialising in M&A and transactional work in our offices, throughout South East Europe and East Mediterranean. Eurofast has over 25 years of experience working with global businesses and leading institutions. Over the years we have performed successfully significant number of local and international M&A transactions in the region. We have a unique approach to support M&A transactions at international level through our professional network, providing assistance to our clients in all phases of M&A transactions from planning process to closure and post integration.

Our Network

We are uniquely positioned as one stop shop for investors looking to enter South East Europe and Eastern Mediterranean. We have office in South East Europe and East Mediterranean, with 21 fully fledge offices in Athens, Thessaloniki, Nicosia, Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade, Podgorica, Tirana, Skopje, Zagreb, Pristina, Banja Luka, Sarajevo, Cairo, Alexandria, Tbilisi, Beirut, Erbil, Moscow, Kiev and Tehran.

Our competitive advantage

We seek to delight our clients, by being proactive. Our aim is to create client enthusiasm by giving even more value to our clients, whether measured by price, performance, quality or service. Our portfolio

includes a number of high net worth individuals and clients engaged in every sector of the economy , which proves the range of our abilities.

Our competitive advantage stems from our ability to serve our clients promptly, efficiently and effectively. Every Eurofast office consists of teams ranging from 15-60 professionals with diverse backgrounds and experience including tax, legal, M&A, payroll, accounting, audit and consulting.

Our credentials

We have over 28 years of history, working with many global brands and leading Institutions, operating in the manufacturing, retail, airlines and professional services sector. Our clients are the vivid evidence that Eurofast is your trusted business advisor in South East Europe and East Mediterranean.

We have achieved worldwide market recognition for our exceptional advice, capabilities and innovation. We have been acknowledged as a leader in Tax in Cyprus. Among others, we have been ranked top Tax Advisors and announced “Cyprus Tax firm of the Year” by International Tax Review which is a true recognition for the valued client work we deliver every day.

For 2015 we were acknowledged by Acquisition International as ‘Corporate Adviser of the Year – South East Europe’ for our work done in the Region. In 2015, Eurofast has ranked Tier One Tax Planning Advisor by International Tax Review for the seventh time in a row. In 2014, Eurofast was also recognized for its expertise in M&A.

Eurofast is Taxand Cyprus.

For more information on Eurofast and its service portfolio, please visit www.eurofast.eu.

AI 30

Trinity Law Group provides superior legal and strategic business counsel through its extraordinary commitment to client success, outstanding competence and straightforward communication. We spoke to Walter Wright, member and managing attorney at Trinity Law Group, on why they were dubbed “the smallest big firm” on the earth.

Law Firm: Trinity Law Group LLC Name: Walter A. Wright III Email: wwright@trinitylg.com Web Address: www.trinitylg.com Address: 200 Lowder Brook Drive - Suite 2600, Westwood MA 02090-1189, U.S.A. Telephone: 781.329.0088

“We were once described as “the smallest big firm in the world”, by the Managing Partner of an international law firm based in metropolitan Boston Massachusetts, because the breadth and depth of our business and corporate law and strategy experience and preternatural entrepreneurial disposition is rare,” says Wright. “In order to achieve this reputation, we are committed to be efficient and effective, and our overhead is closely managed and we leverage technology with greater effectiveness that most of our peers.”

While many law firms are simply named after its founders, Trinity Law Group chose a name that truly represents their lawyer’s philosophy and practice approach. The name “Trinity” comes from the notion of “threes”, symbolizing three sets of three components that underlie the reality and aspirations of their combined law practice and professional commitment. The trinity of “Law”, “Clients” and “Attorneys” comprise the core of the company.

Similarly, their ethos is based on “Competence”, “Commitment” and“Communication”, and they leverage “Relationships”, “Technology” and“Strategy”.

Based in New England, the firm practices a broad range of business and corporate law throughout the United States and the world with well-recognized attorneys of stellar academic and professional accomplishment.

Since Trinity Law Group’s inception, its attorneys have worked on developing, negotiating, documenting and closing the broad spectrum of corporate growth and liquidity transactions which includes mergers and acquisitions, dispositions, spin-offs, tuck-ins, asset purchases and sales, tax reorganizations and joint ventures. As Wright explains: “My partner Daniel Clark, initially began our practice at a venerable Boston law firm which focused on developing lawyers with the intellectual capacity and personal talent to operate as full-spectrum business and corporate lawyers. There we honed our skills in industry roll-ups, public offerings, venture capital financings, technology licensing, fund formation and operation, contract negotiation, executive employment and dispute management/resolution. As part of the management team, we led tech initiatives to better serve our clients.

The setting also helped refine our entrepreneurial focus as strategists, founders and investors.”

In 2015 and 2014, Trinity Law Group served as lead counsel and legal strategist in a number of M&A and related transactions important to its clients.

In seller side M&A, they were involved in twelve business asset sales and five stock purchases, and the redemption, disposition and refinancing of a multiple dealership virtual tax partnership. This partnership involved 15 cross-controlled entities, long-term licensing of personality-based and software intellectual property and 10 commercial real estate

56 Acquisition International - January 2016

long-term real estate leases, two subleases and three use licenses. The acquirers included two publicly traded entities and four private equity backed acquirers, with a total dollar value in excess of $450 million.

With regards to buyer side M&A, Trinity attorneys were involved in the acquisition of an energy consulting firm by a venture backed energy software management company. For seller side private equity, they were involved in the sale of 20% of an international business software and service company in cash for preferred stock transaction with a private equity investor with related partial exit for existing shareholders and follow-on financing. For securities issuers, they handled the venture, institutional and angel financings for eight clients including conversion of debt to equity of an e-commerce business. The firm’s work on buyer side investments involved investments in three emerging companies including acquisition of legal document automation division from venture backed company.

As leader of a firm that works across a diverse range of services, Wright anticipates growth in a number of different sectors across the US market. “The insurance brokerage sector continues to consolidate with attractive multiples and terms for the wellrepresented and well-positioned seller,” says Wright.

“Furthermore, the sustainable building energy sector is moving to innovative financing for building energy retro-fits backed by state and local governments.

Moreover, Big Data analytics continues to have an impact on strategic planning across many sectors.

Additionally, The Internet of Things is just getting started and cognition based technology will further close the “last foot” of device telecommunications.

“Our region, the U.S Northeast is a global center of finance, science and technology, business innovation and education,” added Wright. “As a result, those who wish to practice business law competently in this region must be among the best and the brightest, like the companies and people they seek to serve.

Having proved ourselves in this region, we have been able to expand our client base throughout the U.S. and globally.”

With the legal landscape in the US constantly evolving, Wright has noticed a number of emerging trends. “Executives and entrepreneurs are recognizing that large and medium sized law firms are not the only or even the best option for business law and strategy solutions. Alongside these developments, transaction parties, even in M&A, are seeking fixed price agreements with defined scopes.

Furthermore, intelligent document technology, despite some false starts, is beginning to gain a sure foothold on the future. Companies like our emerging client, Leaflet Corporation, are convincing Fortune 50s and Legal 500s that legal document automation

Leading Advisers 2016

will revolutionize legal service delivery. Once adopted, companies like LegalZoom will have to change their limited and uncustomized offerings. The result will be further democratization of elite quality legal services and counsel. This also means that in M&A, more deals will get done, quicker and better.

transactional best practices and the necessity of complying with U.S. Law,” says Wright, a citizen of the U.S and the EU (Ireland). “Trinity Law Group attorneys assist clients with U.S. corporate entities, foreign assets, multi-national contracts and other international commercial and securities transactions.”

“In order to stay ahead in our industry and remain one of the key players, we are constantly engaging in self-study and strategic analysis, including gleaning information from periodicals like Acquisition International.”

“We have international engagements, cross border transactions and global clients,” Wright added. “The nations where clients of Trinity Law Group lawyers have had interests, transactions, operations, assets, opposing parties and corporate partners include EU countries such as the UK, France, Ireland, Spain, Germany and Cyprus, NATFA nations (Canada and Mexico) and MENA nations such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Iraq. We have also worked with BRIC nations (Brazil, India, Russia and China), as well as the Caribbean region (Puerto Rico, United States Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands).”

Although providing a variety of different services presents a number of challenges, Wright believes that there are myriad advantages in their holistic approach. “In mergers and acquisitions, our skills, experience and broad expertise make doing deals easier and smoother for our clients. Instead of a having to work with (and pay) for a group of departmental specialist lawyers (often with limited perspectives, experience and deal skills,) our clients can be confident that we will address the vast majority of the myriad U.S. legal issues that naturally arise in a transaction correctly, strategically and as economically as possible. When we identify legal issues where we need to supplement our services with other lawyers, we work with the client to identify the most appropriate options for collaboration.”

With increasing deal volume, the United States presents a number of opportunities to overseas investors. Trinity works with a number of overseas investors spanning the globe. “From our experience, foreign investors in the U.S. must have sophisticated counsel and an appreciation for the importance of

“Where appropriate and where requested, Trinity Law Group collaborates and co-engages with foreign and U.S. attorneys, solicitors, barristers, accountants, consultants and other multi-jurisdictional legal and business practitioners for legally effective, prudent and cost-efficient results.”

Trinity’s global client base across is a testament to their success in assisting overseas investors.

Alberto Haddad, a global management and financial structuring advisory consultant, was very complementary about Trinity’s services, stating: “They are very energetic and responsive at all hours, which is vital for international and multi-time zone deals. Their experience in law, business, technology,

entrepreneurship and government is truly substantial and unusual. Their understanding of the human side of business and mastery of constructive negotiation has been invaluable. They also are extremely quick studies; rapidly adjusting and easily contributing in areas where most lawyers fear to tread. They are correctly noted for innovative, creative and workable solutions to seemingly intractable problems. In the end, they are outstanding counselors and advocates.

I feel that Trinity Law Group is truly a hidden gem in the business law community.”

Looking back upon 2015, Wright believes that last year was further evidence of the continued success and growth of their company. “Although our firm’s revenue and PPP have increased each year since inception, even during the 2008 Financial Crisis, this past year was our best,” says Wright. “Aside from the increase in merger and acquisitions, our clients have given us excellent references and our overall standing has increased in the marketplace.”

Looking further into 2016 and beyond, Wright is very optimistic that Trinity will continue to grow and expand their services. “We are now more open to closer alliances with law firms located outside the U.S. who seek high level corporate and business law expertise and deal-making skills,” says Wright.

“We are also finding that in-house general counsel recognize that we can support their efforts without the burdening barrage and cross-purposes of some big law firms. Furthermore, we are open to expanding our roster with attorneys of comparable backgrounds and client profiles who are looking the escape the politics and stilted economics of larger law firms or the challenges of small firm operation.”

Acquisition International - January 2016 57

Lindeborg Company: LindeborgLaw Website: http://twitpower.com/ index.php

58 Acquisition International - January 2016

LindeborgLaw is a specialised international law firm founded in 2014 by former Interpol legal counsel Dr. Rutsel Silvestre J Martha.

The firm is headquartered in Mayfair, London and serves clients globally to respond to the need of high profile individuals and transnational enterprises, to manage their risks efficiently in an increasingly complex global environment.

Practice areas specifically covered by the firm include international taxation, finance and arbitration, drawing on the vast experience of their staff and deep industry knowledge and experience to ensure each client receives the best quality service.

With regards to specialisation, the firm favours strategic approaches based on public international law sources and the use of international forums (international courts, tribunals, arbitration etc.) in order to increase efficiency of defence, minimize the impact of deficient local legal systems, and provide leverage to clients in their dealings with authorities.

Founder Dr Martha is the author of numerous defining legal texts, and also speaks at a number of conferences and acts as visiting professor several Universities. These activities highlight his dedication to drawing on his vast legal experience enhance the collective industry knowledge.

Leading Adviser in Japan AI 97

YUASA and HARA provides service of corporate equity finance, IPO assistance and syndicate loans, stock purchase and acquisition of corporate investment & acquisition, etc. Their firm’s team as a local main advisor and lawyer works mostly for the party who takes shares and/or assets of the other party’s, or make equity investment thereto. If possible, their firm’s team participates in an initial stage of planning deal scheme with other experts. In particular, their firm’s team displays an enhanced background to understand the crossover between technology, brand and industrial needs for manufacturing and distribution.

What sets the firm apart in the field of legal advice in terms of the services and advice offered, is that their team make an effort to listen their client’s needs and cost control to maintain qualified legal advice. In a short interview, the firm’s Kozo YABE outlines the company’s financial performance, what makes their company unique and their plans for the future.

Company: YUASA and HARA Name: Kozo YABE Email: illiniky@yuasa-hara.co.jp Web: www.yuasa-hara.co.jp Address: New-Ohtemachi Bldg.

Sec.206, 2-2-1 Ohtemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0001, Japan Telephone: +81-3-3270-6641 (Receptionist), +81-3-3246-6513 (Direct)

Please tell us about YUASA and HARA’s financial performance this year. What do you believe are the reasons behind its success?

It looks good. Our firm could handle more M&A and Corporate works than previous recent years in 2015. It was supported by a good balance of foreign currency and the stock market situation. In addition, due to recent Globalization, Japanese local companies as well as international corporations were encouraged to go to the international market more than was previously done so.

With an optimistic outlook set for the future, what is your company doing to capitalise on this as well as sustain your success?

Our key agenda is to build more reputation of our Corporate works for our core client industries. In addition to that, hiring and acquiring good talents of our attorney members will be the other fuel to boost our success. IT support by our firm’s talented technical staff is also helping our attorneys’ timely and efficient work in remote accessing to our Tokyo office whenever they are located on business travel and/or other needs away from our office. In such working environment, even a relatively small number of attorneys can efficiently and timely work with any clients from the world.

Why do you believe that your company became, and still is, a leader in the legal advice industry?

For our firm’s 114 years’ history as an international Corporate practice law firm in Japan, we have been able to build sustainable trustworthiness of our practice with our clients. We do not make overpromise and overcapacity but tenaciously pursue most preferable solution for the clients.

What makes your company unique? What separates you from your competitors and marks you out as the best option for your clients?

Our firm’s attorneys keep our minds into being a good lawyer for our client rather than a legal businessman.

However, it does not mean that our attorneys are insensitive for the innovative challenges of our clients. Our attorneys with good foreign language skills are prepared to respond to any international needs of business innovation. Being a member of an international qualified business law firm network, such as TerraLex and Unilaw, is one of efforts to provide our service not only in Japan but also in other foreign jurisdictions.

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Leading Advisers 2016 AI 30

Independent Schools Victoria is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to Independent education.

Company: Independent Schools Victoria Postal Address: PO Box 119 North Melbourne VIC 3051 Phone: 03 9825 7200 Fax: 03 9826 6066 Email: enquiries@is.vic.edu.au Web: www.is.vic.edu.au

CristinaMuraca / Shutterstock.com

Independent Schools Victoria is committed to promoting, developing and protecting the autonomy of member schools. To this end they are an association providing professional services rather than an authority managing their members.

The services that the firm provide are as diverse as their membership. The firm’s member schools reflect various religious affiliations and educational philosophies.

All member schools are supported by the organisation to become education leaders and have access to a number of unique resources which enable them to easily understand government regulations and how they affect their education institution.

Enrolments at individual schools range from 20 students to more than 2000. Most schools are in and around Melbourne with a third scattered throughout Victoria.

Additionally, Independent Schools Victoria understands that every school is different, and therefore they are committed to tailoring their services to each individual school’s needs.

More than 125,000 students, almost 15% of Victorian students, attend Independent primary and secondary schools. The firm’s member schools are independently managed within Victorian and Australian Government policy guidelines and regulations. Independent schooling in Victoria began more than 160 years ago.

Michelle Green, the firm’s Chief Executive, explains its vision and how they strive to achieve this.

All Australian schools need government financial support to build an education system that serves a creative, modern, diverse and prosperous nation.

Independent Schools Victoria works with the Australian and Victorian governments on national and state issues to achieve a more equitable, choiceoriented and efficient means of funding students’ learning.

Independent Schools Victoria is dedicated to promoting excellence in education by pursuing fair and efficient delivery of funding for the independent sector, delivering funded programs for government

60 Acquisition International - January 2016

initiatives as well as collaborating nationally and internationally facilitating research and providing benchmarking programs.

“To achieve our Vision, we assist Member Schools to continue providing quality education outcomes.

Representing and supporting Independent schools in Victoria, we are dedicated to achieve the highest standards.”

As a service provider, the primary responsibility of Independent Schools Victoria is to its membership but the firm also seeks to support the education sector in Victoria by sharing its expertise and offering training and, when they are available, the use of its facilities by other organisations, because it recognises that as a major organisation it has a social contract with the Victorian community.

The firm also provides a professional learning programs, which is highly successful due to a combination of experienced Independent Schools Victoria staff and highly qualified presenters working with enthusiastic participants in premises equipped and designed for seminars. Research shows that the interactive presentations and seminars receive high marks, and as such the firm uses participants’ feedback to further improve the programs.

Leading Advisers 2016 AI 30

Company: Kelcey & Hall Solicitors Email: ian.kelcey@ kelceyandhall.co.uk Web: www.kelceyandhall.co.uk Telephone Nos: 0117 972 9604 / 0203 056 8842 Out of hours Telephone No: 07659 104004

Kelcey & Hall is a niche practice specialising in criminal law, fraud, health & safety, Environmental Agency prosecution and motoring Law. We also have a specialist practice in Family Law specialising in high net worth financial provision claims and all issues relating to children together with a Private Client Department dealing with Wills and Probate. We are based in the City of Bristol and also within the City of London.

Ian Kelcey who is the partner in charge of the Criminal Department has vast experience, being a former chairman of the National Law Society of England and Wales Criminal Law Committee. He is also a past chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association and in addition to that he is a Member of the Home Office Reference Group in relation to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and a Member of the Senior Presiding Judge’s National Implementation Team for Better Case Management in the Crown Court.

Gillian Hall is the Partner in charge of the Family Department. Gillian has a wealth of experience in dealing with matters arising out of the breakdown of relationships. She has dealt with high value net worth claims, also cases involving the custody of children under the Hague Convention as well as all aspects of private and public law cases and adoption. She is a member of the Law Society Children Panel and Coram BAAF Adoption & Fostering Academy.

The current trends in the UK market, particularly in the area of crime tend to be focussed on the prosecution or disruption of individuals in high value fraud cases. There seems less inclination to prosecute in lower level crime cases but where cases may involve a substantial Proceeds of Crime element or indeed in relation to matters involving sexual abuse, we have noted that the Prosecuting Authorities are much more likely to prosecute in those cases.

As far as our quality commitment is concerned this firm is approved under the Lexcel Scheme and we pride ourselves on the service that we provide to clients. The firm operates primarily on the basis of recommendation and referral from other professionals within the legal sector and referrals from past clients.

The firm’s financial performance this year has been very strong. We believe the reasons behind our success and our increased profitability are the level of personal service that we seek to provide to those that we represent. So far as the firm is concerned our ethos in all cases is to ensure high level representation and even higher level preparation.

We operate on the basis that if a case is not properly prepared it cannot be properly presented.

With the current business environment that is currently evolving we keep up to date. Ian Kelcey is kept at the forefront of developments in relation to Criminal Law by his continuing to be a Member of the Law Society Legal Affairs and Policy Board and also a Member of the Law Society Criminal Law Committee, which means that he and the Committee are frequently consulted on changes or proposed developments from both the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Law Commission.

Gillian Hall ensures that she is at the forefront of any emerging developments ensuring that both she and her team of lawyers attend regular training courses.

The firm holds in-house training sessions and also attends outside training courses for both Criminal, Family Law and Private Client Law. We ensure that the culture within our firm is that the mission and ethos is easily understood and implemented. We have a firm’s Manual and Policies together with a firm intranet which ensures that we are able to communicate with all staff on a regular basis and with in-house training.

We like to think that what makes us unique from other firms is our commitment to detail and client care. Our desire for the future is that the firm will grow and develop a wide client base and increased profitability. This firm has been listed as a Top Tier firm in both the Legal 500 and Chambers UK regularly over the past 7 years. We are also denoted as being the Criminal Law Litigation Firm of the Year for both 2015 and 2016 in England and Wales.

Acquisition International - January 2016 61

The Most Highly Regarded Expert Witnesses for 2015 Expert witnesses are often entrusted with the reputations and businesses of their clients. Those who take on this role work across a variety of sectors and offer their services to ensure those they serve are supported by expert testimony during their trial.

Within this series of articles we provide the ultimate guide to the businesses and individuals behind those testimonies, with contributors from across a range of industries explaining in their own words what it means to them to hold such a valuable and prestigious role.

The Most Highly Regarded Expert Witnesses for 2015 AI 89

The Boyce Consultancy Group is an international provider of a full spectrum of consultancy services specializing in all types of turbomachinery. Dr. Meherwan P. Boyce explains the firm’s role as expert witness.

The Boyce Consultancy Group provides consultancy services across the full spectrum of turbomachinery, including compressors, pumps, gas and steam turbines, used in electrical energy plants, offshore platforms, refineries, chemical plants, combined cycle power plants as well as the related power and petroleum industries.

Drawing on over 50 years industry experience, we are able to provide the highest level of expertise and have done so domestically and internationally for clients that range from Fortune 500 Companies through to all levels of supporting resource providers to the power supply industry.

Our consultancy services can consist of educating, mentoring, analysis, planning, risk management and prevention, plant reorganization and set-up, turbine package purchasing and start-up, performance analysis, catastrophic failure analysis, negotiations and arbitration assistance, expert witness in trial and litigation.

Company: The Boyce Consultancy Group, LLC Name: Dr. Meherwan P. Boyce Email: mpboyce@boycepower.com Web: www.boyceconsultancy.com Address: 2121 Kirby Drive, 28 North, Houston, Texas 77019-6035 Telephone: 713-807-0888 Fax: 713-807-0088

In order to ensure clients receive the best possible support and advice, especially when they are relying on our expert testimony, we work closely with the client to support them through face-to-face meetings, phone consultations, email correspondence and any other means of communication. Through this we endeavour to assist with fulfilling the client’s expectations and establishing a level of confidence that the services provided will satisfy the necessary determinants in the case to display accuracy in the data analysis of cause and effect.

We also have a diverse staff of experts and support that allow us to capture all our client’s needs. In addition, we have an attitude of lifelong learning due to the type of industry we are in that demands that type of foresight. Continuing education and handson experience keep us leading the industry in the most recent and relevant discoveries and information that we can then pass on to our valued clients.

Internally we operate collaboratively so we can provide our clients multiple areas of ideas, experience, and intellect cultivated by a dedicated

staff of professionals. We feel that all our staff bring something positive to the table that accumulatively can be synchronized to form a successful outcome and experience with us to our clients.

We also educate our clients with our close relationship while working together. We feel the more the clients understand, the more we can work together as a team in alignment with mutual goals and objectives.

We take advantage of industry tools and resources such as on-line classes, webinars, symposiums, conferences, hard copy and virtual books, periodicals and magazines from industry supporting expert’s resources. These tools are particularly important as it is vital that we remain on top of any legislative changes in our sector, so that we can offer the most up to date advice and support to our clients.

Being an active author of engineering text books on the subject matter gives us an extra advantage in the ability to demonstrate the extensive understanding and expertise in the field and industry, and also helps to ensure that we stay current in our knowledge.

Moving forward we are excited about our future. We are confident that can continue to grow and expand our business with the solid foundation of our staff of experts and wide-ranging expertise into the future and continue being a respected organization of consultancy services to clients all over the globe.

We are sensitive to and focused on preparedness of integrating renewable energies and utilization in combined cycle power plants. We understand the future needs to minimize drops in load and efficiencies for combined fossil and renewable energy plants so we have researched extensively how to assist our clients in these plants of the future.

Additionally we are developing on-line classes that are sure to transfer the needed education and experience to engineers all over the world in a convenient efficient learning format. This is how we can contribute to our industry in a constructive manner in which all can take advantage and be exposed to the past and future of our industry’s direction.

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The Most Highly Regarded Expert Witness 2015 AI 72

Name: Jeffrey Davidson, Managing director Email: Jeffrey.davidson@ honeycombpsg.com Web Address: www.honeycombpsg.com Address: Central Court 25 Southampton Buildings London WC2A 1AL Telephone: 020 3709 9250 Mobile: 07901 339 075

Honeycomb Forensic Accounting is a specialist and dedicated forensic accounting, investigations, and litigation support firm providing expert and authoritative analysis and opinion on the financial, economic, accounting, fiscal and monetary aspects of disputes and investigations. The firm’s Managing Director Jeffrey Davidson discusses the firm’s work and how they have become a key player in their industry.

Honeycomb is a firm dedicated to providing expert and authoritative financial, accounting and economic aspects of a dispute or investigation. Our strength is our team, whose background and experience means we can support an investigation with a full arsenal of tools to get to the crux of the matter.

The reason for our success, both in the industry overall and in terms of winning this prestigious award, is that we provide our clients with a full range of services to comprehensively address all the aspects of a case relevant to making our analysis, reports and evidence as insightful and authoritative as possible.

Our clients include law firms, regulators, law enforcement, corporates – particularly their in house-counsel, compliance and risk managers – and financial services entities. Whether the case is being conducted through litigation, arbitration or some other form of alternative dispute resolution, we provide financial analysis, expert opinion, oral evidence and clarity of the issue.

We don’t approach a case in a vacuum, or in an ivory tower. As a team we deal in practical terms with practical problems, brainstorming and looking for proper but imaginative, thought-through and expert answers.

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As we have a big presence and profile in our industry, we are able to compete for important and large engagements, and perform with a level of service at a price which our larger, more factory like, cumbersome competitors cannot match.

With constant changes to the industry, both professionally and commercially, we are always adapting and developing our offerings to make sure we maintain the same level of investigative rigor with every case.

For example, we are always developing new anti-cybercrime processes to combat increasing sophisticated cybercrime activities. Fraudsters find new ways to hide money, so we develop new techniques and processes for finding the money.

New ways of communicating electronically are used by crooks to keep their communications secret, so our partnership with other experts helps to develop new techniques for finding these communications.

Our firm focuses on client service only in the forensic space where we are real experts. This means the work we take on for a client is in our field of expertise where we really know what we are doing. We know the problems, the risks, what outcomes work and how to present them with credibility and authority.

We cut no corners, we are robust in forming and defending opinions, all of which is important to our clients who are trusting us with a vitally important aspect of their business.

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Wilkins Kennedy’s Forensic Accounting, Expert Witness and Alternative Dispute Resolution specialists have built an enviable reputation in creating clarity and accord in complex situations.

Company: Wilkins Kennedy Email: enquiries@ wilkinskennedy.com Web: www.wilkinskennedy.com Address: Bridge House London, SE1 9QR Phone: +44 (0) 20 7403 1877

The accredited team is highly experienced in conducting investigations and conveying information about complex business and personal situations clearly, concisely and impartially.

There are various situations where forensic support, as well as Expert Witness and Alternative Dispute Resolution may be useful and include: - Business and share valuations - Shareholder/director/partner disputes - Quantification of profits or losses - Breach of contract or negligence - Fraud, both criminal and civil - Loss of profit claims - Tax and VAT investigations - Money laundering - Asset tracing - Conduct of directors - Insolvency investigations - Personal injury - Matrimonial disputes Working with companies, individuals, government agencies, solicitors, barristers, insurance companies and liquidators, Wilkins Kennedy has helped to build strong cases and support the creation of beneficial agreements and settlements for businesses and individuals across a diverse range of sectors.

What is Forensic Accounting?

Derived from the term ‘forensic science’, forensic accounting investigates financial documentation for irregularities.

There are numerous reasons why a forensic accountant may be called; for example, during tax and VAT disputes, when the conduct of directors is questionable, during insolvency investigations, to explore financial losses, or in the case of suspected theft or fraud.

In a personal context, a forensic accountant can be utilised, for example, in building a case for a personal injury claim, loss of pension claim or a fatal accident claim.

A highly experienced forensic accountant will be able to identify key issues and develop pre-trial/hearing strategies, locate information and documentation to support a theory or opinion, help determine the strengths and weaknesses of a case and advise on the strongest line of argument.

Forensic services can also be used to analyse company or personal financial statements. But, whereas a regular accountant or auditor may focus on accounting and auditing regulations, a forensic expert will dig deeper to find irregularities or, in the worst case, if potentially fraud may be involved.

Wilkins Kennedy’s expertise in this specialist arena does not stop at specialist forensic accounting. The team embraces a wide range of associated and complementary skills and experience to provide a comprehensive range of support services.

Expert Witness Wilkins Kennedy’s core team is registered with The Expert Witness Institute, The Academy of Experts, and is accredited by Cardiff University under the Bond Solon training scheme. It has accumulated many years’ experience in providing advice on a wide range

of forensic and accounting support matters, offering independent advice in legal disputes, and supports the courts in dealing with complex financial issues.

Alternative Dispute Resolution Increasingly, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is being encouraged by the Courts. The voluntary nature of this route means that ADR can often negate costly, lengthy and time-consuming legal proceedings.

Expert Determination Many disputes can be settled through expert determination, thus eliminating the need to go to court.

Wilkins Kennedy has helped to achieve speedy and cost effective results across a varied range of cases.

Mediation When it comes to Mediation, Wilkins Kennedy enjoys a reputation for excellence. It can be applied to all areas of civil dispute, including commercial and workplace disputes, personal injury and negligence claims.

Wilkins Kennedy’s accredited and trained commercial mediators offer in-depth knowledge and experience to guide those involved in a dispute toward a solution that is acceptable to all. The process of mediation is ‘without prejudice’, in other words, totally confidential. Nothing can be used in evidence should the mediation fail and further action be required.

Why Wilkins Kennedy?

Experience and accreditation are bywords for the Wilkins Kennedy Forensics team, who strictly adhere to The Academy of Experts (TAE) Rules for Expert Determination, a focused set of independent procedures designed for use in virtually any dispute in virtually any part of the world, mediation protocols, civil and criminal precedure rules.

The Rules For Expert Determination provide a comprehensive conduct and procedural framework that enables all concerned to concentrate on the determination, secure in the knowledge that the expert is knowledgeable and totally independent.

Formed in 1987, TAE’s objective was to provide a professional body for experts to establish and promote high objective standards. It provides accreditation of expert witnesses and a wide range of training courses to enable members to develop their expert skills.

But perhaps the best proof is provided by Wilkins Kennedy’s clients themselves.

Partners & Co Solicitors Ltd found the experience of working with Wilkins Kennedy’s Forensics team invaluable; “Wilkins Kennedy was highly recommended to us by a colleague. That first case was very difficult in many respects. But the support we received gave a superb blueprint for the excellent service we have always enjoyed since. Adam (Merrett), being a trained mediator, demonstrated outstanding client skills and went the extra mile with the client to make sure they were thoroughly prepared for every eventuality.”

If you are facing a tough challenge with your business, call Wilkins Kennedy Partner, Adam Merrett, on +44 (0) 1689 827 505 for a completely impartial and totally confidential conversation. It might be the most important call you make in 2016.

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Definitive Expertise – the Key to Success for an Expert Witness With over 200 cases of litigation and arbitration to his name over a period of 30 years, Chris Osborne of FTI Consulting is finding that the role of the expert witness is more important than ever.

Company: FTI Consulting Name: Chris Osborne Email: chris.osborne@ fticonsulting.com Web: www.fticonsulting.com Address: 200 Aldersgate, Aldersgate Street, London, EC1A 4HD, United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0) 20 3727 1500

Growing international trade, especially with the emerging markets, has resulted in increased demand for experienced, expert witnesses who have a global perspective and knowledge of international business.

At the forefront of this trend is FTI Consulting, the global business advisory firm. “We’re finding considerable demand in particular from the countries of the former Soviet Union because they’re increasingly the subject of foreign direct inward investment and there are known risks associated with them,” says Chris Osborne, Co-Chairman of FTI’s EMEA region and the European Head of its Economic and Financial Consulting practice.

Osborne has been involved in over 200 cases of litigation and arbitration, covering loss of profits claims, post-acquisition disputes, insurance claims and restrictive trade practices.

Definitive Expertise “Almost always legal counsel will be responsible for bringing us in during these and other types of case,” says Osborne. “Increasingly there will be some form of beauty parade to produce a shortlist of potential expert witnesses. The choice comes down to relevant knowledge and experience but also to the chemistry between the expert and the lawyer, as well as with the client.”

Osborne believes that a large number of clients come to FTI Consulting because of what he describes as “Definitive Expertise.” He says: “We’re not a highly leveraged model – we generally have senior team members actively involved in projects and we’re very much expert driven in all the forms of work we do.”

FTI’s impressive client base is based on the fact that it has the largest pool of expert witnesses and of people to underpin that work with research and analysis – what he describes as “bench strength”.

This offers both depth of knowledge and breadth of experience.

For Osborne and his colleagues, when it comes to their work as an expert “Definitive Expertise,” translates as ensuring that their testimony is a “definitive” factor in assisting the tribunal to arrive at its conclusion. “We take the importance of independence very seriously and we strongly believe that independence works in the client’s interest because it’s likely to be the most easily understood and the most convincing,” he says.

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An expert witness needs to be analytically thorough, he or she needs to have insight into the way in which the problem should be framed and must be able to communicate clearly to the tribunal. “You need all three of those things,” says Osborne. “Having robust bench strength is essential for the first two. The clarity with which people explain themselves in front of tribunal is also essential.”

Important skills An expert must also not assume knowledge and must avoid excessive jargon. “As the expert witness you have to be sensitive to the level of understanding of those involved in the tribunal and modify the way in which you explain things accordingly,” he says.

There are subtler, but equally important skills too. “The key is not just to answer the questions honestly, completely and correctly but to then take the opportunities that arise to make the points that you want to make without having it feel artificial,” explains Osborne. “Judges and chairs of tribunals are sensitive to expert witnesses trying to skew their questions to make a particular argument. In such situations they will often say that the witness was unconvincing on a particular point.”

Being clear and being believed is essential. “The person cross examining you has an advantage – they can be pushy or manipulative if they want to be, but you have to be straight down the line. As the expert witness, though, you will generally know the subject matter better than they will.”

As well as his work at FTI Consulting, Osborne is a member of the Council of the Academy of Experts.

“It’s important that the judges and tribunals have confidence in the independence of thought of the expert witnesses,” he says of his work here.

“The Academy is part of a policing function that emphasises the importance of that independence.

One of the reasons why British justice is as popular and well respected as it is around the world is because people believe in the independence of the judiciary under proper applications of the rules.

Expert witnesses are a part of that I’m proud to say.”

The Most Highly Regarded Expert Witnesses for 2015

Chris Osborne was an expert witness in the case of a Latvian businessman, Valeri Belokon, who was awarded $16.5 million in compensation for a bank he owned, Manas Bank, which was seized by the government of Kyrgystan. Osborne supported Belokon’s legal team as an expert witness during the tribunal in Paris last year. The Kyrgyz Republic argued that the seizure was justified because Manas Bank had engaged in money laundering and other criminal activities, but the tribunal found insufficient evidence of such claims.

FTI consulting FTI Consulting’s Expert Witnesses have been ranked as the leading player globally in Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration 2016. FTI’s businesses take number one and two positions in their report, with a total of 20% of all Expert Witnesses recognised: 19 in the Economic and Financial Consulting and Financial and Litigation Consulting practices and a further 15 at FTI’s subsidiary, Compass Lexecon. Additionally, two practitioners are listed in the top five most highly regarded individuals in Europe: Chris Osborne and James Nicholson. Who’s Who Legal also named FTI Consulting as Arbitration Expert Firm of the Year and Compass Lexecon, as Competition Economist Firm of the Year in 2015.

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The Most Highly Regarded Expert Witnesses for 2015 AI 128

Company: Acquire Media Email: info@acquiremedia.com Web: www.acquiremedia.com Address: 3 Becker Farm Road Suite 401, Roseland, NJ 07068 Phone: (973) 422-0800

Best Hedge Fund API News Solutions Provider 2016 Acquire Media is a technology-driven organization providing end-to-end realtime digital information solutions for investment and media professionals.

We collect thousands of news feeds -- nearly 750,000 news articles per day -- standardize them for consistency, add value through text analytics, and deliver key content to our clients without adding latency. We fuel the hunt for alpha, and feed the desire to minimize risk.

Acquire Media’s news products play is an important role at many hedge funds. After all, who doesn’t need timely, accurate information to effectively manage risk and guide investment strategy? Often the mention of a particular company in a news article requires swift action to modify a position or impending transaction.

Our APIs and feeds are reliable, robust, secure, and ultra-low-latency.

As a provider of news services to traders and portfolio managers, we know that speed is often the number one priority for our clients. However we also know that accuracy is just as important. That is why we devote significant resources to company name extraction, ticker symbology, topic categorization, and impact analysis. Small details can have a big impact.

Whether read by humans or machines, there is a split-second go/no-go decision that has to be made; mistakes cannot be tolerated.

Acquire Media maintains its edge via continual investment in cutting-edge content technology. We have eight patents covering such subjects as Twitter analysis, eliminating news feed duplication, and the trading impact of press releases. We understand how to work with disparate content formats and protocols, to bring them together efficiently and effectively.

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We are experts in NLP and our engines accurately tag and index content on the fly; we find and discard fluff and fakes. Further, our parallel-processing delivery capabilities, also patented, enable us to provide critical information in a time and format that meets the unique needs of each client without introducing delays. No hedge fund operates the same and neither do our feeds. We provide flexibility to our clients: what news, when received, and how integrated into existing infrastructures. Clients can tap our technical expertise through responsive engineering support, as well as formal development/ consulting assignments.

The founding members of Acquire Media have been together for over 25 years and have assembled an award-winning team of top minds in statistics and data science, as well as software and network engineering, all with experience in the financial industry. This powerful combination of science, technology, and industry knowledge means our products and services offer hedge funds cutting-edge solutions to solve vital information problems.

In recent years we have, with our new TIGER product, expanded our market share in machinereadable news. With our emphasis on speed, our trading-focused machine-feeds have proven popular.

For clients that integrate breaking corporate news into their trading and risk management strategies, these feeds deliver the critical components of disclosure-sensitive data in true real-time. Currently we provide a US-focused solution and are extending into other markets during the coming year.

Leading Actuaries of 2015 Recent challenges within the economic landscape have led clients, from High Net Worth Individuals through to Fund Managers, to increasingly seek the support of Actuaries to measure and manage their risk.

Within this section we have collated the best Actuaries in the industry and allowed them to explain, in their own words, how they came to achieve their success and provide us with a unique glimpse into their future plans and projects.

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Optimizing Foundations LLC / Columbia University

Company: Optimizing Foundations LLC / Columbia University Name: Noor Rajah Email: noor.rajah@columbia.edu; noor.rajah@ optimizingfoundations.com Web Address: www.optimizingfoundations.com Address: 734 Mountain Park, Woodstock, GA 30188 Telephone: 917 275 3802

Optimizing Foundations LLC is a boutique actuarial and employee benefit firm specializing in turning pension solutions into an asset for corporations.

We got in touch with Noor Rajah, Founder of Optimizing Foundations LLC and Faculty at Columbia University, to find out more about their practice and what makes them unique.

We have specialized in traditional pension and retiree medical valuation. We also focus on investment management and help plan sponsors select investment managers who have demonstrated higher returns over time and with lower fees. During this process, we help plan sponsors reduce their expenses as it relates to employee benefits with significant savings and direct impact on financial statements. We also help plan sponsors by developing and implementing an exit strategy Typically, we save plan sponsors approximately 1.5% in fees a year for a traditional pension plan.

The impact is very high over a short time period.

Moreover, we used the same approach for defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans. We also help companies terminate or withdraw of single employer and multi-employer defined benefit plans.

When working with our clients, we take the same approach to all employee benefits programs.

Healthcare savings can span from 5-15% per year in year one through review of insurance carrier and plan design modifications.

As we moved from traditional pension and employee benefit reviews, our partnership with leading tax advisors and accountants have resulted in new plan designs that renders successful companies as tax free structures and creates amazing returns for profitable organizations which allows shareholders, management and employees to earn tremendous value.

This paradigm shift structure has been implemented for a handful of companies with a very strong pipeline in different stages of review. With the demise of traditional defined benefit pension plans, there has been less creative work developed in the pension world. The new structure that has been developed brings together the tax code, corporate finance, investment banking and actuarial science in a way that has never been done before.

In terms of my experience, I have led the School of Professional Studies as Executive Vice Dean from 2014 to 2015 and led the actuarial science program from 2011 to 2015. I am a faculty at Columbia University and with the help of a tremendous group of fellow actuaries such as John Vitucci, Michael Frank, Sim Segal and Lina Xu, have developed what is recognized as one of the leading actuarial programs in the world. The program relies on a network of some of the top professionals in the field spanning from life and health insurance to property casualty insurance as well as enterprise risk management and pension/retirement.

In terms of our region, the United States (and the rest of the developed world) is faced with the issue of low retirement savings for current and future generations. In this environment, very little has been

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done to help individuals to save for retirement, and traditional pension plans are either being closed or frozen. Defined contribution plans do not allow for sufficient retirement savings. However, our approach allows for high returns in a period of 7 to 15 years to create exceptional growth and savings for profitable organizations, their shareholders, management and employees. The methodology works well with management buy outs.

As a company working in a highly competitive environment such as ours, we have developed a network of trusted actuaries in the field through our academic work. We also have a network of non-actuaries, who we partner with including accountants, lawyers, investment managers and other professionals, who are the best in their respective industry.

In the pension field, defined benefit plans have gone through a downward phase in the last 25 years. On the one hand, there are growing concerns related to retirement savings adequacy for retirees.

Plan sponsors, on the other hand, are increasingly concerned with the high level of volatility with respect to cost and balance sheet impact. Often pension plans asset and liabilities are in the same order of magnitude as the enterprise value of the organization.

We have found that pension plans are often not managed as well as the organization. This is an issue of educating the sponsors on choices and options that they have to be able to make rational decisions and we have helped them learn how to manage their plans.

In terms of understanding pension plans, the practice was well summarized by a letter from Warren Buffett to Katherine Graham related to the Washington Post pension plan in 1975. Graham Holdings is one of the last very well-funded pension plans in the US, and I would recommend that anyone interested in pension plan management to read this as it laid the foundation more than 40 years ago on how to think about pension assets and liabilities. Although it was written more than 30 years ago, it is still to this date one of the best pieces on how to think about pension and one can understand why Warren Buffett is so well respected.

Most creative actuaries in terms of design or creation of new plans have either moved on to new fields or retired. Optimizing Foundations, with our tax, accounting, valuation and banking partners, is developing brand new solutions to help companies be more efficient through understanding options in retirement plans and education. As a result, we are expecting a very high growth in our services over the next year and beyond.

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KPMG LLP is a professional service company offering a wide range of services including auditing. We spoke to Nazir Valani, Partner and North American Leader for AXIS Implementation at KPMG. Nazir is also the National Leader of the Actuarial Practice at KPMG in Canada.

AXIS is an actuarial software that is used extensively in Canada and the Caribbean. It is also increasingly being used in the US and Asia. My role involves working with the US KPMG team to leverage the tremendous opportunities for end to end actuarial and finance transformation initiatives.

Company: KPMG LLP Name: Nazir Valani Email: nvalani@kpmg.ca Address: 333 Bay Street Suite 4600, Toronto, Canada M5H 2S5 Telephone: 416-457-8622

I am also the National Leader of the Actuarial Practice at KPMG and the senior actuary for Life Insurance, Pensions and Property & Casualty in Canada. My role has significantly expanded since I joined KPMG in August 2012. Within this role I am responsible for providing actuarial services to audit and advisory clients.

Prior to KPMG, I was an entrepreneur. I founded Valani Consulting in 1998 and operated the company for 14 years. Over these 14 years, Valani Consulting went from a one-man operation to becoming the 2nd largest Life Actuarial Practice in Canada. Over 50% of Valani Consulting’s revenue was US based.

Prior to Valani Consulting, I held two management positions as Director of Actuarial Services with major Canadian life insurance companies including roles in product development (one role involved dealing with customised products for high income earners), reinsurance and corporate actuarial. I also worked at GGY AXIS, the creators of the AXIS actuarial software, for 5 years in charge of customer support and training.

During my career I have participated in a number of industry activities including serving as a member of the Committee on Life Insurance Financial Reporting (CLIFR), a member of the CLHIA Committee on

Policyholder Taxation, a member of the Annuity Reserve Working Group (ARWG) and as a member of the Life Practice Committee in the Caribbean.

I am also a frequent presenter at various insurance industry conferences – Society of Actuaries (SOA), Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA,) Caribbean Actuarial Association (CAA) and Acumen - covering such topics on “The actuarial impact of IFRS 4 Phase 2”, “Modeling Best Practices”, “Model vetting”, “Sources of Earnings”, and “The Future of Participating Life Insurance”.

I am an active member and leader serving the community on various organizational ventures and charitable initiatives. These initiatives include child education, poverty alleviation, and the Syrian refugee crisis. I am an Advisor to KPMG’s Partner Savings Plan & Staff Pension Plan. I am also a Director’s Circle Founding Member & Advisor to the Aga Khan Museum.

Looking to the future, KPMG Canada Actuarial Practice’s revenue is expected to increase by 25% to 50% this year due to the tremendous opportunities in the US for end to end actuarial and finance transformation initiatives involving the AXIS actuarial software.

In addition, the demand for actuaries has and will continue to increase due to ongoing significant developments in the regulatory and capital environment and accounting standards relating to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the Insurance business.

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The Miravite Consulting Group (MCG) is an ISO-accredited company providing risk consulting services, in the actuarial practice areas and in macro-financial analysis and quantitative finance. Faye S Miravite provided an insight into the services the firm provides.

Originally established in 1964 as Feliciano F Miravite Inc, The Miravite Consulting Group are the top pioneer consulting actuaries in the country, and have been providing actuarial consulting services for over fifty years to private corporations and government institutions in the Philippines and in the Asia Pacific region.

Company: Miravite Consulting Group Name: Faye S Miravite, FSA Email: faye.miravite@ ffmiravite.com Web: www.ffmiravite.com Address: 20/F Fort Legend Tower, 3rd Avenue corner 31st Street, BGC, Taguig City Telephone: +63(2)856-7118

The last decade has seen the evolution of MCG into risk modelling and other risk practice areas for financial applications, despite quantifying and mitigating business uncertainty under local or global economic contexts.

As CEO of the company, I have been steering the direction of the company to embrace a wider perspective for undertaking our professional activities, ensuring that our way of doing business is aligned to future unfolding market and corporate realities.

To support this, we have created symbiotic relationships with relevant academe and industry partners giving us access to multidisciplinary research, allowing us to enhance our foresight in providing perfect-fit solutions to manage risk, as we partner with our clients towards the achievement of their strategic and financial objectives.

The firm offers a range of consulting services which may be consolidated within the context of Corporate Pension Risk Management. These services range from actuarial services for retirement plans through to asset liability management.

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In tune with the evolving international practice, however, we undertake these services within a multidisciplinary context. Two years ago, we established our Risk, Quantitative Finance and Economics team that, through its research activities, ensures our risk quantification techniques reflect current trends in research literature; and at the same time are calibrated through relevant qualitative analyses that we conduct in macro-financial analysis, monetary economics, industrial and firm analyses.

In 2015, we formed an alliance with an asset management firm. With their expertise and services in investments and asset management, we are able together to provide consolidated consulting services for retirement systems. Our mutual objective is to be thought leaders in these complimentary practice areas, hence, develop and implement services that are at the forefront of industry practice.

In addition to our actuarial consulting services, we have also recently performed counterparty credit risk analysis, as requested by one of the top five banks in the country. The engagement involved the credit risk analysis of the different counterparties, both local and global, either currently engaged by the client or prospectively.

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Ones to Watch in 2016 Every year we profile some of the most successful individuals within their specialist area across the globe within our ‘Ones to Watch’ feature.

This exciting section features one firm from each region outlining their strategies, philosophy and future plans, providing a tantalising glimpse into some of the best companies in the world.

Ones to Watch for 2016

Property Investor Partners are leading the way in partnering with investors to create mixed portfolios of properties in the North West of England. Director Martin Henshaw reveals the opportunity for investors to benefit.

Martin Henshaw has been investing in property in the North West for 15 years starting in his home area around Carlisle and now with Property Investor Partners has properties from Carlisle to Manchester and Barrow in Furness to Liverpool.

The UK buy to let property market has experienced exponential growth over the last 20 years irrespective of boom or bust in the general economy. It has developed in a unique way with a mass of small private investors pouring into the market so that there are now more than 4 million buy to let properties owned by over 2 million investors. 98% of those investors own less than 3 properties.

Company: Property Investor Partners Name: Martin Henshaw Email: admin@ propertyinvestorpartners.co.uk Web: propertyinvestorpartners. co.uk Address: 5 Cavendish St, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, LA14 1SF AI 100

There are many different sectors to this market but Property Investor Partners where Martin is a Director have focused on building portfolios both for themselves and on behalf of investors in the North West of England.

This Region has suffered economically over the last 50 years and matters reached a low point after 2008.

Property prices remain, relatively speaking, at a historic low but it remains difficult for local buyers to access finance. The rental market however remains strong and yields are high (despite rental values only now showing signs of increasing after remaining essentially static for the last seven years).

Looking forward there is now a concerted effort to revive this area both at a micro level (with many regeneration projects underway and planned) and at a macro level centred around the Government’s Northern Powerhouse initiative. This coupled with the slowly improving economy means there has never been a better opportunity to purchase properties.

Cash buyers in particular are able to secure exceptional deals.

The problem for potential investors however, especially those not based in the region, is how to best access the market. This is not London where you can buy one property for £750k, break even on rental income and watch the capital grow. By contrast £750k would buy you 15 houses in Liverpool but how would an investor, especially one who isn’t local, manage such an investment?

Thinking about those numbers for a minute: That £750k investment in one London property would give you one, three bedroom house in say Turnpike Road.

You would then pay £27.5k in stamp duty, it may then cost £25k to refurbish giving a total cost of just over £800k. This property is likely to give a rental income of around £24k per annum and therefore a yield of around 3%.

In Liverpool that same £750k would buy 15 3 bedroom houses at around £40k to £45k each. Each may cost around £5k to refurbish and based on Housing Benefit Rules would deliver a rental income of £5,454. This gives a total rental of £81,810 and so a yield of around 12%.

As well as a much better yield the investment risk is spread across many properties and is more flexible allowing re-mortgages or sales across any part of the portfolio.

So there just remain two issues – local expertise to find the right properties to make up the portfolios and the difficulty of managing the large number of properties for Investors not based in the Region. This is where Property Investor Partners have the solution: • Based in the North West themselves and with 100 plus properties in their various current portfolios they have built up the extensive local knowledge required to find the best buys • Through their company Pomegranate Property Management they have the locally based team to manage the properties.

They have a unique business model enabling Investors worldwide to work with them to build successful portfolios on a hands free basis. For example, one portfolio has been created and is being managed for a German Investor who initially put in £250k but is now in the process of putting in a further £600k.

If you want to know more contact them or if you are not ready to invest but want to track what is happening, then why not sign up for their newsletter “Invest in the North West” which provides a free insight into factors affecting investment in the area.

Registration is via the website.

With the Government’s recent changes to both the Stamp Duty and tax rules there is increasing evidence that a shift in the rental market may be on the way – away from the many small private landlords and towards larger, professionally run, property management companies. Property Investor Partners and their investors are in the perfect position to capitalise on this opportunity.

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Ones to Watch in 2016 AI 41

Kenny Nachwalter P.A. is a Business Litigation firm which specializes in handling a wide range of complex business disputes in Florida and nationwide. We profile the firm and explore their work within the legal sector, providing an exciting insight into this dynamic business.

Company: Kenny Nachwalter P.A. Web Address: www.knpa.com Address: 1100 Miami Center 201 South Biscayne Boulevard Miami, Florida 33131 Telephone: +1 (305) 373-1000

Kenny Nachwalter P.A. is a 25-lawyer litigation-only firm with offices in Miami, Florida, Austin, Texas and Washington, D.C. The experience the firm has acquired over its 37 years has led them to regularly appear on lists of the premier law firms in the United States in the areas of antitrust litigation, defense of professional liability litigation and general commercial litigation. The firm applies its experience in complex business disputes in state and federal court and arbitral forums.

The firm enjoys a national reputation for excellence in complex business and antitrust litigation.

Lawyers working for Kenny Nachwalter P.A. have demonstrated expertise in wide range of practice areas in the broad realm of Complex Business Litigation, including Antitrust, Securities, Professional Liability, Director and Officer Liability Defense, and Intellectual Property Litigation. Kenny Nachwalter, P.A. is routinely retained in cases involving complicated economic and factual issues, multiple parties, multiple interrelated matters, and other substantive issues requiring superior legal scholarship and forensic skills.

One area of specialization for which the firm has been known since its founding in 1978 is federal antitrust litigation, particularly on the plaintiffs’ side. Most firms that specialize in plaintiffs’ antitrust litigation are class action firms — that is, they represent relatively small companies that file suit against a supplier or group of suppliers on behalf of a class of similarly situated purchasers. Instead of filing class actions, Kenny Nachwalter represents large companies who wish to litigate their own claims with their own chosen counsel outside the class-action device.

The firm also represents plaintiffs in antitrust cases that do not lend themselves to class-action treatment, such as a claim against a competitor. Being one of only a handful of firms that specialize in non-class plaintiffs’ antitrust litigation and practicing in this area is nationwide, the firm has represented a wide range of clients in this area including Fortune 500 companies at all levels of the distribution chain (manufacturers, retailers, etc.) and in a wide variety of industries (pharmaceuticals, chemicals, airlines, food, payment systems and electronics, to name a few). Alongside this the firm also has experience litigating cases under all major federal antitrust laws (sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act and the Robinson-Patman Act).

In addition to their national antitrust practice, the firm has a broad-based complex business litigation practice. As part of that practice, the firm is frequently asked to defend professionals, including attorneys, accountants and auditors, securities brokers, engineers and architects and consultants, in state and federal courts and arbitral forums.

As such, the firm have built up decades of experience in defending professionals who have been sued for professional negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, securities law violations, fraud, and aiding and abetting a fraud or breach of fiduciary.

Attorneys and other professionals also seek their advice and opinions in preventative and risk management capacities, to ensure that they are acting in compliance with the rules governing their professions and providing the highest levels of service to their clients.

In each complex matter in which the firm is retained, its focus is always on its clients’ particular business and litigation objectives, and therefore firm lawyers draw on their extensive trial experience to inform their strategies, with the goal of achieving their client’s objectives in an efficient and effective manner.

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Ones to Watch in 2016 AI 18

Moore Stephens Chartered Accountants is a client-centred Chartered Accountant firm offering a wide range of services. We speak to Andrew Dixon who provides us with an exciting insight into the company and their working practices.

Moore Stephens Chartered Accountants is part of the Moore Stephens Isle of Man group of independent accounting and business advisory firms. The group delivers a range of services including accounting, audit and assurance, business and executive consulting and coaching, foreign exchange services, insurance brokerage, investigations and forensic, investment advisory and financial planning, regulatory compliance and retirement solutions in addition to taxation and compliance advice.

Company: Moore Stephens Chartered Accountants Name: Andrew Dixon Email: andrew.dixon@msiom.com Web: www.msiom.com Address: 26-28 Athol Street Douglas, Isle of Man, IM99 1BD Telephone: +44 1624 662020

Moore Stephens Isle of Man in turn is a member firm of Moore Stephens International, one of the world’s major accounting and consulting networks with 292 independent firms and 626 offices in 103 countries.

Accountancy is a very serious discipline so, not surprisingly, we take our work very seriously.

Because we are an ISO 9001 accredited firm and all of our engagements are partner led and reviewed by staff with formal accounting qualifications from bodies such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants, we ensure our clients always receive the highest standard of service.

Recently we completed the installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM which already is aiding our interaction with prospects and clients, not just by cataloguing the people with whom we do business, but also highlighting how we can provide them more value.

In addition, while appropriate training and qualifications are of course a prerequisite for any member of our team, I believe the ideal way to ensure our clients are in the best possible hands is by empowering our team through clear objectives and a coaching style of management. This starts with clear communication of the goal from start to finish.

Working in a highly competitive environment such as ours means we must work hard to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. The task is made more challenging because many accounting and audit “products” are commoditised and pricesensitive, which is why many in our profession have outsourced these to countries with a lower labour cost.

Instead, we differentiate ourselves by service.

This may sound trite, but as we define “service”, we mean making the entire experience pleasant while providing the universal standard of technical expertise. Delivering technical expertise is fairly straightforward, but delivering what the client needs, making sure they feel good about their experience, every time, is our differential.

To achieve this we practice empathetic listening.

This means not talking down to them; it’s too easy to lecture a client on what you think they need rather than first standing in their shoes.

We work on a global scale assisted by the global presence of Moore Stephens International.

The Isle of Man is geographically on the doorstep of Europe and through sharing the UK’s Customs and VAT regime it’s part of the EU trade area, but otherwsie it’s not part of the EU. As a result, there are unique opportunities in international trade, space technology, aviation and aerospace, shipping, superyachts, and e-Gaming.

One challenge of being based in the Isle of Man is how some of the world’s press and politicians portray this.

Although the Isle of Man is recognised as one of the world’s most open, best regulated and most reputable international finance centres, we still encounter less-informed people who think the Island is a tax haven, which the Isle of Man unquestionably is not.

On the other hand, most understand that having a reputable international finance centre to blend and reconcile sometimes conflicting regulations is essential for international trade.

As we look to the future, there is an overall improvement in the business climate although trading conditions are still challenging. We are very bullish because of our commitment to noncommoditised, complementary and high value services.

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Druces LLP is a City of London law firm with both national and international coverage. We spoke to Christopher Axford, Partner at Druces LLP, who gave us his unique insight into the exciting world of Islamic finance.

Islamic finance has developed from a specialist or niche part of the global banking system to one of the fastest growing areas in global finance. As Islamic finance has grown, so too has the United Kingdom’s position as a global hub for Islamic finance.

Name: Christopher Axford, Partner, Druces LLP Email: c.axford@druces.com Telephone: +44 (0)20 7216 5557

Recent data by Al Rayan Bank showed that at the end of 2014, the UK was the world’s ninth largest Islamic finance market, the leading Western country and Europe’s premier centre for Islamic finance with $19bn of reported Sharia’ah compliant assets.

Twenty international banks operating in the UK are working in Islamic finance, six of which are fully Sharia’ah compliant.

The Islamic financial sector in Europe has the potential to grow significantly in the medium term as trade and financial links, as well as general collaboration between the EU and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries continues to grow.

Over the past few years, there has been increasing evidence of support for Islamic finance from European governments as they become increasingly keen to be seen throwing their weight behind ethical funding, as well as looking at access to alternative global funds. Interestingly, a number of commentators also point to a growing interest in the halal food business across Europe as a contributing factor in the burgeoning interest in Islamic finance.

Islamic finance and the legal landscape Until relatively recently, legal advice on Islamic finance issues was a specialism undertaken by a small number of law firms, usually with interests in the Middle East and a number of Islamic clients with corresponding needs.

Today, as Islamic finance becomes a genuine option to replace “traditional finance” on transactions, more and more non-Muslims have become interested in opportunities provided by the use of Islamic finance.

As financial institutions and banks look to emerging

markets (in Asia and Africa in particular), combined with the continued power of oil-rich countries in the Middle East, the need for specialist lawyers that understand Islamic finance is abundantly clear.

In its most recent edition, The Legal 500 lists 22 law firms with offices in the UK that are recommended for Islamic legal services. As Islamic finance has grown as a segment in the UK, so too has the demand for Islamic finance legal services and the number of law firms that see Islamic finance legal resource as a wise investment.

However, it is not good enough for advisors to take a passing interest in Islamic finance. Clients are rightly demanding deeper Islamic finance expertise across the spread of their advisers, legal or otherwise.

Clients are placing significant value on their lawyers developing close relationships with Sharia’ah scholars and experts, as well as a broader range of Islamic financial institutions, all over the world.

These clients want Islamic finance advice that is as well informed as it can possibly be, and suitably tailored to address their varied needs, whether they are using Sharia’ah principles for religious reasons or not. Moreover, they want to deliver a Sharia’ah compliant solution that stands the rigorous legal tests that high value finance transactions demand.

Druces LLP and Islamic finance Law firm Druces LLP’s Islamic Finance team was formed in 2011 under partner Christopher Axford’s leadership, to bring together the firm’s banking and property finance teams and combine the team’s existing knowledge of Islamic finance structuring.

Druces acts for a number of well-known Islamic finance providers and has acted on a large number of transactions as well as taking on a growing deal book for a number of Middle Eastern investors and funds interested in applying Sharia’ah compliant structures.

The team’s growing reputation is recognised in leading legal directory, The Legal 500, as a leading firm in Islamic finance.

Conclusion The Islamic finance industry is very likely to expand further, globally, and as it does the number of opportunities afforded to advisers on Islamic finance will grow accordingly. In the last five or so years, Islamic finance has become more competitive and robust and there’s every reason to expect the industry to continue to develop as an increasingly important part of the global financial system.

At Druces we are particularly excited by that significant further potential that Islamic finance has and are looking forward to working with our broad range of clients in this burgeoning sector, continuing to advise a number of clients across the full range of Sharia’ah compliance and structures.

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Ones to Watch in 2016 AI 44

Jean-Claude Gonneau, Managing Director of Camden Associates, discusses the firm’s progress and how it will adapt in future.

Company: Camden Associates Name: Jean-Claude Gonneau Email: jcg@camdenassociates.co.uk Web: www.camdenassociates.co.uk Address: 27 Hill street London, W1J 5LP Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7290 9812

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Mr Gonneau is the Managing director of Camden Associates, an international transactions firm, and supervises a team of three bankers. This year has been a positive, with a lot of advisory work done notably in the private sphere. The level of business has gathered steam which is a good sign and we’re getting a substantial amount of repeat business.

multiplied. Alongside traditional capital markets, alternative private financing markets are operating at scale, and the resurgence of interest in M&A puts acquisitions firmly on the corporate agenda.

Significant change is clearly under way, although it is much too early to say whether this will be a permanent structural shift in market conditions.

However, our market is changing. Using statistics based on the number of virtual data rooms opened for the purpose of conducting due diligence on anticipated transactions, Deal Flow Indicators show that the pattern is changing with activity moving to private markets and to Asia.

One of our recent projects was the financing of Chinese company Snowbird which we co-listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange last year. Earlier in the year we participated in the financing of Theravectys a French biotech company on its fourth round of financing and are now working for Inovio an American biotech company pioneering a novel class of vaccines using SYNCON, a synthetic DNA.

As we move through to the second half of 2015, with the IPO pipeline building, we expect activity to gain momentum. What we would expect for the global IPO market based on first half of 2015, as improving economic backdrop will underpin increasing appetite for deal activity regardless of the worries generated by the severe market correction of last august. The economic outlook is positive and improving.

Meanwhile, disruptive innovation is driving dealmaking at every level of the enterprise. Multitrack strategies should continue to grow in importance.

Now, the rationale for multitrack is much wider.

Sources of capital for financing a business have

Looking ahead to 2016 we will be looking at growth, expanding our current client base and providing them with additional services.

Ones to Watch in 2016 AI 21

Meleagros Surgical Ltd Company: Meleagros Surgical Ltd Name: Luke Meleagros Secretary: Joanne Dobson Email: jdobson116@btinternet.com Telephone: 0208 5270977 Mobile: 07862290089

Mr Luke Meleagros BSc, MBBS, MD, FRCS is a Consultant Surgeon at Meleagros Surgical Ltd and has been consultant general, gastrointestinal, colorectal and laparoscopic surgeon in the NHS since 1994. Qualified in 1978, his specialist fields are general surgery and colorectal surgery.

His clinical interests are Colorectal Cancer, Haemorrhoids, Rectal Prolapse, Ulcerative Colitis, Chron’s Disease, Fistula-in-ANO, Fissurein-ANO, Hernia, Incisional Hernia Gallstones. Alongside these he is also an expert in the more specialist areas of Laparoscopic surgery, laparoscopic colorectal surgery, diverticular disease, appendicitis, small bowel adhesions and obstruction.

Mr Melegros has extensive medico-legal practice, and as such he receives more than 100 instructions per year. He has appeared in court twice in the past year, highlighting the prestige of his testimony.

His professional memberships include the Association of Surgeons, the British Society of Gastroenterology, the British Association of Surgical Oncology and the Society of Academic & Research Surgery In addition he acts as a surgical trainer and supervisor for surgeons in training, and also publishes scientific and clinical research papers in medical journals in order to give back to the medical profession. He is also a reviewer of scientific articles for medical journals.

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Ones to Watch in Nunavut AI 80

Alain Chiasson is a member of Field Law’s Business Group, practicing in the Firm’s northern office.

Alain has a vast legal background in corporate law, business law and securities law. He also focuses on taxation and estate planning including, estate freezes, corporate reorganizations, tax litigation and the purchase or selling of shares and assets.

His practice also includes the areas of mining and natural resources.

Company: Field Law Name: Alain Chiasson Email: achiasson@fieldlaw.com Web Address: fieldlaw.com Address: 601 - 4920 52 ST Yellowknife NT X1A 3T1 Telephone: 867-669-8451

A large part of Alain’s practice includes advising mining corporations seeking investment opportunities in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. He also provides strategic guidance to Inuit companies in arranging tailored corporate structures in the negotiation and implementation of intricate agreements, thus allowing for the greatest organizational potential of firm natural resources.

Within these territories, Alain has also guided clients on the various complex administrative aspects of the regulatory bodies in the mining industry. To enhance his knowledge and practice, Alain recently also completed The Osgoode Certificate in Mining Law, thus giving him the background to provide strategic advice to better equip clients on crucial business and legal matters in the mining industry today.

Previously, Alain has also appeared before the Court of Queen’s Bench, Court of Appeal, as well as the New Brunswick Labour and Employment Board and various administrative tribunals.

About Field Law Field Law is a northern and western regional law firm with offices located in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories and Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta.

The Firm has been proactively serving clients and providing legal counsel for 100 years. Field Law offers a comprehensive range of services, and those services are designed to support the specific and ever-evolving business needs of regional, national

and international clients who do business in northern and western Canada. Field has lawyers called to the Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan Bars.

With over 120 experienced lawyers, Field Law provides legal services for businesses and institutions in most areas of law. Additionally, the Firm provides private services to individuals. As a member of SCG Legal, a global network of independent law firms, Field Law’s clients gain access to trusted, dependable, local legal representation anywhere in the world their business takes them.

One of Field Law’s core values is giving back to the communities they serve. The Firm is active in many community and charitable initiatives and is a proud supporter of the arts and contributes to helping build a vibrant culture within local communities. Field Law works closely with Aboriginal communities, looking for ways to support and engage youth, display their talents and keep them safe.

Field Law launched the Field Law Community Fund Program in 2013 which in its 100th anniversary year provided $100,000 to local projects. Since 2013, Field has awarded $250,000 in the funding of local ideas, supporting them with a profile-building website and in some cases being the catalyst for causes to achieve further funding from others.

Field Law’s Northern Practice Group The Northern Practice group has provided legal services and governance advice to Aboriginal communities in the North and Alberta. They have also provided corporate and commercial legal services to Aboriginal closely held corporations with a focus on business development.

“Field Law” is a trademark and trade name of Field LLP.

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Ones to Watch in M&A AI 44

V-Rooms is a market-leading, US-based global virtual data room provider offering industry leading security secure document management services.

Karen Perkins spoke to us about how the firm operates within such a competitive business environment.

Company: V-Rooms Virtual Data Rooms Name: Karen Perkins Email: kperkins@v-rooms.com Web: www.V-Rooms.com Address: 309 W. 7th Street, Suite 810, Fort Worth, TX 76102 Telephone: 800-731-7379 or +1 404-692-6101

V-Rooms is privately owned and operated from within US, and in recent years we have seen steady growth over our 10 year history and are positioned for continued growth and success.

which focuses on ease of use, client efficiency and security as top priorities. The user experience with V-Rooms Pro+ is seamless and intuitive as it supports fluid business processes on a daily basis.

I personally have served as the company’s President for almost 10 years, with a focus on technology development, operations and marketing. I recently purchased the company along with a new business partner, Stanton Williams, a seasoned known for discovering the opportunities, setting the strategic vision, inspiring impactful teamwork while compassionately mentoring individuals to exceed their expectations and the company’s goals.

Looking to the future you can expect V-Rooms to release more features and capabilities that extends the usage of Virtual Data Rooms further into the business organization as we look to provide API (Application Program Integration) with other enterprise cloud services. V-Rooms is becoming a single-source provider of services relevant to our clients, including data analytics, research support and private equity fund accounting. We are partnering with best in class service providers to provide a suite of services that will enable us to provide a holistic solution to our client base and increase profitability.

As such V-Rooms continuously invests in our technology to drive improvement initiatives, and offer new features and functionality ensure superior security and performance for our customers. Our focus has always been, and it continues to be, on generating superior value for our customers through improved performance, increased security, flexible features and an excellent user experience.

With this in mind, V-Rooms has recently launched a patent pending industry leading User Interface, Pro+,

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Third Quarter Update For many firms across the corporate landscape and around the world, the third quarter of 2015 presented a number of challenges, although many worked tirelessly to ensure their continued success.

As such, we have profiled the work of some of these firms, exploring how they have worked through these challenges and sought every available opportunity to make 2016 an even better year.

Third Quarter Update AI 52

Connors O’Dell LLP Company: Connors O’Dell LLP Phone: 610.524.2100 Web: http://connorslawllp.com

ConnorsLaw is an insurance defence firm with a focus on workers’ compensation and general litigation practicing throughout Eastern Pennsylvania. We profile Kevin Connors, the firm’s managing director.

Concentrating his practice in insurance defence litigation, Kevin has extensive experience defending civil and administrative matters that involve all aspects of insurance liabilities, to include premises liability, retail liability, restaurant liability, products liability, motor vehicle liability, general negligence liability, employment practices liability, bad faith liability, insurance coverage, workers’ compensation liability, and subrogation.

Kevin was also admitted as a Fellow into the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers in 2012. The College has less than 300 members. Kevin is also the primary contact between ConnorsLaw and the National Workers’ Compensation Defense Network (NWCDN), a national network of attorneys specializing in defending workers’ compensation claims, with ConnorsLaw being the Pennsylvania representative member firm for the NWCDN.

Kevin has defended and litigated insurance coverage matters involving declaratory judgment actions, for purposes of addressing coverage issues under commercial and personal insurance policies.

Kevin was also recently appointed as a Member representative to Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Advisory Board. He is also a Member in the Council on Litigation Management.

Practicing as an insurance defence litigator over the last 25+ years, Kevin has tried lots of cases to verdict, before both juries and arbitration panels.

He also has had extensive experience in defending motor vehicle liability cases involving first-party coverages for first-party benefits, uninsured motorist’s benefits, and underinsured motorist’s benefits.

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Fourth Quarter Update: A 2015 Year End Round-Up 2015 was an exciting year across the business landscape, with economic and social challenges leading many businesses to work tirelessly in order to ensure success.

Within this section we examine firms from a variety of industries and countries, exploring how they overcame these challenges to come out fighting in 2016.

Fourth Quarter Update: A 2015 Year End Round-Up AI 47

ProSport CPA PLLC provides expert tax, accounting, and financial education services exclusively to professional athletes.

ProSport CPA PLLC is a rapidly-growing, boutique firm providing expert tax, accounting, and financial education services exclusively to professional athletes. This specialty firm, founded just seven years ago by a former PricewaterhouseCooper’s international tax manager, Dr. John Karaffa, is becoming increasingly well-known as the preferred U.S. tax and accounting firm for professional athletes, and are truly living up to the slogan, THE Tax Pro for the Pros®.

Name: Dr. John Karaffa Email: JKaraffa@ProSportCPA.com Web: www.ProSportCPA.com Address: 7927 Patriots Landing Place, Quinton, VA 23141 USA

The company serves over 400 clients with leading positions in several professional sports leagues, including over 130 professional basketball players, including 70 in the NBA and WNBA; over 120 professional American football players; many world class track and field and other Olympians; top UFC fighters; and professional athletes in all the major American sports leagues.

taxation has proven especially valuable and lucrative for those professional athletes using ProSport CPA. As a quality boutique accounting firm that caught our eye, ProSport CPA is truly living up to the slogan, THE Tax Pro for the Pros®.

About Dr. John Karaffa Dr. John Karaffa is a former professional athlete and coach in Germany and New Zealand, and is a 25-year industry veteran and seasoned tax and personal finance expert with unmatched credentials: Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Personal Financial Specialist (PFS), Certified Financial Planner® (CFP®), National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) Registered Player Financial Advisor, and Registered Canadian Football League Players Association (CFLPA) Financial Advisor. Dr Karaffa is also a published author and distinguished college professor.

ProSport CPA works with many professional athletes from the UK and continental Europe who compete in America. ProSport CPA’s top position among foreign professional athletes came about from the experiences that the firm’s management team all gained while working at Big 4 accounting firms in Europe. As the world of professional sports becomes more global, this specialty niche of international personal taxation combined with professional athlete

Yusuf Ali & Co., Ghalib Chambers (Law Firm), Ilorin, Nigeria began on 1st June, 1994 and has since grown to the status as one of the leading law firms in Nigeria. The firm operates from four cities in Nigeria, viz: Ilorin, Lagos, Abuja.

Company: Yusuf Ali & Co Name: Yusuf Ali Email: yoa@yusufali.net Web: www.yusufali.net Address: 2nd Floor Ghalib House, 24 Abdul Wahab Folawiyo Rd., Ilorin Telephone: 234 (0)31 740894

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As Principal Partner of the firm, Yusuf Ali SAN was called to the Nigerian Bar about 3 decades ago and has remained in active legal practice to this day.

He attended the University of Ife, now (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife) where he gained a 2nd Class Upper Division for his Bachelor of Laws degree.

He attended the Nigerian Law School, where he also passed with a 2nd Class Upper Division and was appointed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria in 1989, as a Notary Public. Yusuf Ali SAN attained the highest professional honour at the Nigerian Bar in 1997, when he was conferred with the prestigious and honourable title of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (S.A.N.) Yusuf Ali SAN is also a member of many professional bodies such as the Nigerian Bar Association, the International Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the Commonwealth Lawyers Association to name a few. Yusuf Ali SAN also served and is still serving on boards of many Companies and Institutions, such as being Chairman of the Kwara State Law Reform Committee.

He is also a Patron and Legal Adviser to many professional and social cultural groups in Nigeria.

He is listed in the America’s Biographical Who is Who and as well as Who is Who in Nigeria and is also an Associate Lecturer, at the Faculty of Law, University of Ilorin. He has contributed chapters to various legal publications and has to his credit many published learned articles in learned journals in the field of litigation, Commercial Law and so on. Yusuf Ali SAN has prosecuted many cases for many state governments in Nigeria, high net worth Individuals, Corporate and Institutional Clients.

Fourth Quarter Update: A 2015 Year End Round-Up AI 49

“Deloitte” is the brand under which tens of thousands of dedicated professionals in independent firms throughout the world collaborate to provide audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management, tax, and related services to select clients.

These firms are members of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”). Each DTTL member firm provides services in particular geographic areas and is subject to the laws and professional regulations of the particular country or countries in which it operates.

Deloitte UK fully appreciate that their everyday business activities affect not only their own organisation but society more widely, both through their actions and through the actions of those they do business with.

Company: Deloitte Name: Stephanie Thorpe Email: stthorpe@deloitte.co.uk Web: www2.deloitte.com/uk/en Address: 2 New Street Square, London, EC4A 3BZ. Telephone: 020 7303 6830

They are supporting social mobility and changing the way they recruit and support their people, to enhance the service they can provide to their clients and to make an impact that matters to their clients and to society.

in a school where most students achieve 3Ds, is recognised as exceptional performance.

The firm have also introduced school and universityblind recruitment, ensuring that their recruiters do not consciously or unconsciously favour those who attended a certain school or university, so that job offers are made on the basis of present potential, not past personal circumstance.

Social mobility It is the firm belief of Deloitte UK that “where you’re from should not determine where you’re going”, but the reality in the UK today is that the data tells a different story: • By the age of three, poorer children are estimated to be, on average, nine months behind children from more wealthy backgrounds; • By 16, children receiving free school meals achieve 1.7 grades lower at GCSE; • 30 per cent of all A* grades at A level are achieved by children at independent schools, yet only 7 per cent of the school population attend independent schools; • 32% of MPs, 51% of top Medics, 54% of FTSE100 chief execs, 54% of top journalists and 70% of High Court judges went to an independent school, compared to 7% of the population.

For school- and college-leavers, the firm have redesigned and re-launched their BrightStart scheme, to ensure that their attraction strategy is more closely aligned to their outreach activities. In September 2016 Deloitte UK will be welcoming 200 students into the firm as they take their first steps in their careers through this important programme.

Why is social mobility important?

The UK has one of the poorest rates of social mobility in the developed world, which means that people born into low-income families, regardless of their talent, or their hard work, do not have the same access to opportunities as those born into more privileged circumstances.

In September 2015 the firm launched a survey to better understand the educational and socioeconomic background of their people. The results of the survey will be used to review and enhance their recruitment and retention strategies.

Deloitte UK wants to provide the best service to their clients, bringing diversity of thought to provide innovative solutions to their clients’ biggest challenges. They do this by recruiting the best people, from a diverse range of backgrounds and by creating an environment that helps everyone to succeed. They are supporting social mobility and changing the way they recruit and support their people, to enhance the service they can provide to their clients and to make an impact that matters to their clients and to society.

What is Deloitte doing in their recruitment and selection practices?

In September 2015 Deloitte UK introduced contextualised academics which allows their recruiters to make more informed choices about candidates by considering the context in which their academic achievements have been gained.

Contextualisation allows Deloitte UK to recognise these important qualifications for young people, whilst also ensuring that for example, 3Bs at A Level

In summer 2015, Deloitte ASPIRE was launched, a new experience of work programme designed to give school-age students an insight into the world of the work, access to professionals to build their networks, and opportunities to develop their skills for the workplace. Deloitte ASPIRE involved 141 students, all of whom were eligible for free school meals, or attended a school with above average free school meal eligibility and were the first in their family to go to university. In 2016 Deloitte ASPIRE will grow to take on 200 students across more of the firm’s regional offices.

What is Deloitte doing in society?

Deloitte UK’s twice award-nominated programme, Deloitte Access, delivered in collaboration with Teach First, is designed to raise aspiration, support achievement and provide opportunities for students in low-income communities. In September 2015 they launched the Evaluation Report of the second year of Deloitte Access highlighting the programme’s continuing success and growth.

Deloitte has been recognised by the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills as one of 12 Social Mobility Business Compact Champions – UK businesses who are playing a leading role on the issue of social mobility. The firm is also a signatory to the Access Accountancy initiative, a movement for change across the accountancy profession.

And finally, the company’s role at the heart of business means they have a unique part to play in engaging their clients in the issue of social mobility, not only demonstrating what they are doing to respond, but supporting and encouraging their clients in their own social mobility journey.

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Fourth Quarter Update: A 2015 Year End Round-Up AI 52

Name: Alan Tilley Chairman & Managing Partner Email: atilley@bmandt.eu Web: www.bmandt.eu Address: 23 Austin Friars, London, EC2N 2QP Telephone:07950 808777

BM&T is restructuring and advisory boutique specialising in UK and pan European operational and financial restructuring and M & A pre and postacquisition advice and support. BM&T is a founding partner of European Restructuring Solutions, an organisation of senior professionals in the major countries of Europe, and is European associate of US mid-market restructuring leader, Conway Mackenzie.

The firm has completed over 50 assignments of businesses from £10 million to £2 billion in turnover according to Alan Tilley, Chairman & Managing Partner. “Its Principals have a combined 50 year experience in turnaround having established the European division of US industry pioneer Glass & Associates in 1997. Certified Turnaround Professionals and qualified accountants and MBA’s they have previously worked in USA, and most major European countries in international manufacturing and service companies” he said Tilley continues that “BM&T has recently undertaken the post-acquisition integration of a 40 site European manufacturer of plastic containers into the acquiring company’s 50 site operation, working alongside the company to identify synergistic site integration targets and subsequently to assist as project leader in the closure and integration of French and Scandinavian sites and the closure of German sites and transfer of production to lower cost sites in Eastern Europe.”

hands-on grey matter.

“Other assignments include high level post acquisition advisory work for US companies on operational and labour related issues in European target companies, including plant closures, pensions and union negotiations in UK, France, Germany and Italy.

In closing, Tilley remarks that, “BM&T’s professional capability has been recognised by industry peers; Alan Tilley was Insolvency & Rescue UK Turnaround Manager of the year 2010. BM&T was awarded TMA Global International Turnaround of the Year 2011 and European Turnaround of the Year 2013 & 2015. BM&T authored the Guide to Turnaround, a comprehensive publication on best practice in turnaround and restructuring, for ICAEW.”

.Mergers & acquisitions .Gaming and gambling .Payments .Corporate finance .Software licensing .Brand protection .Sponsorship .Image rights .Privacy .Data protection .e-money .Company incorporation .Company maintenance .Insolvency .Restructuring .EU cross-border trade .Competition (anti-trust) .Employment .Consumer protection .Domain name disputes .Taxation .Real Estate .Financial services .eCommunication .Wealth management .Cryptocurrency FINANCIAL AND CORPORATE RECOMMENDED FIRM

2015

Level 5 Quantum House 75 Abate Rigord Street Ta’ Xbiex XBX 1120 Malta Telephone: (+356) 20925100 Web: www.whpartners.eu

88 Acquisition International - January 2016

Fourth Quarter Update: A 2015 Year End Round-Up AI 92

Guzmán Ariza is a national law and business consulting firm – the first and only one in the Dominican Republic.

Company: Guzmán Ariza Web: www.drlawyer.com Address: Pablo Casals 12, Serrallés, Santo Domingo 10125, Dominican Republic.

Telephone: +1 (809) 255-0980

Founded in 1927, the firm has extensive experience counseling clients, either commercial entities or individuals, in all stages of their business ventures in the country, the largest economy of Central America and the Caribbean. Our team of lawyers advises local and international clients in organizing startups, managing risks, incorporating new partners, financings, seeking funding for operations or helping them with compliance requirements for doing business in the Dominican Republic.

The firm’s seven offices are strategically located to serve clients in every major business and tourism centre: the Santo Domingo metropolitan area; the northern region–Sosúa-Puerto Plata, Cabarete, Las Terrenas, Samaná; and the southeast –Punta Cana, Bávaro, Miches, Macao and La Romana, including Casa de Campo and Bayahíbe.

Taxation, Intellectual Property, Litigation, Real Estate, Environmental, Criminal Law, Immigration, Family and Individual Law. We have regularly served as experts on Dominican Law in foreign jurisdictions and have participated in numerous depositions abroad.

Guzmán Ariza is recognized for being at the forefront in terms of quality in the legal market for international companies and investors in the country, handling all types of highly complex or simple matters.

Our commitment to knowledge of the law and business principles, responsiveness to clients, and cost-effective practices have earned us the reputation within the international business community as a trusted and respected law firm that delivers results.

Guzmán Ariza is a full-service law firm and the lawyers are committed to uncompromising client service and legal excellence, to meet their clients’ needs while exceeding their expectations. Our multilingual attorneys and business consultants assist clients in business and personal matters across a wide variety of areas; Corporate and Business, Mergers and Acquisitions, Project Finance, Banking, Insurance and Securities,

Denkstatt Romania is a business’s consulting company providing services in the areas of sustainable development, being part of ”denkstatt group”, with a clear mission to ‘drive the change to a sustainable society in Romania’. We invited Fistis Gabriela, the firm’s Managing Director, to provide us with a unique overall view of the firm’s performance in 2015.

Denkstatt Romania operates across a wide variety of consultancy services such as management systems, waste management, HSE legal compliance services, environmental due diligences, sustainable development, business process management, energy efficiency and climate protection, CSR reporting, etc.

Company: DENKSTATT ROMANIA Name: Fistis Gabriela – Managing Director Email: office@denkstatt.ro Web: www.denkstatt.ro Address: 22 Madrid street, Timisoara, Romania Telephone: +40 256 434397

During the past year the firm has increased its financial performance by 35% versus 2014.

Increased demand for sustainability consultancy services in Romania and a new growing market with new challenges in this field has helped make Denkstatt Romania one of the most reliable consultancy companies.

a systemic analysis and evaluation of resources use, on staff development in order to launch sustainability programs.

Therefore Denkstatt is keen to associate with those companies which are looking to be more proactive and want to start the changes in their business to make it more sustainable, looking together with them toward different benefits on the three dimension environmental, social and economic markets.

In the near future, the success of an organization within the sustainability sector will be defined by how it continues to develop its internal competences of the employees on the one hand and on the other hand, how will focus on environmental and social responsibility goals integration into its strategy.

The competitiveness of organizations and their economic success will depend clear on how they focus on operational performance improving through Acquisition International - January 2016 89

Law Offices of Hushang Hafizi a member of the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association

hushanghafizi@yahoo.com www.hhls.af

Fourth Quarter Update: A 2015 Year End Round-Up AI 49

Company: OGLETREE, DEAKINS, NASH, SMOAK & STEWART, P.C. Name: Maria Fernanda Gandarez Email: maria.gandarez@ ogletreedeakins.com Web: ogletreedeakins.com Address: 1745 Broadway, 22nd Floor, New York, NY 10019 Telephone: 001 (917) 685 8081

As one of the largest labor and employment law firms representing management in all types of employment-related legal matters throughout their worldwide offices, Ogletree Deakins has built on the high standards of its founders and their dedication to exceptional client service for more than 35 years. Ogletree Deakins has been named a Law Firm of the Year five consecutive years by U.S. News – Best Lawyers® “Best LawFirms,” and has earned a national “First Tier” practice area ranking for immigration. In addition to handling labor and employment law matters, Ogletree Deakins has one of the largest business immigration practices in the United States. In fact, the firm was named the 2015 Immigration Law Firm of the Year – USA by the Lawyer Monthly Legal Awards.

Immigration Practice (U.S. and Global) “In our business immigration practice, “hand-holding” is not a pejorative. From multinational Fortune 500 companies to the newest start up, our mission is to ensure each client’s journey through the immigration system, whether in the United States or abroad, is smooth from start to finish. Moreover, as an immigration practice in a global labor and employment firm, the synergy between immigration, labor and employment can be maximized to clients’ benefit. At Ogletree Deakins, we offer clients unfettered access to multiple practice areas, including labor and employment, benefits, and tax laws, both in the United States and globally. By exploring these other areas in conjunction with immigration, we reduce risks before they occur with innovative legal solutions and preventative strategies. In today’s world of increased immigration enforcement, the consequences of non-compliance can mean millions of dollars in fines, or other farreaching government sanctions.” Maria F. Gandarez, Head Immigration Practice, New York City Client service – a priority • They operate an attorney-managed model. Their clients are based all over the United States and the world, and the New York immigration team is available 24/7, via email or cellphone to provide real-time answers, with no regard to time zone differences.

• The firm successfully cover a variety of industries, from alternative energy to beverage to research and development, expanding their knowledge of each to properly advise their clients based on industry trends.

• Their legal personnel report on changes to immigration practices or regulations and provide a detailed analysis of their impact on employers via their website, client bulletins and eAlerts.

• They analyse the immigration implications of mergers and acquisitions, advise on I-9 requirements, and their labour and employment colleagues assess any significant impact to employment contracts or agreements.

• Outbound/non-United States transfers receive the same level of care. They manage every step of the process, in collaboration with their excellent international practice group, providing due diligence on country-specific requirements, from immigration to local labour laws and benefits.

• Employers and lawyers working together, providing seamless collaboration among all parties and firm practice groups.

Professional Development, Diversity, and Inclusion Ogletree Deakins is proud to have a tradition of professional development, diversity, and inclusion.

In more than 49 offices, lawyers of diverse gender, age, race, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, marital status, sexual orientation, and physical abilities have significant positions of responsibility. These positions include a seat on the Board of Directors, Compensation Committee and more than a dozen managing shareholders of their offices.

Why This Matters and Their Commitment • They believe that professional development, diversity, and inclusion are integral to their outstanding performance and exceptional client service.

• The firm is committed to having a highly talented, vibrant workforce that reflects the growing diversity of its communities and it’s clients.

• They believe that such a workforce is able to contribute unique perspectives and creative approaches. This, in turn, generates the highest quality of legal service and serves the needs of their clients and the communities where they live and work.

The firm has its roots in a bold decision that the 16 original Ogletree Deakins’ lawyers made 35 years ago … to leave a law firm dictatorship and establish a new model to service clients. The principles adopted in those early days of the firm remain core values of our firm today: premier client service; teamwork and collaboration; treating each other with respect; hard work; and open governance. These core values permeate the firm’s culture and are the bedrock upon which we build our diversity and inclusion initiatives.”

Kim F. Ebert Managing Shareholder, Ogletree Deakins The firm’s commitment to professional development, diversity, and inclusion is demonstrated by the leadership of Michelle Wimes, Esq., the firm’s full-time Director of Professional Development and Inclusion, and her team.

“I am proud to serve as the firm’s first Director of Professional Development and Inclusion. Diversity and inclusion are two cornerstones of the firm’s core values and underlie our ability to provide premier client service. As our firm continues to grow and prosper, so does our commitment to providing an environment where each attorney can bring his or her unique talents to the table and leverage those talents for the benefit of their clients.” Michelle P. Wimes, Director of Professional Development and Inclusion Mission and Vision They empower the workforce at Ogletree Deakins to develop to their full professional potential. They maximize the potential of professional development and inclusion to drive outstanding business results in a respectful work environment that reflects the growing diversity of their clients and community.

They will achieve their vision by: • Providing their high-performance workforce with best-practice development opportunities that embrace diversity and foster inclusion.

• Sustaining targeted recruiting efforts that are integrated seamlessly with their retention, development, and promotion efforts.

• Cultivating internal and external stakeholders in order to foster meaningful professional relationships while recognizing their value as a business-driving force.

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RICHARDTYLER I N T E R N A T I O N A L Richard Tyler International, Inc.® is one of the world’s top Sales Training and Management Consulting firms.

Richard Tyler International, Inc.® has been profiled on national television, in articles, magazines and newspapers. Richard Tyler International, Inc.® has earned a worldwide reputation for delivering powerful sales education programs and management consulting services. Richard Tyler International, Inc.® teaches success philosophies and techniques in such areas as Sales, Leadership, Management, Customer Service and Quality Improvement.

At the heart of Richard Tyler International, Inc.® is a group of proven professionals with extensive experience ranging from Fortune 100 companies to business start-ups. Our team can increase growth and sales for large corporations as well as, small to medium-sized businesses.

We can help you to drive your business in a more profitable direction.

“

“

Remember, your success tomorrow is in direct proportion to your ‘Commitment to Excellence®’ today.™

®

Richard Tyler International, Inc.® 5773 Woodway Dr., Suite 860, Houston, TX 77057-1501, USA Tel: (+1) 713.974.7214 | Web: www.RichardTyler.com

Fourth Quarter Update: A 2015 Year End Round-Up AI 97

Migration and visa law is an increasingly complex area of law. Anyone wanting an Australian visa should insist upon using an experienced migration lawyer as migration is a life changing decision, and therefore deserves to be correctly looked after.

This is why The Migration Place only employs lawyers because there is no substitute for completing the rigorous demands of a law degree and postgraduate professional training.

Our legal experience also helps us to assist our clients to establish their new life here, as we can also advice on tax structures, business law, Wills and all other legal issues which need to be understood by new Australians.

Company: The Migration Place Name: Zeke Bentley Email: mail@themigrationplace.com Web: www.themigrationplace.com Address: 293 Adelaide Street Brisbane QLD 4000 Telephone: +61 7 3229 4025

It is surprising that less than 30% of the Registered Migration Agents in Australia are lawyers (although this explains the trend of non-lawyers leaving the industry each year (almost 1 in 3).

Lawyers have years of compulsory professional training in interpreting legislation (like the Migration Act) and cases decided by Courts and Tribunals.

Additionally, if your visa application is refused or your visa is cancelled, lawyers can represent you in review processes, which Registered Migration Agents alone cannot do. As our lawyers prepare applications to a high legal standard, you are also guarded against the need to seek a review in the first place.

Less than 25% of Australian Registered Migration Agents have more than ten years’ experience in migration law. Zeke Bentley, principal of The Migration Place, has thirteen years’ experience in migration law – double that of most Registered

Migration Agents! Our migration lawyers work closely with Zeke and benefit from his vast knowledge of Australian migration law. As The Migration Place is a division of Irish Bentley Lawyers, our migration services are complemented by a full range of legal services and support.

Our hard-working Australian migration lawyers are experienced in all aspects of the visa process, from submitting thorough applications, through to preparing detailed submissions for appeals to the Migration Review Tribunal. We are experienced in all classes of visas, including Skilled Visas, Employer Sponsored Visas, Family Visas, Business Visas and Investor Visas. We have built successful working relationships with some of Australia’s biggest construction companies, and most of our business is built on referrals from companies and individuals alike. Our lawyers have a range of language abilities, can interpret financial documentation, and can identify potential problems with applications so we can find solutions as early as possible.

We are frequently referred complex and difficult visa applications and reviews by other agents due to our reputation for identifying novel solutions, and our ability to successfully process cases that other firms consider “too complex”.

We are proud that we find solutions where other RMAs fail to do so, and we love helping new Australians succeed in the lucky country.

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2016 First Quarter Update AI 51

Business Lawyers

Company: Bargate Murray Name: Quentin Bargate Email: info@bargatemurray.com Web: bargatemurray.com Address: 44 Worship Street, London, EC2A 2EA Telephone: 02073751393

Bargate Murray are an award winning boutique commercial and superyacht law firm based in The City of London. We speak to Quentin Bargate who provides us with a fascinating insight into the firm’s progress in the first quarter of 2016.

Much of the work we do at Bargate Murray is international in scope and we’ve become known for our specialist knowledge and attention to client care.

Our main focus is Maritime and superyacht work but this sector shares many common features with other areas of law such as commercial contracts and other agreements, business advice, commercial litigation, dispute resolution etc. The different areas of practice that we are involved with complement each other perfectly and allow us to provide a high quality of service to all our clients. Because of our small size we are able to offer a service which is unparalleled by any large firm and at a price unmatchable by those with expensive glass atriums to pay for.

Most of our new clients are introduced to us by existing ones. Therefore word of mouth recommendations are very important to us, hence our focus on client care and maintaining relationships. We also strive to meet new clients and contacts at the various industry leading forums, for example the Monaco Yacht Show and the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, both of which we’re closely involved with.

Clients are not the only people we aim to impress, as we believe that a collaborative approach is ideal to ensuring we stay ahead of emerging trends in our industry. As such we regularly network with our peers, both at home and abroad. Exchanging information at conferences and through articles and social media as well our blog which we publish on our website ensures that we give back to the collective knowledge as well as drawing from it. We’ve also become closely involved with a number of ambitious new tech start-ups which has been and continues to be a refreshing and interesting experience.

This approach means that we feel we are part of a community of business professionals, each of whom contributes knowledge and information. We very much see it as part of our professional role to participate in that exchange of information to help drive the advancement of the field onward and upward.

The first quarter of this year looks set to provided us with strong growth and a good financial performance.

In the last couple of months the firm has seen record performance reflecting considerable activity and growth in our principle areas of practice.

We’ve also seen steady growth within the firm itself having recently taken on two new trainees, not to mention the promotion of Mark Needham to partner.

We currently have a stronger team than ever and have some very exciting new projects on the cards.

All of which give me great confidence for the future.

Moving forward, we will continue to aim to always give the same high quality advice and first rate service that we have become renowned for but in the longer term, our aim is to further grow our aviation practice and develop a presence in the high end property field. Most fervently, we must never forget that our most important allies are our existing clients and friends.

94 Acquisition International - January 2016

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Creating the Perfect Look in Business Image is vital in today’s technology driven business market, and therefore many firms are turning to Image Consultants in order to ensure everything from their marketing through to their personal appearance is absolutely perfect.

We have sought out the most dedicated professional Image Consultants and invited them to talk us through their work and the role it plays in ensuring their clients’ success.

Creating the Perfect Look in Business AI 75

Company: Read Me Style Club Name: Rui Zhang Email: rui@readmestyle.com Web: www.readmestyle.com Address: Chengdu, China

Read Me Style Club is a highly specialised professional image consulting company. We got in touch with Rui Zhang, owner of Read Me Style Club, to find out more about her company and get a glimpse into the world of professional image consultancy.

Our clients are mostly managerial personnel and business entrepreneurs. During our process, we keep in close-contact with clients on a weekly basis during the consulting session. We also have a mechanism of return visits within one year. Meanwhile, we have exclusive access to selective high-end independent designers’ works in order to provide extensive and versatile wardrobe assistance for all clients.

At the present period, our company is doing very well and generating profit. We have remained low-key in public promotion in the past, but this is only because we believe that reputation should be built and not said.

From our experience, image consulting is still a relatively new concept to general public. At the same time, many hair salons, local-tailors would use “image consulting” or similar words to represent themselves, which create confusions and misunderstanding of what we do here in our company.

With our service, we are constantly striving to be up to speed with the many emerging trends and developments in our industry. In order to stay current, I do professional training wherever necessary, and also join associations to remain in the loop. Furthermore, our clients’ feedbacks also helps us to understand their needs better and allow us to provide more accurate consultation.

Personally, I believe that our clients choose us because of the highly personalised service we deliver. Consulting is a very private service, and it not only deals with outside appearance, but more importantly, mind-set. Here at Read Me, we respect our clients whole-heartedly and try to provide professional solutions whenever we are needed. We take note of everyone’s unique situation and try our best to tailor our services to their needs.

We provide services in four different aspects. Firstly, our glamour institute is a one-on-one base consulting service.

Within this service, we guide our clients to “get to know themselves”, namely, their colour pallet, dressing personality, body measurements, and more. We will then guide the clients to practice their style, and upgrade their appearance, behaviour, and communication based on our analysis.

Another aspect is the style lab, which is a small group seminar designated to explore the significance of coherent image. We also have our career refinement station, which is a training course designed for office professionals who have strong image and appearance requirements. So far, Read Me Style Club has provided this refinement training for industries in fine-jewellery, banking and finance, hospital, and high-end gourmet restaurants in local Chengdu.

Our fourth aspect is known as ‘House of Enjoyment’. This involves taking in a form of small afternoon-tea party, and inviting those who are interested to appreciate the precious enjoyments of life, such as a vintage-jewellery show or a Chinese tea-ceremony.

Looking towards the future, I have strong confidence in the market and the necessity of our existence as a profession. In 2016, I look forward to incorporating my consulting service with even more merchandise and expanding our client base further.

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Creating the Perfect Look in Business AI 102

Cybelle Rebutica

Image Builds Trust “A professional image works best when you need to seal the deal.,” says brand strategist and professional image consultant Cybelle Rebutica. As professionals and businesspeople, we constantly promote and sell products or services offered by our company. Little do we realize that the first thing we promote and sell is ourselves. The moment one walks inside the room, offers a handshake or stands up to present is the same moment that the customer decides to trust you with their money or business.

Name: Cybelle Denise Rebutica Email: cybelle@marquesdeclat.com Phone: +63 (2) 8836134 / +63(2) 8836006 Office: 35th floor Penthouse Unit 1, Eco Tower Building, 32nd Street cor 9th ave., Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, Philippines

The principle of “substance over form” holds true even with image. How one looks establishes the level of trust, credibility and professionalism of an individual and an organization. Often, busy schedules and tight deadlines do not leave top executives and professionals with enough time to create or polish their professional look. Not giving enough attention to having the right professional look though is tantamount to underselling yourself, your products or services, and your company.

With the pace of business nowadays, impressions and decisions are more quickly formed. Your level of expertise, competence and professionalism only gets a few seconds to connect and cut through the people in the boardroom. Creating the right impression with the people you deal with is even more essential in today’s competitive business environment.

The color & fit of your suit, the way you speak and how you behave convey the level of trust that your client, boss or colleagues will lend you. Your manner of dressing, words and gestures subtly communicate who you are and the work that you can do to your audience. It is when you need to clinch that deal, seize that business opportunity or get that promotion that a polished professional look gives you that extra

boost of confidence. It is when you reach your goals, that you realize that having the right impression really does count.

Cybelle Rebutica brings with her over 14 years of brand building and business development experience in the fast moving consumer goods, life insurance and fitness industries. Cybelle successfully grew and managed brands in the large multinational and local companies she worked for like Philam Life (an AIA member company), Wrigley Philippines, NutriAsia, and Green Cross Inc. Cybelle’s passion for building brands led her to be an image consultant, with a desire to bring out the best in people and help brands flourish in the market. Cybelle is a member of the Association of Image Consultants International (AICI) Singapore Chapter. She sharpens her branding expertise through continuous studies, most recent in the Academy of Image Mastery Singapore, London Image Institute and ESSEC Business School.

Cybelle is currently based in Myanmar with her family, and regularly travels to Singapore, Thailand and Philippines.

Cavendish Trust is an independent, international service provider based in the Isle of Man with a sister company in Jersey and affiliated offices in Malta, Cyprus and the BVI. We strongly believe that service should be based upon respecting traditional values, building personal relationships with our clients and focusing on attention to detail. This is how we ensure that modern day expectations for outstanding service standard and delivery are always met.

• • • • • •

31-37 North Quay, Douglas Isle of Man IM1 4LB, British Isles Telephone: +44 1624 679000 www.cavendishtrust.com

Company/ Trust/ Foundation Establishment & Management Corporate & Private Jet Ownership and EU Importation Structures Ship and Superyacht Ownership and EU Importation Structures E-Gaming & E-Commerce Licensing and Management Services Aerospace and Satellite Ownership and Management Services Multi/ Bespoke Family Office Services Regulated and licensed by the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority

Acquisition International - January 2016 97

Virtual Data Room to Support Cross-border M&A Transactions Drooms allows for the transparent, efficient and secure management of confidential business processes such as commercial real estate sales, mergers and acquisitions, non-performing loan transactions and board communications.

LUXEMBOURG is one of the most successful economies

fast and efficiently, no matter where they are. In other words, by

in the European Union. The gross domestic product (GDP)

accompanying cross-border transactions, Drooms contributes

per inhabitant is twice as high as the European average, and

to strengthening the role Luxembourg already plays in the global

national wealth is growing at 1-2 percent per year. The financial

financial scene – that of a strong pro-business economy.

sector - namely funds, banks and insurances - is to be reckoned responsible for such a positive and steadily growing economic situation producing the 25 percent of the GDP. Tax receipts from the financial branch are accountable for between 24

If transnational deals are at the core of Luxembourg‘s

and 32 percent of the national budget. This also entails risks

financial strength, it is crucial

for Luxembourg, as the financial service sector is undergoing

for deal players to make sure

relevant changes in the regulatory and supervisory framework,

transactions run smoothly.

though predictions for the future of the country are positive.

The advantage of digitalisation in comparison with physical data room storage is clear in that shareholders do not need to travel to work on documents: they can access them from their office by using Drooms’ highly secure

application. The high-performing load speed of documents The market in Luxembourg is

allows for the fast reviewing and processing of information.

nowadays to a great extent

Also, the latter is stored in German and Swiss servers in

globalised, in that many

compliance with the highest EU data protection standards.

international companies have

Moreover, the intuitive and structured Q&A process provides the

subsidiaries there. Moreover,

users with expert answers, covering all European languages, at

the national legislator has

any time of the day. Drooms’ competitive advantage lies in all

passed laws aimed to facilitate

these elements, providing transaction managers with a tool that

the legal framework for cross-

improves their work and, most of all makes free time.

border mergers and acquisitions.

If transnational deals are at the

About the Company

core of Luxembourg financial

Founded in 2001 by M&A and legal experts, the software

strength, it is crucial for deal players to make sure transactions

provider facilitates highly secure access to confidential

run smoothly. Technology plays a key role in bringing the

documents, as well as the ability to exchange them safely with

efficiency of the market forward, although its contribution is

third parties beyond company firewalls. Drooms is a leading

often underestimated or even forgotten. In this context, Drooms’

provider of secure cloud solutions in Europe.

secure virtual data room ensures that players work seamless,

drooms.com

The Importance of IP in M&A Transactions AI 56

The Importance of IP in M&A transactions Stratagem IPM services the biotechnical and high tech industries with intellectual property legal support and advice. Kevin Hanson talks us through the importance of intellectual property in M&A transactions.

Stratagem IPM was formed in 1999 to respond to a developing need within the biotechnology industry for clear and decisive strategic advice and management of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR’s).

Company: Stratagem IPM Name: Kevin Hanson Email: mail@stratagemipm.co.uk Web: www.stratagemipm.co.uk Address: Stratagem IPM Ltd, Meridian Court, Comberton Road, Toft, Cambridge, CB23 2RY, UK Telephone: +44 (0)1223 550740

Since our conception we have evolved into an eleven-strong team of patent attorneys, trade mark attorneys and lawyers, plus support staff, who draw experience from a multitude of industries including: pharmaceutical, automotive, renewable energy, materials science and medical devices.

We recognise that IPR’s are the lifeblood of many businesses and, behind employees, are amongst the most important and valuable assets to a business. We have substantial experience of advising investors and targets on the relative importance, scope and value of IPR’s in relation to corporate transactions including initial public offerings, mergers, acquisitions and disposals.

We assist our clients in creating and protecting a strong and balanced portfolio of IPR’s (registered and unregistered) to facilitate a premium return on investment whether that is through commercialisation of products and/or services or through sale of all or part of a business.

For investors and targets alike, due diligence on IPR is business critical to ensure appropriate valuation of targets and to identify any potential risks to freedom to operate in key markets. Due diligence should be undertaken at the very outset of a transaction by both parties to the transaction.

Our unique blend of technical and legal experience, deep understanding of IP transactions and strategic approach puts us in the ideal position to offer advice on corporate transactions entailing significant IPR elements.

Acquisition International - January 2016 99

AI 28

Company: PHI Group Address: 5348 Vegas Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89108, U.S.A. Tel: 702-475-5430 Fax: 702-472-8556 Email: info@phiglobal.com Website: www.phiglobal.com

2015's Most Innovative Business Leadership PHI Group, Inc is an energy and natural resources firm specialising in renewable energy solutions.

Founded in 1982, PHI Group, Inc. is a U.S. publicly traded company primarily focusing on energy and natural resources. The company currently develops a portfolio of energy assets in Southeast Asia, provides renewable energy solutions and invests in natural resources.

Undoubtedly, global demand for energy is one of the most pressing concerns for decades to come.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), worldwide demand for coal over the next five years will continue marching higher, breaking the 9-billiontonne level by 2019.

Despite its efforts to moderate coal consumption, China will be joined by India, ASEAN countries and other countries in Asia as the main engines of growth in coal consumption, offsetting declines in Europe and the United States.

While coal is still the most abundant fossil fuel and its contribution to energy security and access to energy is undeniable, coal use in its current form is not unsustainable in the long run.

For this to change, the energy sector needs to radically accelerate deployment of carbon capture and sequestration as well as application of advanced, cleaner and more cost-effective renewable technologies.

In order to achieve this PHI Group have begun an ongoing acquisition program to accumulate coal assets in Indonesia to provide stable, long-term supplies to ASEAN countries, especially Vietnam, and other countries in Asia that need coal for coalfired power plants, steel mills, cement and glass manufacturing plants, etc.

In the longer term the firm favour clean renewable energy solutions as a preferred substitute for fossil fuel wherever applicable. The firm have established relationships with U.S. and international companies to provide innovative renewable energy technologies in the areas of wind, solar power, and biomass.

Additionally they have established Cornerstone Biomass Corp., a joint venture between AG Materials, LLC and PHI Group, Inc. to set up and operate a 200,000 MT wood pellet plant in Live Oak, Suwannee County, Florida. PHI Group, Inc. owns 51% of stock in Cornerstone Biomass Corporation.

As part of the acquisition strategy they have also acquired 10 acres of land from Klausner Holding USA, an Alabama corporation and subsidiary of Austria-based Klausner Group, to build the wood pellet plant next to Klausner’s lumber mill in Live Oak, Florida. Subject to financing and permitting, construction is expected to start during the first quarter of 2016 and production to begin by the second quarter of 2017.

In addition, the firm invest in natural resources, participate in international trade and also provide M&A advisory and consulting services through their wholly owned subsidiary PHI Capital Holdings, Inc. The firm’s management team consists of highly qualified and experienced members in energy and natural resources capable of creating significant competitive advantages for PHI Group, Inc. with respect to the business sectors in which it operates.

This ensures that every aspect of the firm’s mission to regenerate the sustainable energy market is covered by a highly experienced member of staff.

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2015’s Most Innovative Business Leadership

Acquisition International - January 2016 101

2015

Leading Corporate Adviser of the Year South East Europe

info@eurofast.eu | www.eurofast.eu

Your Regional Business Advisory Organisation

Eurofast: Your Regional Business Advisory team Who we are Eurofast is a regional business advisory organisation operating in South East Europe and East Mediterranean offering various professional services including M&A and Transactional Advisory, Business Restructuring & Insolvency, Market Entry Services, Banking and Financial Services, Outsourced Payroll and Employment Solutions, Citizenship & Residency Services, Corporate Services, Transfer Pricing, International Tax, Tax Planning & Tax Compliance, and Accounting.

We Specialise in M&A & Transactional Advisory We, take pride in our dedicated team of professionals, specialising in M&A and transactional work in our offices, throughout South East Europe and East Mediterranean. Eurofast has over 28 years of experience working with global businesses and leading institutions. Over the years we have performed a successfully significant number of local and international M&A transactions in the region. We have a unique approach to support M&A transactions at international level through our professional network, providing assistance to our clients in all phases of M&A transactions from planning process to closure and post integration.

Our Network

We are uniquely positioned as one stop shop for investors looking to enter South East Europe and Eastern Mediterranean. We have 21 fully fledged offices in Athens, Thessaloniki, Nicosia, Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade, Podgorica, Tirana, Skopje, Zagreb, Pristina, Banja Luka, Sarajevo, Cairo, Alexandria, Tbilisi, Beirut, Erbil, Moscow, Kiev and Tehran.

quality or service. Our portfolio includes a number of high net worth individuals and clients engaged in every sector of the economy, which proves the range of our abilities.

Our competitive advantage stems from our ability to serve our clients promptly, efficiently and effectively. Every Eurofast office consists of teams ranging from 15-60 professionals with diverse backgrounds and experience including tax, legal, M&A, payroll, accounting, audit and consulting.

Our credentials Our clients, global brands and leading institutions, operating in the manufacturing, retail, airlines and professional services sector, are the vivid evidence that Eurofast is your trusted business advisor in South East Europe and East Mediterranean.

We have achieved worldwide market recognition for our exceptional advice, capabilities and innovation. We have been acknowledged as a leader in Tax in Cyprus for the past 8 years. We have been ranked top Tax Advisors and announced “Cyprus Tax firm of the Year” by International Tax Review which is a true recognition for the valued client work we deliver every day. In 2014, Eurofast was also recognized for its expertise in M&A. For 2015 we were acknowledged by Acquisition International as ‘Leading Corporate Adviser of the Year – South East Europe’ for our work done in the Region.

Our competitive advantage We seek to delight our clients, by being proactive. Our aim is to create client enthusiasm by giving even more value to our clients, whether measured by price, performance,

Eurofast is Taxand Cyprus.

For more information on Eurofast, its offices and its service portfolio, please visit www.eurofast.eu.

THE ONE CONSTANT IS CHANGE

The Flexitallic Group is the international market leader in the manufacture and supply of high quality, high value industrial static sealing products, delivering industrial gaskets on a global scale.

enquiries @flexitallic.eu

www.flexitallic.eu

Doing Business Overseas (New Zealand) AI 111

Name: Mr Peter Wyllie, Mr Peter O’Dea, Dr. Maria A. Pozza, Mr Alan Bruce and Mrs Victoria Stevenson Email: perter@helmores.co.nz; petero@helmores.co.nz; maria@helmores.co.nz; alan@helmores.co.nz; victoria@helmores.co.nz Web: www.helmores.co.nz Address: PO Box 8370, Riccarton, 8440, Christchurch, New Zealand Telephone: 0064 3 366 5086

Doing Business Overseas - New Zealand Helmore Ayers Lawyers is a professional and friendly law firm dedicated to providing clients with domestic and transnational legal services. In our changing global world we, as lawyers need to change with it in order to effectively meet our clients’ evolving needs. Helmore Ayers Lawyers is an innovative practice offering not only traditional legal services but also legal services in new, developing areas of law.

Established in 1883, and founded by Mr G N Helmore, Helmores Ayers Lawyers is one of the oldest law firms in Christchurch. Many distinguished lawyers have worked within the law firm including the late Mr Kerry Ayers. The firm is located in Christchurch and consists of three partners, Peter O’Dea, Peter Wyllie and Alan Bruce. We have a staff solicitor, Victoria Stevenson and a consultant lawyer, Dr Maria A. Pozza.

Our partners offer a wealth of legal experience. Peter O’Dea, the firm’s principal partner, was admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor in 1977. He has 37 years’ experience spanning the laws of New Zealand and laws of the Middle East. He offers services in commercial law, contract law and company law. Peter offers specialist services in the laws of wills and trusts, estate planning, construction law, civil litigation, Sharia law and investment into New Zealand compliance law. He is also well equipped with a plethora of experience, to advise on capital raising, securities law, private equity and venture capitals.

Peter Wyllie has over a decade of legal experience and was admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor in 2003. As a member of the Registered Trust and Estate Practitioners (2007) and a member of the Property Law Section, his experience is sought

on a global scale. Peter offers services in estate, wills and trusts law, property and conveyancing law. Peter offers specialist services in international tax and financial law, international company and corporate law, intellectual property and trade practice compliance. Through our Helmores Wealth associate company, Peter directs unique services in foreign trusts, compliant and non-compliant trusts, wealth building and managing, private equity and overseas investment into New Zealand as well as international business law.

Alan Bruce is a long standing partner of the firm and re-joined the practice in 2009. Alan was admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor in 1980 and offers clients more than 30 years of experience in trusts, estate planning, asset protection, partnerships, and enterprise involving commercial law and risk and land developments. Alan has a history of involvement in charitable trusteeships including the Tait Foundation.

Victoria Stevenson and Dr Maria A. Pozza recently joined the law firm in 2015. Victoria is the firm’s staff solicitor and was admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor in 2002. She was also admitted as a lawyer in Samoa in 2002 and provides services in estates, wills and trusts law, asset protection and management, commercial law as well as contract and franchise agreements. Victoria offers unique advisory services in commercial law, civil and international tax law as well as estate planning. She offers specialist advice in relation to commercial law in Samoa.

Dr Maria A. Pozza is the law firm’s consultant lawyer and was admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor in 2013.

Maria was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2005 by the Honourable Society of Lincolns Inn. Maria provides services in civil litigation, construction law, public law, commercial and company law. Maria offers specialist services in the laws of outer space, aviation law, cyber law, unmanned aerial vehicles law (drones) as well as domestic and international regulation and general international law.

It is our business to understand our clients business and legal needs. Our expertise extends to commercial strategy, planning and wealth management. We offer a broad range of legal services and are transnational in our approach.

Thinking of doing business in New Zealand? We can help.

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Family-owned Businesses: the Backbone of Jersey’s Economy AI 22

Company: FranckelLaw Email: info@franckellawjersey.com Web: www.franckellawjersey.com Address: St Andrews Studios 3 St Andrews Place St Helier, Jersey, JE4 9QW Telephone: 00 (44) 1534 871212

Family-owned Businesses: the Backbone of Jersey's Economy FranckelLaw was established in 2008 by Advocate Simon Franckel as a niche dispute resolution law firm. As the firm has grown and evolved, it has developed a specialist trust and fiduciary advi-sory role, advising and assisting trustees, beneficiaries and high net worth individuals.

Advocate Franckel has over 25 years’ experience as a UK solicitor and 12 years as a Jersey Advocate.

The firm prides itself on delivering solution-focused advice and representation whilst also delivering a service which makes us approachable and trusted by our clients. That is the ethos of the firm.

Advocate Franckel said of the award ‘I am delighted that the achievements of the firm have once again been acknowledged by this award. As a small firm we are not able to call upon extensive marketing resources, but that makes an award such as this even more rewarding as it means it has been achieved on the basis of our reputation and support from our clients and the profession.’

Advocate Franckel assesses 2015 as the firm’s most successful yet. The firm recruited additional staff in 2015 and expects that steady, careful growth to continue in 2016.

For Jersey as a jurisdiction, 2015 was as busy as ever but the jurisdiction faces challenges of its own.

The pressure on offshore jurisdictions, and the competition for business both between and within those jurisdictions, is as intense and challenging as it has ever been. One of the key weapons in that battle is the range of products and investment vehicles and structures, which no doubt in turn present investment opportunities. Jersey has always been at the forefront of such innovation, and Advocate Franckel expects that trend to continue. ‘Any new product or investment vehicle that we produce has to be useful and attractive, but also has to pass the intensive scrutiny of very stringent regulatory and compliance expectations, both within Jersey and externally. Other jurisdictions do not necessarily labour under the same pressures, which means that we are not always operating on a level playing field.

However I remain confident that Jersey will be at the forefront in 2016 and beyond.’

‘2015 was an excellent year for the firm. Our focus remains the delivery of high quality representation and a client-focused service. The challenge is to retain that balance as we grow. I am very excited about the challenges ahead.’

Acquisition International - January 2016 105

Record Year for M&A in Medical Devices AI 83

Record Year for M&A in Medical Devices 2015 was a very strong year for M&A in the UK for medical devices businesses with the sector recording 64 deals compared to 51 in 2014, an increase of 25%. The search for growth, access to innovative products and the need to strengthen capabilities in existing categories is creating a positive environment for M&A activity as strategic acquirers and financial investors use acquisitions to help achieve a range of strategic objectives.

Company: Catalyst Corporate Finance Name: Justin Crowther Email: justincrowther@ catalystcf.co.uk Web: www.catalystcf.co.uk Phone: +44 (0) 20 7246 0500

Trade deals have a strategic focus As in previous years, the majority of deals were seen in the equipment and supplies, diagnostics and patient monitoring niches. Activity across the medical devices sector has been driven by trade buyers with a number of deals meeting the strategic needs of established leaders to fill gaps in their offering, gain access to key areas and expand geographically, thereby protecting and increasing market share.

Overseas buyers have been particularly active and high quality privately owned mid-market businesses that have strong market share in niche areas are prime acquisition targets. For example, NYSE-listed Cantel Medical’s $79.5m acquisition of Medical Innovations Group, a provider of endoscope storage and transport systems in the UK and internationally, expands its global footprint in key growth areas, while NYSE-listed Medtronic’s $110m acquisition of Aircraft Medical expands its portfolio of solutions for dealing with difficult airways and supports its therapy innovation strategy.

Acquirers are also keen to access innovative products.

India’s BPL Medical Technologies’ acquisition of Penlon, a UK-based leading global manufacturer of anaesthesia systems and vaporizers with worldwide distribution networks, complements BPL Medical’s existing portfolio and will help in expanding BPL’s presence in the critical care segment.

With many mature medical devices companies boasting strong balance sheets and cash flows, their financial capacity for further acquisitions is well

supported. The need to continue increasing market share and protect margins is also not going away and we expect a steady stream of deals from these players.

Impact of disruptive technologies With demand for healthcare continuing to grow and no signs of funding pressures abating, there is an increasing requirement for disruptive technologies to be adopted across the healthcare ecosystem, either by healthcare systems like the UK’s NHS or the private paying consumer. Acquirers and investors are therefore attracted to businesses that use technology to reduce costs. The past 12 months has seen activity in mobile healthcare technology, with companies such as wearable fetal heart rate monitor specialist Monica Healthcare and electric medicine adherence health tag Folium Optics securing additional funding from financial investors.

Cash rich private equity investors are active Private equity has significant funds which it needs to invest and it is hungry to source and back growth businesses. It is attracted to businesses from a range of sectors from infection control and mobility equipment to wearable technology.

LDC’s 2014 £30m acquisition of Prism Medical UK has supported three acquisitions including The Mobility Equipment Company and Smirthwaite last year to expand Prism’s existing product and service offering in the UK and Europe. Palatine Private Equity backed the management buy-out of Vernacare, the UK’s market leading provider of single use infection control systems to the healthcare sector. A wider pool of financial investors is also targeting businesses.

Michelson Diagnostics’ investors include private equity, Smith & Nephew plc and a UK county council.

PE has a successful record helping businesses in the sector to achieve scale, develop new products and grow overseas and then exiting well; BPL’s acquisition of Penlon for example was an exit for Altaris Capital Partners.

This is an attractive market for business owners keen to attract financial investors or achieve a sale to a trade player. We expect increasing levels of activity over the next couple of years as established players respond to the ongoing pressure to innovate and gain access to growth areas such as surgical robotics, and acquisitions are a key way to achieve this.

Justin Crowther, Partner and Head of Healthcare, Catalyst Corporate Finance

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The Power of Outsourcing AI 114

The Power of Outsourcing Most businesses we speak to are suffering from the same condition. Lack of time. To build and grow your business you need to be able to focus on identifying growth areas, building a strong pipeline of prospects and maintaining/retaining your existing customer base, whilst keeping your own sales and marketing strategy going alongside the administration of internal processes. Phew! And breathe… Get Ahead VA are here to help.

Company: Get Ahead VA Rebecca Newenham Owner Rebecca@getaheadva.com Vanessa Hodges Marketing Specialist vanessa.hodges@getaheadva.com Web: www.getaheadva.com Phone: 01483 332220

Thanks to the advancements in technology and the ability to be connected 24/7 businesses are now able to benefit from the help of a fully outsourced solution.

Get Ahead VA provide the “the staff you don’t see, the difference you do”, by helping individuals and businesses of all sizes to save both time and money.

2. Be Brave Don’t try to be like everyone else. As with personalities, everyone is different. Apply this rule to your posts. Be bold in what you have to say, don’t focus on product information or how best you can manage a portfolio too much.

We are a virtual agency providing businesses access to an experienced team who collaborate and provide services from PA & Administration, Accountancy, Marketing, PR and also Social Media.

3. Be Consistent Whatever you say, however you say it, be consistent.

Create a narrative that people will want to be involved with and keep reading your posts. Make sure you are posting on a regular basis, not ad-hoc as you will lose the momentum. Create a schedule to keep yourself on track and deliver content often, followers will unfollow you if you’re not doing anything.

Social Media Madness – Keep it simple As the online market grows and grows, it is now more important than ever to consider social media to support your marketing strategy. We’re not just talking about the larger organisations with an entire social media marketing team, but it is now relevant to plumbers, solicitors and accountants alike. Businesses are now being validated, in some part, via their online presence and in particular social media platforms.

Social Media – The Rules Three basic rules should be applied when you embark on your social media journey: 1. Be Authentic Social media is about getting to know the person or personalities behind the brand. Therefore, you need to be open and honest. You need to be comfortable with sharing not just information about your business but about yourself, making your content interesting and more likeable so that others will want to follow and ‘hang-out’ with you on your pages.

Content and scheduling When you put these simple rules into practice you can begin to build your social media presence.

Using scheduling tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social you will be able to search, create and post content in advance. However, don’t forget to regularly review your accounts so that you can share and retweet posts that you like or are trending on a particular day. Sharing is a great way to build your followers and likes.

If in doubt, and you know you haven’t got the time to manage or maintain social media, why not outsource it to someone who can?

Give us a call at Get Ahead VA and we will be more than happy to talk you through the variety of packages available.

Acquisition International - January 2016 107

The Volkswagen Scandal: A Legal Viewpoint AI 110

The Volkswagen Scandal: A Legal Viewpoint From a legal perspective, the situation around the Volkswagen (VW) emissions scandal has both public and private law aspects but in this article we will deal only with the latter. František Honsa, Partner in BBH, advokátní kancelář, s.r.o., a prominent Czech law firm with an international presence talks us through the scandal and the legal implications.

Company: BBH, advokátní kancelář, s.r.o.

Name: JUDr. František Honsa, Ph.D. Email: legal@bbh.cz Web: www.bbh.cz Address: Klimentská 1207/10, Prague 1, Postal Code 110 00 Telephone: +420 234 091 355

Lawyers all around the world agree that affected customers have suffered or may suffer some harm as a consequence of VW’s fraud. At the moment it is not entirely clear what such harm may consist of. This uncertainty results from the lack of relevant information about the solution of the emissions fraud and the impact of such solution on the relevant vehicles and their owners.

In particular, according to Czech law, a number of claims might arise as a result of VW being guilty of emissions fraud, such as claims relating to, inter alia, compensation for time spent in car services, for the impairment of a vehicle’s performance, for increase of diesel consumption and costs of operation, for impaired price of the sale of the affected cars or for moral harm caused to environmentally conscious customers who bought a vehicle from VW thinking that it is environmentally friendlier than it actually was. A legal assessment of claims may vary according to particular circumstances of every case.

We are convinced that VW’s fraud should be qualified as an act which is in contradiction with good morals and as such is an illegal act. Pursuant to Czech law, any harm caused by wilful breach of good morals should be compensated.

VW must be aware that it breached emissions regulations while using the software that can recognise when a vehicle is being tested for emissions levels. In order to regain the trust of its customers, VW America has introduced the socalled Goodwill Package. Based on this package, the owners of 2.0-liter diesel vehicles are eligible to receive a USD 500 Volkswagen Prepaid Visa Loyalty Card, a USD 500 Volkswagen Dealership Card and a no-charge 24-hour Roadside Assistance for three years without prejudice to their right to seek compensation before the court in respect of any possible claims against VW connected with the fraud.

Recently, VW has indicated that its European customers are not likely to be provided with a similar package. Therefore, the affected European customers may ask themselves a legitimate question: “Are European citizens to be considered as second category citizens to Americans?” No, they are not.

It is hardly acceptable that such double standard treatment should be justified by the fact that, unlike the European vehicles, the American vehicles had been labelled as “Clean Diesel”. It is necessary to point out that in both cases VW abused the trust of its customers and intentionally used a “defeat device”.

VW is certainly aware that the common law and continental law systems each differ in their approaches to how respective harm is compensated. The main difference manifests in a practical way, particularly

108 Acquisition International - January 2016

with respect to the enforcement of compensation claims. Even if the legal concept of class action is not advanced in the Czech Republic and it might be more costly to achieve adjudication of a remedy by the court in the Czech Republic, it is without any doubt that an illegal act which causes harm should be properly compensated. We are of the opinion that VW should compensate all its world-wide customers affected by its emissions fraud equally, regardless of the concept of law and the way it is enforced. It would seem fair that VW should offer its European customers the same goodwill package as it did to its US customers.

Multinational corporations, such as VW, significantly affect a large portion of the world’s social and economic affairs and their behaviour has considerable impact on the world’s economic and social environments. Such influence, therefore, bears great responsibility. These corporations should always act as an example for others and if they do not follow their responsibility, relevant instruments, such as law, which serve for ensuring that the proper compensation is granted, should be used.

This scandal has impacted not only on the entire automotive industry, but also the whole industry of diesel technologies, including diesel fuels producers and distributors. It has sped up the negotiation process within the EU regarding the implementation of new real driving emissions legislation pursuant to which the road shall be added as a new environment for emission testing and certification.

What is likely to ensue in the immediate future?

VW has announced that the respective affected European vehicles should be subject to an authorised inspection and servicing in order to perform some minor technical adjustments, however, it still remains unclear what impact such servicing may have on the performance and diesel consumption of such vehicles. The Czech government officials said, after meeting with the remaining representatives of the Visegrád Group, that the owners of affected vehicles would probably not have the obligation to undertake such service stop as there is no law in the Czech Republic which would impose such obligation on the relevant owners. However, they also stated that they would expect VW to persuade at least 80% of the owners of affected cars to undergo such service stop. Czech government officials also said that the injured customers should obtain proper compensation from VW. Whether at least part of such compensation will be provided voluntarily, as VW did in the US, is currently unknown. It can be expected that if VW fails to adequately address the compensation of European customers, such customers may seek compensation before the courts regardless of a more costly approach of continental law to the adjudication of compensation.

Africa’s Economic Paradise: Mauritius AI 112

Company: International Financial Services Limited Name: Neeraj Ramyead Email: nramyead@ifsmauritius.com Web: www.ifsmauritius.com Address: IFS Court, Bank Street, TwentyEight Cybercity, Ebene 72201, Mauritius.

Telephone: +230 467 3000

Africa's Economic Paradise: Mauritius International Financial Services Limited (IFS) is a leading Management Company in Mauritius licensed by the Financial Services Commission. We asked Neeraj Ramyead, Business Development Manager at IFS, to provide us with an insight into both his company and the unique region it operates in.

IFS has been a pioneer in the global business industry in Mauritius, servicing the needs of global investors for more than 20 years. We take pride in the mutual trust and successful long-term relationship that we share with our clients.

With a team strength of more than 230 including 180 professionals, we have the breadth and depth of experience and expertise ranging from legal and tax advisory to setting up of Funds, SPVs and other structures and handling corporate, administrative, accounting and compliance matters. We offer comprehensive fund administration, fund accounting, transfer agency and investor services leveraging on state of the art technological platforms. Our service suite also includes wealth planning and family office.

The Mauritian economy is broad based and diversified with the manufacturing sector being the single largest driver contributing about 17% of GDP, while financial services and the hospitality sectors each account for around 10%.

Mauritius is further diversifying its economy with particular focus on the ocean economy, ICT, real estate development and the expansion of its harbour to position itself as a leading transhipment hub in the region.

At the domestic level, Mauritius has major development plans which will require significant foreign direct investment (FDI). Mauritius intends to modernise its infrastructure through the construction of smart cities across the island. The Smart City Scheme which has been elaborated by the Government offers a number of fiscal incentives to investors including residence permits to non-citizens and their families for investments above USD500,000 and citizenship to non-citizens investing more than USD5 million.

In addition, as Mauritius aims to become a transhipment hub in the region, major investments will also be made in the port infrastructure. Other sectors that may attract FDI are renewable energy, ocean related activities, manufacturing, ICT-BPO, Financial Services, Healthcare and Education, to name a few. The Board of Investment which is the Investment Promotion Agency, acts as a single point of call for foreign investors looking to capitalise on opportunities in and from Mauritius.

The financial services landscape is also set to broaden its horizon. In December 2015, the government enacted the Captive Insurance Act 2015 which sets the scene for opportunities in the insurance sector. Mauritius also looks to move up the value chain in the global investment industry by attracting Asset Managers to move to Mauritius. A lot of emphasis is being placed on capacity building to enable this stepping up. Last year the government also revived the Financial Services Promotion Agency to give a new impetus to the promotion of this sector.

Currently many overseas investors use the Mauritius IFC for structuring their investments into India and across the African continent. The country is also positioning itself to become a business, trade, logistics and financial gateway between Asia and Africa. Mauritius historically been the prime contributor of FDI into India and the share of private equity investments structured through Mauritius into Africa is growing year-on-year.

There are several reasons which motivate investors to domicile in Mauritius. The Mauritius IFC has a large pool of bilingual (English and French) professionals including Chartered Accountants and Lawyers who are fully conversant with structuring and administration of Funds and SPVs. Mauritius ranks among the top 30 countries in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report and has an investor-friendly business environment with no foreign exchange controls. This is supplemented by a very robust regulatory framework which ensures compliance with global AML/CFT framework. In addition, Mauritius has fully embraced its responsibilities under FATCA and is gearing up to adopt the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Investors also leverage on the large network of Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (IPPAs) which guarantee against expropriation of assets and provide investment protection, as well as the network of Double Tax Avoidance Treaties (DTATs).

This whole package comes at very competitive pricing as compared to IFCs in other regions of the world.

With a view to better service our clients, IFS has joined the WTS Alliance, which regroups tax and legal consultants in more than 100 countries. We leverage on alliance members to provide cross-border tax and legal advisory services to our clients. We strongly value the contribution of alliance members who support us in servicing our clients by providing local knowledge in overseas jurisdictions.

Furthermore, with a view to meeting the growing demand for Islamic Finance related products and services, we have joined IsFin, one of the world’s leading advisory for Islamic markets. We are thus able to service the sharia-compliant needs of our valued clients, including set-up and maintenance of sharia compliant structures, access to sharia advisors, drafting of contracts based on sharia principles and investment-related needs in Islamic products and markets across the globe.

Given the nature of the global investment environment in which we operate, it is imperative for us to collaborate and partner with leading service providers. This is a key element of our service delivery model. We have working arrangements with professional firms (accounting, law, tax, and corporate service providers) in a number of jurisdictions where we are not physically present.

Moving forward we aim to continue our business development strategy based on the consolidation of existing businesses and the diversification into new products, services and markets.

Acquisition International - January 2016 109

A Sunny Year for the Sunshine State AI 116

A Sunny Year for the Sunshine State Yolofsky Law is a business law firm that assists clients in both the boardroom and courtroom. We spoke to A. J. Yolofsky from the firm about the services it provides and the region in which it operates.

Yolofsky Law has developed a three-part “manoeuvre” strategy to effectively and efficiently reach client goals.

Our manoeuvre concept employs strategy and tactics to put the opposition into the ‘horns of a dilemma,’ forcing them to operate reactively to the tempo we set.

Company: Yolofsky Law, P.A. Name: A.J. Yolofsky Email: ajy@yolofskylaw.com Web: www.yolofskylaw.com Address: 1101 Brickell Ave., S-800 Miami, FL 33131 Telephone: 305.702.8250

As the firm’s Founder I combine more than twenty years of business, legal, and military experience to give clients the highest level of advice and counsel in business matters across the globe.

The business practice developed from my experience working with companies and executives of all types from Fortune 500 enterprises to entrepreneurs with just an idea. After many years of litigating failed deals, corporate breakups, and stock fraud, I turned my attention to assisting businesses avoid these issue through goal-setting, strategic planning, and the development of tactics to carry out the strategy and obtain the goal.

Within the corporate side of our business we work with small and medium size businesses on all aspects of their operations. Many of these entities are either international businesses that are in the process of expanding their operations in the United States or they are Florida businesses seeking to work internationally. For example, we are in the process of guiding an Asian communications company reorganize their North American operations, including expansion into Canada.

Additionally, we also work in dispute resolution, because unfortunately not every deal or relationship turns out for the best. Sometimes it seems that litigation is a growth industry in the United States because almost every issue is brought to court for resolution. However, litigation is potentially an open-ended expensive proposition. By applying the principles of “manoeuvre litigation,” which are based on the teachings of the Chinese master of strategy, Sun Tzu, the firm works to place the adversary into a position where they give up the fight.

Being based in Florida we have a strong knowledge of the local economy. Florida has been working hard to establish itself following the 2008 crash and ensuing recession. The unemployment rate has dropped to approximately 5%; however, there are still numerous trained individuals who are ready to go to work. Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the country because of our weather, low taxes, and pro-business government.

In particular, Miami continues to see investment growth because of the number of international firms that put their Latin American operations headquarters in this city. Over 40% of all U.S. exports to Latin and South America pass through Florida.

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With regards to investment, real estate will always be the top investment prospect, as Florida remains one of the top travel destinations in the world. Currently, some forecasters are predicting a downturn in Florida’s real estate market; however, all this means is that there will be value opportunities for those who do their homework. Land is one commodity for which is there is no new manufacturing. Florida’s beaches are some of the best in the world and there are countless places for which growth can be obtained over the long run.

Other industries seeing positive growth over the next twelve months include professional services, tourism, space technology, and agriculture. There is some geographic distribution of these opportunities as increases in professional services are typically in either the Miami-Dade/Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area or the Tampa metropolitan area. Growth in space technology is concentrated on the Space Coast in east central Florida. The agriculture opportunities exist in central and northern Florida.

Therefore, overseas investors looking to move into the US will find there are many opportunities for growth investment in technology, real estate, agriculture, tourism, and financial services. Those investors who seek to immigrate to the United States will find the EB-5 visa program particularly attractive because the US Congress did not change the investment requirements.

Additionally, there are other possible visas available for companies looking to expand their operations into the United States. For those looking to start anew in the United States, there are options for creating entities such as limited liability companies and corporations that do not require US citizenship.

Ultimately, Florida is fast-becoming one of the primary centres of international trade. With our ports, great weather, low taxes, and easy access to North and South America, Florida is uniquely positioned to provide a complete platform for foreign firms and individuals to add profitable operations. There is absolutely nothing comparable to working in a place where most other people come to vacation because stress levels can be instantly lowered by savouring a cafecito or colada while watching the early morning waves crash on our beaches. As with any new destination, a guide can be extremely helpful to get quickly oriented and organized to avoid pitfalls and traps for the unwary, and our firm offers a range of services to support the ingratiation of new businesses.

Moving forward, the firm’s future is overwhelmingly positive. Revenue is up and clients continue to trust us with their business. The firm expects to be working on more international private equity transactions in the Middle East with expansion into three or four African nations. Additionally, general counsel services are in high demand as three new clients have requested the firm to work with them.

Michel Bitenyo Ngabo a member of the Bar of Rwanda

ngabomic@yahoo.fr

AI 116

2015's Most Innovative Business Finefair is London’s number one choice for guaranteed rent schemes and property management, as well as providing a wide variety of other propertyrelated services for a diverse range of clients. We spoke to the firm’s Founder and Director Kamran Naseem who provided us with an insight into this unique company and the services it provides.

Company: Finefair Ltd Name: Kamran Naseem Web: www.finefair.com Email: info@finefair.com Address: 552-554 Ley Street, Ilford, Essex, IG2 7DB Tel: 020 8554 0500

Established in 2002 and incorporated in 2003, Finefair was specifically designed to provide much needed temporary accommodation and housing solutions for the public sector.

Over the last decade the company has developed its management portfolio to over 3000 homes, managed and maintained across London’s local authorities, with its status as a preferred supplier and frame work partner.

Over this time Finefair has developed a detailed working knowledge and experience of local authority needs. With growing pressures on Government to provide affordable housing, Finefair is uniquely positioned to serve this growing demand. They have also established excellent working relationships with boroughs and authorities within the areas which they operate. This has led to innovative and efficient operations providing best value to its clients.

Finefair has been responsible for bringing innovative solutions forward, both for the current housing crisis and for difficulties most authorities have in securing much needed affordable housing. Finefair works in partnership with Local Authorities and Landlords to bring empty properties, which can be used by families that require them most, back in to use.

Finefair provides a cost effective way of tackling the shortage of affordable homes compared to new builds, as well as improving neighbourhoods. This method of providing homes, new to the market, on a ten year lease, is far more cost effective than building new homes in London due to exceptionally high land prices.

Further innovative solutions include Finefair’s ‘Meanwhile Management’ initiative. The company understands that regeneration schemes and Decent Homes schemes have inherent delays in their programmes once decanting is complete and properties have been left vacant for long periods.

Meanwhile Management services provides a great solution to this for Local Authorities, easing some of the huge pressures in housing by having buildings or estates that are currently in need of refurbishment or have been sitting derelict for some time brought back up to a habitable standard.

Finefair bring these properties back in to use by using their own funding to fully refurbish these properties and provide much needed homes within the local areas on behalf of the local authority.

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The benefits of this are two fold, these properties would otherwise be costing the local authorities significant sums in keeping them secure and safe from vandalism and having unused assets, that could largely assist with housing for temporary accommodation, back in to use. Through this initiative alone Finefair has provided homes to over 200 familes.

Today Finefair employs over 300 staff across its housing, care and support operations and associated companies. Over the last decade Finefair has developed a highly experienced and diverse work force committed to working within the communities with which they operate. They also provide opportunities for local people and are exceptionally proud of their on-going accreditation to the ‘Investors in People’ scheme. With their comprehensive training and development programme, all of their employees are regularly trained in customer care, equalities and child/ adult safeguarding as well as receiving detailed job role-specific training, ensuring that they are highly knowledgeable in all aspects of their roles.

Finefair’s comprehensive recruitment and training programs promote equal opportunities in line with the Equality & Cohesion Charter. They also encompass the diverse cultures within which they work with their staff having the ability to speak 9 locally used languages.

As a direct result of their extensive experience, they understand the finer points of service delivery and concentrate their efforts on building good rapports with tenants from the outset and establishing routine programmes to identify and prevent property defects and potential tenant welfare, health and social problems.

Within its first year of trading the company secured its first official contract in 2002 with LB Redbridge as the local authority’s first official PSL Pilot Partner, subsequently to this the company’s contracts are all on third/forth renewals demonstrating their ability to provide the services to a high standard and representing the confidence clients have in their ability to deliver this service.

Shortly after winning their first official contract the company secured its second contract with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, again to date this is the fourth renewed term on this contract and they remain the biggest provider to RB Kensington & Chelsea.

2015’s Most Innovative Business

Since this time the company has gone on to secure contracts with over 22 of London’s local authorities as a preferred supplier. Today they cover all of London and its surrounding areas, progressively working towards developing services in the Midlands and the North of England.

Director, Kamran comments ‘Demonstrated through our partnerships and affiliations we are strong believers in working collaboratively, we undertake partnerships with local authorities, independent organisations and clients in various areas including social housing procurement and management; leaving care services; adult care services; portfolio management; planned and reactive maintenance services as well as development of guaranteed income cover for our investors’ portfolios which continue to grow year on year’.

By ensuring a proactive and robust approach Finefair has successfully taken over much of the day to day management tasks of the Council’s temporary accommodation departments freeing them of the unnecessary costs associated with the management of such schemes. This demonstrates the success of Finefair’s working partnerships and the trust their clients place in their ability to deliver this service.

Additionally, Finefair is recognised for working with London’s Local Authorities and Private Landlords to establish practical solutions to support the council to deliver Central Government targets and cost reductions to each local authority whilst developing exceptionally high yielding portfolios for its investors.

In 2012 Finefair successfully launched its joint venture company ‘FineFutures’ Ltd, owned and operated by Kamran Naseem and joint Director Steve Blount.

Finefutures is a CQC Registered firm committed to providing high quality support services to vulnerable young people and adults in suitable, safe and affordable accommodation. Steve Blount comments ‘We knew there was a better way to deliver services from what was being offered by the care sector for vulnerable adults. This was an opportunity to provide highly specialist bespoke services to people who were often in desperate situations. Through our dedicated team of carers and support staff it has been exceptionally satisfying to see the positive difference made in people’s lives through delivering our services which are for people with highly complex needs. It’s been a pleasure to see the organisation growing from strength to strength and being part of the continuous development of our staff and services.

Our aim remains to exceed expectations in order to provide the highest quality of care and compassion for each of our service users leading to a quality life and independence for each of them.’

years and is continuing to expand month on month.

They have successfully developed relationships with Social Services departments throughout London and the Midlands, this growth has meant they have now developed the infrastructure and specialties to work with largely diverse and vulnerable groups, from young people age 16 years to adults by providing an alternative to residential and nursing home care.

Finefair’s aim is to help all service users experience a smooth transition through departments as they become older. During this journey they work closely with every service user to develop their life skills, gain confidence and help them to sustain an independent life in the longer term.

Finefair has access to a wide range of accommodation to suit service user’s varying needs, in groups, shared and single tenancies or licences. Thereby providing a foundation for positive engagement which allows the service users to develop a package of support that suits their needs and will enable them to live independently and safely.

Its latest venture, Finefair Housing Ltd (Finefair Housing) was incorporated in 2013 and gained a Registered Social Landlord (RSL) status granted by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).

As a ‘for-profit’ RP, Finefair Housing is part of a new small movement of organisations with innovative and fresh ideas to help increase the supply and quality of homes in the social housing sector as the demand continues to outstrip supply in the UK. Finefair Housing is committed to improving the quality of both housing and the communities in which it works. By seeking to secure Registered Social Landlord Status, RP status and owning and letting housing at affordable rents. Finefair Housing will be responsible for building a property portfolio let at affordable rents, provide management, care and support services to the residents of these properties, access grant, discounted land and other funding sources, from the HCA; local authorities and the wider public sector.

Finefair Housing’s particular expertise and experience is suited to housing management and smaller development projects. Finefair Housing will complement other existing and larger RPs already working in London and through its local intelligence about potential development sites and properties, and the ability to deliver small projects at comparatively low cost, make it an ideal organisation for registration and for grant funding as it will offer the ability to deliver projects that might otherwise not proceed.

As a new Housing Association and independent organisation, Finefair Housing has already been successful in securing valuable contracts with London Authorities that would otherwise not have been open to organisations without a Registered Provider status. This will complement the 14 years of experience developed at Finefair Ltd (in particular its management team) which demonstrates a strong track record of performance through to its associated companies, Finefair Housing and Finefutures.

Finefair Ltd. has significant experience of providing specialised support in areas such as long term temporary accommodation solutions to local authority’s housing associations and trusts, primarily for housing households who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The company also had a strong consultancy service offering and delivering care and support services for a number of clients.

As an organisation Finefair is fortunate to have a unique positioning in the market, being the bridge between the private and public sectors. Finefair is dedicated to providing specialist services to both sectors by bringing investors and investment opportunities together, through providing rent cover backed by local government for up to 10 years, a win-win model for investors whilst providing local communities with the housing they desperately need.

Looking to the future, the growth forecast looks very promising for the company, with a forecasted 10% growth over the next 12 months through contracts which have been successful and which will be coming to mobilisation stage over the next quarter.

Operating in this unique space will maintain the quality and high expectations in fulfilling existing and new contracts and continue to develop investor services to benefit both investors and provide local authorities with property portfolio’s to cater with the already huge demand on social housing which will not be receding any time soon. New innovative ways to provide housing and care solutions will continue to be developed as pressures on housing, care and support for teens to adults, immigration and social services continue to increase. The services Finefair and Finefair Housing (RP) provide are more in demand than ever before.

In respect to their Adult Care Services, Fine Futures also continues its rapid growth, with new business and contacts already secured, confirming growth of over 200% for the coming year, 2016/17. Their service offering will also be developing as well as the senior management team and their geographical coverage. 2016 looks to be a promising year.

Finefutures forms part of the Finefair Group of Companies, which means they are able to work in partnership with Finefair a major housing provider for both temporary & long term accommodation. Finefair currently provides accommodation to over 3000 social housing tenants and is continuing to grow each year, this unique partnership means they always have suitable accommodation available for users and local authorities in most areas within London and the UK. The company has experienced rapid growth since its inception with over 300% growth in its first three Acquisition International - January 2016 113

AI 83

Africa's Economic Paradise: Mauritius Crowe Horwath (MUR) Co (CHM) was founded in 1989 in Mauritius and we are a member firm of Crowe Horwath International (CHI). Today we are one among the fastest growing professional services firms in the region. We are registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) in the United States which allows us to provide audit services to US listed entities and their subsidiaries globally. We are fully geared to offer our professional services to entities on the African continent.

Company: Crowe Horwath (Mur) Co Name: Suresh SEWRAZ E-mail: suresh.sewraz@ crowehorwath.mu Phone: 230)4662992 Web: www.crowehorwath.mu

At CHM we have always placed significant importance on maintaining the highest standards of technical competence and therefore providing impeccable service to our clients. The vast majority of our clients are multinational entities operating in the Mauritius financial services center. We are committed to providing unparalleled services to help our clients meet their corporate objectives.

At CHM we strive to exceed the client’s expectations, with impeccable service and the highest quality standards, driven by an innovative approach to creating solutions to meet their needs. We do this by building trusted relationships that become the foundation for ongoing ingenuity, creativity and success.

As a member of CHI, we can draw on a worldwide network of independent professionals and their know-how. The Crowe Horwath network consists of more than 140 independent accounting and advisory services firms and 588 offices in more than 125 countries around the world. We are known for our local knowledge, expertise, and experience balanced by an international reputation for the highest quality in audit, tax, advisory and risk services.

We provide statutory and non-statutory audit services to entities in a multitude of business environments.

We adopt a proactive approach and our audits are carried out under current auditing standards. We provide audit and assurance services to a wide variety of corporate and non–corporate entities operating both locally and internationally.

We offer your entity the opportunity to keep a hold on costs and to concentrate on the efficient deployment of your economic resources in your higher – value addition endeavours. You will benefit from our proven ability and knowledge in the planning of business ventures and how to optimize the use of allowed tax deductions to minimize your tax liability.

We will cater for your requirements while offering you the possibility of discussing your tax affairs with an experienced member of our personnel.

Our team will work with you to understand your strategic objectives and evaluate your needs with the view of choosing the optimal solution. We also assist organizations manage risk by identifying their key risk factors, combing data files to locate exceptions to usual pattern or suspicious transactions, and compliance with laid down processes and procedures.

This unique combination of our local and regional talent coupled with the global reach of our network provides us with the local expertise and global worldwide capabilities our clients expect and deserve.

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Africa’s Economic Paradise: Mauritius AI 83

Chexsys Consulting Ltd is a multi-lingual provider of outsourced accounting and business processing services to businesses all around the world. Our primary aim is to take over companies’ non-core activities to help them concentrate all their resources on their core competencies and become more competitive.

Based in the high-tech Ebene Cybercity in Mauritius, our 24-hr BPO service offers to a worldwide clientèle cost-effective accounting and business solutions on a Microsoft Server 2012 platform. Using internet and fibre optics access, our customers can share documents and information safely under latest stateof-the-art technologies protecting our systems against insider threats, malware, hacker, and other network attacks.

Company: Chexsys Consulting Ltd (Member Crowe Horwath International) Name: Suresh SEWRAZ E-mail: suresh.sewraz@ chexsysconsulting.mu Phone: (230)4678684 Web: www.chexsysconsulting.mu

At Chexsys, we will provide you with the very best assistance possible. We can be relied upon for an efficient and professional service and assume personal responsibility for service quality and timeliness. We will walk that extra mile for you to surprise and delight you as we are always thinking about how we can do things better next time to give you an even better service.

At Chexsys, we will provide you with payroll services, business consultancy services, bookkeeping and accounting services, the preparation of regular management reports, in an agreed format with you, to enable you monitor the performance of your business and make the appropriate management decisions at the earliest. Our financial administration service compliments our management accounting service. We provide a tailored financial administration solution to meet your requirements.

Our IT team works jointly with consultants of Crowe Horwath International to provide our customers with the best management audit and consulting services_ Strategy audit, Organizational audit, Operational audit, IT audit and Business Process Re-engineering.

Our consultants have proven experience in both private and public sector and have provided services in many countries on the African continent.

Chexsys also provide IT services such as IT Consultancy and Software Development. We will advise you how to use information technology in order to meet business objectives or overcome problems and will work to improve the structure and efficiency of IT systems in your organization. We also design, build and develop custom software and mobile applications compatible with Android, IOS and Windows platform that will meet your organization’s needs.

At Chexsys, we value the relationship with our clients more than anything else.

We seek regular customer feedback to improve our service level and to ensure that we understand our clients business in depth so that we can meet their requirements.

We use the latest technology and security measures to ensure that your financial and non-financial records are kept in the most confidential manner.

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How Asset Based Lending is Fuelling Growth AI 83

How Asset Based Lending is Fuelling Growth Hilton-Baird Financial Solutions is an independent commercial finance brokerage. Originally specialising in asset based finance, their extended knowledge of the wider commercial finance arena means that they can assist businesses in achieving their goals by identifying the right fit of funding solutions to satisfy their specific requirements. We got in touch with them to find out what it’s like to work in their industry, as well as how asset based lending is continuing to fuel growth.

Company: Hilton-Baird Financial Solutions Name: Evette Orams Email: evette@hiltonbaird.co.uk Web: www.hiltonbairdfinancial.co.uk Address: Ashwood House, Ashwood Gardens, Southampton, SO16 7LF Telephone: 07894 513555

From our experience, asset based finance has undergone a significant transformation in the UK in recent years. Its flexibility and suitability has enabled it to play a key role in supporting business and therefore boosting the economic recovery.

Furthermore, figures from the Asset Based Finance Association (ABFA) show that advances made to British businesses between April and June 2015 against the value of assets including debtors, stock, property, plant and machinery reached £19.3 billion.

Another prevalent theme is that the decline in bank lending, coupled with the explosion of alternative finance (peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding reportedly grew by 160 per cent in 2014 alone to provide £1.2 billion of funding), has meant that SMEs and corporates are more willing to consider less traditional forms of funding.

Additionally, the flexibility that asset based finance provides means that it is an ideal tool to support growth plans, particularly in the current climate.

Whether a business is struggling to maintain a steady cash flow or requires additional funding to capitalise on expansion opportunities, the features of this form of funding make it an extremely useful solution.

When we introduce cash flow solutions, we find that the needs of the business will drive which funding solutions we will match them with. While we can source a wide range of funding solutions from business loans to trade finance, we often find that asset based finance is the most suitable and versatile option.

We have found that many businesses aren’t utilising the assets on their balance sheet effectively.

Releasing the cash tied up in these assets, such as the sales ledger, can provide flexible funds to satisfy a myriad of business goals; releasing cash flow for day to day working capital, to fund new orders and to finance acquisition and merger activity.

Looking further ahead, the biggest opportunities and challenges within our industry are very closely linked.

The commercial finance arena is witnessing an era of great change and with change comes both potential risks and rewards. Moreover, awareness and adoption of alternative finance is booming, and is providing much needed support to those businesses who are pushing forward with growth plans at a time when more traditional funding is declining.

This evolving nature of the commercial finance industry requires Hilton-Baird to continually keep abreast of the changing landscape in terms of funder appetites and new entrants in the market place. However, our core ethos remains to support businesses using our extensive knowledge of the commercial finance arena and the suitability of the funding solutions for our clients, both in terms of short and long term needs, understanding that businesses are always evolving themselves.

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Best Emerging Manager 2016 - California AI 83

Gratia Capital LLC Company: Gratia Capital LLC Name: Steve Pei Email: investor@gratiacapital.com Address: 2029 Century Park East, Suite 1180 Los Angeles, CA 90067 Telephone: 310-733-2500

Best Emerging Manager 2016 - California Gratia Capital is an SEC-registered multi-strategy, value and event-oriented asset management firm based in Los Angeles, CA. Steve Pei talks us through the firm and the services it provides.

Gratia Capital’s investment approach seeks to maximize risk-adjusted returns through opportunistic investments across the capital structure in our focal sectors of Consumer, Industrials, and Real Estate.

The firm’s fundamental strategy is to combine the advantages one typically gets in a sector specialist (a PM well-versed in the sector, strong context for relative value within the sector, and the ability to be forward-thinking) with the flexibility of a generalist (the two biggest drawbacks of a sector specialist are lack of relative value context and constraint of the investment mandate when opportunities arise outside the core expertise). By focusing on multiple sectors, we seek to harness the advantages of a sector specialist while retaining the opportunism of a generalist, capturing the best of both worlds.

The firm began operations in April 2012 and formally launched its commingled funds in January 2013. Typical clients that invest with our firm are endowments and foundations, family offices, consultants and fund of funds.

Our flagship product is Gratia Capital Partners Master Fund Ltd. Unlike most funds of more recent vintage, Gratia has relied upon investing with a high hit rate in a moderately diversified portfolio (as opposed to making returns in just a few volatile, core positions like many funds started in recent years). As a result, while we are unlikely to be the single best performing hedge fund in any single year (because one winner or loser doesn’t really make or break our year), we have demonstrated through a large number of datapoints, that we consistently drive alpha and we have relatively low single name security risk.

In every individual period since inception (2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015), Gratia has driven alpha on both the long and short sides of our portfolio. In addition, the overall portfolio employs a reasonable gross (165-180%) and moderate net (20-45%) philosophy, providing strong staying power during market selloffs. Since our April 2012 inception, in aggregate during down months, the S&P has returned -34.99%. During those same periods, Gratia was only down -2.48% net in aggregate.

Our investment approach tends to be value and event oriented in general. However, we believe in marrying specific expertise with flexibility. The fund is designed to be all-weather and to adapt to opportunities regardless of style (skew to value/event but not exclusively so), asset class (equity and credit), and sector (multiple sectors to invest in).

Internally, Gratia adopts a partnership sharing model, with the explicit goal of aligning interests and cultivating a truly team-oriented philosophy in an industry which tends to skew towards individualism and fiefdoms. With this in mind, we seek top-tier talent but we also seek good firm citizens who can buy into a long-term “best for our investors, best for the firm” mentality. Compensation and promotion is intimately tied to individuals who espouse these traits.

Looking to the future, we feel we are on a strong trajectory, and as such the goal is to maintain focus on the portfolio and gradually augment the organization. Gratia has been operating at a high level and it is important that focus be placed on gradual growth and thoughtful improvement across our processes and organizations. Therefore while we are open to creative change, we also want to acknowledge and continue what has worked well in the past.

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Best Boutique Energy Law Firm - Canada AI 83

Company: Regulatory Law Chambers Phone: 403.532.7991 Fax: 403.930.7991 Address: #601, 888 Fourth Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P 0V2, Canada Email: Rosa.Twyman@ RLChambers.ca Website: http://regulatorylawchambers.ca

Best Boutique Energy Law Firm - Canada Regulatory Law Chambers is a Calgary-based boutique law firm dedicated to excellence in energy regulated matters.

Regulatory Law Chambers has expertise in oil and gas, electricity, including renewable energies and commercial matters, tolls and tariff, compliance and environmental legal matters.

The firm frequently represents clients in proceedings before the Alberta Energy Regulator, the Alberta Utilities Commission, the National Energy Board, all levels of the Courts, and in arbitrations and mediations.

This wide range of specialisms and services provides all staff at the company with a varied experience which they are able to draw on to ensure that all clients receive successful commercial results, congruent with clients’ business objectives.

Services offered by the firm include: • Obtaining regulatory approvals for electricity, and oil and gas related facilities, including pipelines, processing facilities, well licences, holding applications, industrial system designations, power plants and related facilities;

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• Legal matters related to fracturing activities, including seismicity and cross-flow matters; • Negotiating and entering into electricity commercial arrangements, including disposition of regulated assets, power purchase agreements, and royalty agreements; • Tolls and tariff matters; • Regulatory enforcement and environmental compliance; and • Commercial arrangements and regulatory matters related to natural gas liquids.

Regulatory Law Chambers prepares and distributes the Energy Regulatory Report, a monthly report summarizing decisions of the National Energy Board and Alberta regulators. This allows the firm and clients to keep up to date on developments in the regulatory industry regarding Federal matters and matters in Alberta.

Client service is a top priority for the company, and this is highlighted by their mission: “to provide exceptional service to a sophisticated client base and maintain a firm that is innovative, successful, ethical and fun.”

Hungary: A Soaring Economy, Beating the Odds AI 83

Company: Danubia Patent and Law Office LLC Address: 16 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, Budapest, H-1051 Mail: H-1368 Budapest 5, POB 198, Hungary Phone: (+36 1) 411-8700 Fax: (+36 1) 266-5770 E-mail: central@danubia.hu Website: www.danubia.com

Hungary: A Soaring Economy, Beating the Odds Danubia Patent and Law Office LLC is a leading Hungarian IP law firm providing services covering patents, trademarks and all fields around protecting, enforcing and defending intellectual property rights.

Danubia has been voted as No 1 or tier 1 firm for Patent prosecution and enforcement work and No 1 or tier 1 firm for Trademark prosecution and enforcement work in Hungary according to the world IP Survey sponsored by the magazine Managing Intellectual Property (a London-based Euromoney enterprise). These four rankings have been awarded to Danubia every year since 1997 up to the present, and as such we are the only IP law firm that can boast with such a broad and persistent ranking for over 18 years. Apart from this award Danubia has several other awards issued by the ACQ and WIPR magazines.

The professional experience accumulated during the firm’s more than 66 years long existence provides the basis of the high quality and reliable services, which are combined with the comparatively modest price at which such services are provided.

Based on such experience and professional skill, the firm’s overseas clients are welcome and invited to try their European Services for obtaining European Patents and Community Trademarks and Designs and to enjoy the moderate costs by which such services are provided.

Of course, besides these European services all clients are welcome to utilize the firm’s services whenever they have any IP-related issue in the Republic of Hungary.

The firm’s professional staff consists of registered European Patent Attorneys and European Trademark Attorneys, as well as of lawyers specialized mainly in trademark and patent enforcement, including also European Patents and Community Trademarks and Designs.

Within their client base is a substantial number of leading multinational companies, highlighting the firm’s dedication and trustworthiness.

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AI 116

Africa's Economic Paradise: Mauritius Cim Global Business is the leading management company in Mauritius with over USD 150 billion in Assets under Administration with offices in both Mauritius and Singapore. They form part of Cim Group, the largest non-bank financial services group in Mauritius whose parent company, Cim Financial Services Ltd, is listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius. Graham Sheward talks us through the firm and the role it plays within this growing region.

Company: Cim Global Business Name: Graham Sheward Web: www.cimglobalbusiness.com Email: mauritius@ cimglobalbusiness.com Address: 33,Edith Cavell Street Port Louis, Mauritius Tel: + 230 212 9800

Cim Global Business offers Corporate, Fund and Trust administration services, and also provides Professional Services Outsourcing solutions to their clients, these include; institutional investors, asset managers, private equity fund managers, development financial institutions, sovereign wealth funds, banks, hedge funds and high net worth individuals.

The country is strategically located at the crossroads of Asia and Africa. The island has been able to position itself as one of the preferred international financial centres of this region. It has secured a number of bilateral treaties with African and Asian countries including Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (“DTAA”) and Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (“IPPA”).

The firm has 23 years of experience in fund, corporate and trust administration. They have a strong international client portfolio which includes top Fortune 500 Companies. In an insightful interview, the firm’s Managing Director, Graham Sheward sheds light on the current trends in the Mauritian business market, opportunities there for overseas investors and an insight into his firm’s financial performance, outlook for the future and what makes his company unique.

Over and above the tax benefits, Mauritius is a jurisdiction of substance, for instance, a stable political, economic and social system, qualified local resources, certainty of law and sophisticated financial infrastructure.

Investors can use Mauritius as their investment hub for Africa, and there is no exchange control on fund flows. Another option is to establish their Pan-African operational, administrative and financial headquarters in Mauritius. This is a good way to mitigate potential direct geopolitical risk, unstable mainland local currencies, and exchange control restrictions.

The Mauritian economy is growing at 3.2% according to the latest IMF forecast. The country has a welldiversified economy driven by its agriculture, property, hospitality, manufacturing and financial sectors.

The government is also putting a lot of effort into developing the ocean economy and Freeport sector.

The financial services sector is pivotal to the economy as it contributes around 10.3% of GDP, and employs more than 13,000 people (Mauritius has a working population of approx. 578 700 people).

The country has a wide offering in terms of financial services sector products, ranging from traditional retail products to more sophisticated investment solutions.

For instance, Mauritius is one of the largest and most innovative capital raising markets on the African landscape. The country has two securities exchanges; the Stock Exchange of Mauritius Ltd and the Bourse Africa Ltd, which complement each other to position Mauritius as a capital-raising hub for both regional and global players.

Mauritius’ efforts to be viewed as a jurisdiction of choice is also reflected in the international recognition it has gained over time. For instance, it has been constantly ranked first in the Mo Ibrahim Survey on Good Governance and the World Bank has ranked Mauritius as number 1 in Africa for Ease of Doing Business.

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Last but not least, as an expat, I am very happy to confirm that Mauritius is a very pleasant place to live.

The tropical climate throughout the year allows for outdoor activities, there are international schools and the country is a very safe and secure environment to raise a family.

As the Managing Director of Cim Global Business I am responsible for creating and implementing business strategy to ensure the sustainable growth and development of the firm on behalf of our clients, colleagues and shareholders. I also enjoy meeting our clients, both in Mauritius and in their home markets overseas, to learn about their businesses and how we can continually improve our products and services to meet their evolving requirements.

Overall the firm has had a strong 12 months. The Group’s revenue for the year ended 30 September 2015 grew by 17% to MUR 4.1 billion driven by an improved performance in all business divisions.

Cim Global Business recorded a good performance on the back of increased US Dollar fee revenue, a strong dollar against the rupee, continued focus on cost management and our strong client base. Our revenue grew by 16% to reach MUR 731.7 million and Profit After Tax rose by 39% to MUR 231.5 million.

Africa’s Economic Paradise: Mauritius

Looking to the future, our strategic plan is to both retain our India-focused client investment portfolio, and continue our diversification strategy by expanding into our chosen target markets in Africa.

We will soon open our new office in Johannesburg.

This will be the cornerstone of our African expansion strategy.

We have also recently introduced a Professional Services Outsourcing business division, which will enable companies operating in high cost jurisdictions to outsource their accounting, administration and selective legal services to our experienced and qualified team in Mauritius, at a potentially significantly lower cost.

Alongside this we have broadened our product offering, and are able to offer a wide range of company service solutions for our clients who set up their business operations in Mauritius. In addition to our corporate administration solutions, we can now also provide IT services, offices, HR support and tax advice.

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SCP Ndiaye & Diagne, Notaires landing.dione@notaires.sn

Africa on the Rise / Setting up a Franchise Business in India AI 102

Africa on the Rise Company: Benefit TechGroup, Inc Address: 101 Greenwood Avenue, Suite 280, Jenkintown, PA 19046 Telephone: 215 881 2262 Fax: 215 881 2263 Email: nk@btginc.org Phone: 215.881.2262 Website: www.btginc.org

Benefit TechGroup, Inc. are qualified employee benefit plan consultants and actuaries that design, install and administer employee benefit plans.

Benefit Tech Group, Inc is the outgrowth of over 40 years of providing actuarial, consulting and administration for companies, national organizations, federal, state and municipal plans and one person companies.

The group’s pro-active interaction has enabled it to provide meaningful benefits at reduced costs.

The group’s web based services have often saved employers from 20% to 40% in administrative costs, and it is a 100% fee based company.

Company: Kanga and Company Web: www.kangacompany.com Address: 1st Floor, Ready Money Mansion 43, Veer Nariman Road, Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001, India Phone:+91 22 6633 2288

Nathan S. Kolbes is President of Benefit Tech Group, Inc. A consultant for over 40 years, is an Enrolled Actuary and Member of American Society of Pension Actuaries, Fellow of The Conference of Consulting Actuaries, and Member American Academy of Actuaries.

He consulted on the original Pension Reform Act and authored books on ESOPs, “Efficient Pension Planning” and “Tax Filing Procedures for Accountants and Attorneys”

Setting up a Franchise Business in India Kanga and Company, established in 1890, is a highly respected and professionally managed law firm.

Kanga and Company is among the oldest law firms in India as well as being one of the largest, boasting 16 highly specialised partners.

As a traditional firm, the firm believes in offering a personalised service. As such its constant endeavour is to be responsive to client requirements, be proactive in designing creative solutions and provide value addition whilst maintaining a very competitive fee structure.

The firm’s partners are hands-on and easily accessible at all times and the company’s value systems and culture have attracted many clients (including several blue-chip companies and multinationals) who have continued their patronage for decades.

Practice areas covered by the firm include tax and financial law; real estate and property law and dispute resolution, although boasting such a wealth of legal talent means the firm is highly flexible and able to offer a range of services to suit the individual needs of their clients.

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Best in Patent Litigation - Austria AI 116

Salomonowitz Horak Rechtsanwalte Company: Salomonowitz Horak Rechtsanwalte Address: Tuchlauben 18/9 A-1010 Wien Phone: +43 (1) 5320404-0 Fax: +43 (1) 5320404-80 Email: office@sh-ip.at Website: www.sh-ip.at/en

Best in Patent Litigation - Austria Salomonowitz Horak Rechtsanwalte is a law firm specialised in intellectual property law, offering quality services which draw on the experience of the firm’s Founders.

Founders Dr. Salomonowitz and Dr. Horak have worked as associates and junior partners with Schönherr Rechtsanwälte GmbH and other reputable law firms, drawing on this experience to enrich their firm. The partners are highly specialised in matters of intellectual and industrial property law and advertising law and have a worldwide network of competent and reliable attorneys.

Former projects undertaken by Sascha Salomonowitz include the representation of a European pharmaceutical company against a producer of generics during patent protection, providing ongoing advice to R&D units and companies for R&D cooperation and participated in the drafting of the Austrian Biopatent Monitoring Report to the Austrian parliament.

Co-founder Michael Horak has successfully defended an international producer of pharmaceuticals against a lawsuit and preliminary injunction for alleged patent infringement, represented a producer of luxury fashion in a landmark case before the Austrian Supreme Court on acquiescence of trademark rights and developed of an anti-counterfeiting strategy during the European Football Championship 2008 in Austria for a major producer of sports goods in cooperation with Austrian customs and police forces.

By undertaking work which impacts on the Austrian legal system the firm are able to ensure that they are always at the forefront of emerging developments in the industry, enabling them to offer the most up to date advice and support to their clients.

In addition the Founders also regularly contribute to the industry by publishing articles and speaking at international conferences, in order to enhance the industry’s understanding and use their hard earned experience to help support their fellow legal practitioners.

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Best Criminal Law Firm - Singapore

Company: Gloria James-Civetta & Co Address: 25 North Bridge Rd, Singapore 179104 Tel: +65 6337 0469 Fax: +65 6337 0463 Email: consult@gjclaw.com.sg Website: www.gjclaw.com.sg

Best Criminal Law Firm - Singapore At Gloria James-Civetta & Co, we fight to defend the rights of our clients, and have built our reputation on getting favorable results. You can count on our experienced criminal lawyers to help and guide you through your legal matter by offering a clear explanation of the law and representing you through skillful advocacy.

If you have been charged with a crime or are facing a criminal investigation in Singapore, you should immediately seek professional legal advice.

We are able to guide you through this uncertain and often stressful part of the criminal law process.

Our experienced criminal law lawyers can help if you: • Are under police investigation and required to attend a formal interview with police • Have been charged by the police and have to attend court • Have been served with a Private Summons Prosecutions / Magistrate’s Complaint • Want to initiate a Private Summons Prosecutions / Magistrate’s Complaint • Want to initiate an application for Prevention of the Harassment Act (POHA).

We have a dedicated Criminal Law Website (www. singaporecriminallawyer.com.sg) covering the whole of the Criminal Law Procedure in Singapore, from being arrested and charged in court, to the final verdict. This valuable information helps our clients to better understand the Singapore Criminal Law System.

About our lawyers Gloria James-Civetta (Fluent in English and Mandarin) Senior Lawyer – Principal Partner - Advocate and Solicitor (Singapore) 1996 - Barrister-at-Law (Lincoln’s Inn – UK) 1995 - LL.B (Hons) (University of Wolverhampton – UK) 1993 - Primary Justice Lawyer (State Courts of Singapore)

Gloria has been in practice for 20 years. In the course of her legal career, she has gained considerable experience and knowledge in the area of Criminal Law. As Vice-Chairman of the Criminal Law Practice Committee of the Law Society, Gloria is closely involved in the ongoing changes which are currently taking place in criminal law litigation procedures.

As a skilled advocate and solicitor, she has represented hundreds of clients in both the State and Supreme courts of Singapore, earning respect for her legal prowess in criminal matters both in and out of the courtroom. She possesses considerable knowledge of all aspects of criminal law and is able to play a key role when representing clients and providing them with professional advice and guidance Gloria actively advises various foreign Embassies, informing them of the criminal justice process in Singapore and at the same time acting for foreign nationals detained in Singapore Amarjit Singh Sidhu (Fluent in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Bahasa Malay) Partner – Head of Litigation - Advocate and Solicitor (Singapore) - LLB (Hons) (University of London) 1996 Amarjit has extensive experience in Criminal Law which stems from the early 1990s as a Senior Officer with the Ministry of Home Affairs and later as an Assistant Public Prosecutor with the AttorneyGeneral’s Chambers. Amarjit has made regular court appearances and prosecuted offenders under the Penal Code, Misuse of Drugs Act, Prevention of Corruption Act, and the Road Traffic Act, amongst others.

He has vast experience in trial litigation and has been commended for his advocacy skills. Being a former prosecutor has given him the knowledge to understand the rationale of criminal prosecutors, which is invaluable when preparing an effective defense for someone accused of a crime.

Amarjit has appeared before the Appellate Court for criminal appeals and acted for many expatriate clients accused of committing criminal offences.

Amarjit has an excellent track record and has successfully secured the withdrawal of charges or their composition for many of his clients after representations were made to the Attorney-General’s Chambers.

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Profiting from Risk AI 83

Profiting from Risk Company: Actuarial Risk Management Website: www.actrisk.com

The ARM innovative business model design can deliver unbiased Enterprisewide solutions to Middle-market companies looking for an edge in an uncertain era.

Established in 2006 under the vision of founder and senior actuary Corwin (Cory) Zass, Actuarial Risk Management (ARM) has quietly developed a “21st century advisory consultancy firm.” Rooted deeply in a new set of principles and critical thinking underpinned from a sound actuarial foundation ready to challenge the standard mindset of today’s vertically focused actuaries and risk managers, ARM enjoys an ever growing loyal following.

Believing an organized class of experienced entrepreneurial professionals can impartially test the stale risk mitigation ideologies and “cookie-cutter” solutions promoted to companies, Zass successfully assembled a broad team of industry experts without limitations to franchise locations or narrow focuses, and led ARM in becoming an independent member of the BDO Alliance USA, expanding its reach across a nationwide association of independently owned local and regional accounting, consulting and service firms with similar client service goals. The BDO Alliance USA is a subsidiary of BDO USA, LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership.

Vetted by a number of other Top 30 accounting firms, ARM continues to reinforce the availability of value-add views and expertise via the ARM Network, a vastly increasing group of accomplished actuaries and risk advisors.

Whether strategic partners or ARM customers, the financial volatility ushered in a new generation of risk aversive companies and created a new wave of demands from professional vendors. The confidence to establish a new baseline or to say “no” to the tried and true approaches of the past, ARM routinely leverages the ARM Network to solve problems rather than simply deliver commodity results.

Using a collaboration philosophy, ARM manages client project teams staffed with more senior consultants having decades of practical experience honed over an average 25 year career. Besides the intellectual capital gained by ARM partners and clients, ARM’s hands-on team provides unique insight to the assessment of risks thus enabling stakeholders to realize valuable new (and necessary) approaches that address and solve those “keep-me-up-at-night” risks which add undesired economic pressures.

Since risk exposures interconnect across entire organizations—property, liability, people and financial stability issues—and influence short- and long-term decisions, there is no substitute for an ARM 360-view of risk vulnerabilities. Whether a second opinion or a need to “shake-the-tree” so incumbents align their deliverables with company objectives, ARM will empower an organization to better manage its risks.

Relying on a client centric fee-only advisory platform ARM strives to enrich boards and C-suite with a new glide-path to gain control of risk via protection, guardrails and enhanced financing mechanisms to produce accretive opportunities all without financial influences or commissions tied to solutions.

Acquisition International - January 2016 127 129 143

Intellectual Property – what’s your focus?

Intellectual property law is a vital tool in the creation and protection of dynamic business assets and Edwin Coe’s Intellectual Property team combines dedicated IP specialists and heavyweight litigators.

We provide a full service from the acquisition, exploitation and protection of intellectual property, through to its commercial use and the handling of infringement and other contentious issues.

Edwin Coe LLP | 2 Stone Buildings | Lincoln’s Inn | London | WC2A 3TH t: +44 (0)20 7691 4000 | e: info@edwincoe.com | edwincoe.com

Contact: Simon Miles Head of Intellectual Property e: simon.miles@edwincoe.com Nick Phillips Partner e: nick.phillips@edwincoe.com

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Boogles Bookkeeping Best Book-Keeping Company - London In an interview with Boogles Bookkeeping Ltd’s Lisa Newton, she reveals the current state of the accountancy industry. www.acquisition-intl.com

Without a Worry in the World Candice Fourie of No Worries Company Services Limited tells us about the company’s vision to deliver outstanding, easily accessible accounting services tailored to suit the needs of professional contractors working in the UK.

welcome

to the 2016 Global Accountancy Awards

The 2016 Global Accountancy Awards have been created to highlight the vital work done throughout all industries and sectors by the behind-the-scenes experts who ensure that every firm, regardless of size, reputation, geographical location or area of expertise, can be confident that the figures that make it tick are in safe hands.

Accountants all over the world carry out a vast array of essential tasks, from ensuring the accuracy of statements and maintaining compliance with laws and regulations, to advising on best practice and making recommendations regarding the most effective allocation of resources. The biggest and best businesses naturally work with only the most innovative, mindful, dedicated and talented accounting professionals and it is these specialists that we seek to reward through our prestigious awards programme.

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contents 4. Future Success Business Advisory has won Best for SME Business Advice - Australia 6. MTM Accountants Ltd has won Best Accounting & Book-Keeping Practice - Milton Keynes 8. No Worries Company Services Ltd has won Best in Contractor Accounting - UK 10. Norman Bookkeeping & Payroll has won Book-Keeper of the Year - West Midlands 12. Business Partnering LTD, Steven Swientozielskyi has won Recognised Leader in Business Transformation & Change Management – UK 13. Boogles Bookkeeping LTD has won Best Book-Keeping Company - London 14. RoseRyan has won Most Innovative Finance & Accountancy Firm - California & Best XBRL Practice - USA

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Best for SME Business Advice - Australia

Future Success Business Advisory

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Future Success Business Advisory was established in 2014 to meet the commercial and financial needs of SMEs and Not for Profit organisations in Western Australia. They recognised that there was a large gap in the services offered by traditional accounting firms who tended to focus on past performance only, rather than helping businesses to understand how their day to day decisions affect future financial performance.

Company: Future Success Business Advisory Name: Lou Charlet Email: lou.charlet@futuresuccess.com.au Web Address: www.futuresuccess.com.au Address: 9 Makybe Drive, Baldivis, 6171, WA Telephone: 08 9520 5401

They specialise in business planning and forecasting for new and existing organisations and also financial due diligence for new business purchases. The firm also help larger companies to streamline their operations and increase efficiency through targeted business process improvements.

In a short interview, Future Success Business Advisory’s Lou Charlet outlines the state of the accountancy industry today, the firm’s approach to clients and what the future holds for their business as they stay on the cutting edge of developments.

What are your views on the state of the accountancy industry in your region at present. What major challenges does it currently face and what are the major outside influence factors?

The accountancy industry in Western Australia is largely made up of firms providing traditional services, however with the evolution of cloud-based accounting software, business need for this type of service is reducing.

This poses a challenge for firms which are not embracing the change, but creates great opportunity for firms which are focussing on business advisory and consulting services.

What is your overriding philosophy for areas such as client service and the acquisition of new business?

We approach our clients with a partnership philosophy. Future Success advisors have had extensive commercial and operational business experience and are able to explain accounting concepts and financial projections in a way which empowers business managers and owners, rather than isolating them.

We are proud of our approach and acquire new business largely through referrals and recommendations. We believe that businesses are all about people and conversations and always make sure that this is at the heart of our new business meetings.

Working within such an evolving and dynamic industry, what steps do you take to ensure that your firm remains on the cutting edge of new developments? How do you ensure that you are always best placed to meet your clients’ needs?

Future Success Business Advisory is founded on a concept of future-proof, sustainable financial management and as such we are always looking at ways to be dynamic. We spend time listening to our customers and through reflection and conversation, ensure that our services are always relevant to our clients’ changing needs.

What does the future hold for your business? Are there any specific projects or major developments on the horizon that you would be willing to share with us?

We are looking at the “part-time CFO” business model and trailing the concept with some of our larger clients.

It’s not as popular a concept in Western Australia currently, but we would like to lead this change as we see great benefits for our clients and future clients.

We believe that the traditional stigma attached with accountants needs to change, as SMEs and Not for Profit organisations need financial business partners to help them make informed, fact-based decisions. We want to help organisations feel more connected to the numbers that tell the story of their business and have more relevant conversations with them. We hope that this makes accounting a more personable and supportive profession in Western Australia, by looking to the future together.

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Best Accounting & Book-Keeping Practice - Milton Keynes

MTM Accountants Ltd MTM Accountants Ltd is a Milton Keynes based accountancy firm serving primarily private limited companies and self-employed workers. We spoke to the firm’s Founder Mary Majoni in order to gain an insight into the firm and the services they provide.

Company: MTM Accountants Ltd Email: mary.majoni@mtmaccountants.co.uk Phone: 07496929398 Website: www.mtmaccountants.co.uk

MTM Accountants offers a range of accountancy services to suit the needs of clients operating outside of the PAYE system.

Currently I find that the accountancy industry is very busy, as many people move away from the mainstream workplace and register either as limited companies or as being self-employed. As such there is a lot of business for firms such as mine, but there are also a lot of companies within the industry that act as competition.

However what sets MTM Accountants apart is that I always put my clients’ needs first, working hard to ensure that everyone who uses my firm receives a professional service which is tailored to their individual requirements.

This is why, although some of my clients come to me organically through my website or social media, most are referred to me by previous satisfied clients. This high level of referred business highlights both my dedication to client service and my accountancy skills.

Both of these factors are of vital importance, and therefore as well as ensuring each client receives a top quality service I ensure that my industry knowledge is fully up to date by attending ongoing courses and seminars on accountancy to ensure I have up to date knowledge and skills.

Additionally I take full advantage of advances in technology by ensuring my software is always up to date, which makes it easier for my clients to undertake daily tasks such as filling our expenses forms and invoices.

The future is exciting for my firm, as I have recently been approached by a local college to take train some apprentices. This offers my firm the opportunity to grow as we take on more staff, and it is always invigorating to be able to share my knowledge and experience with the younger generation.

Alongside this new legislation is due to come into force later in 2016 which will pose fresh challenges such as explaining the effects of the new rules on my clients and helping them to prepare for the changes they will need to make in order to comply. However overall I see these challenges as positive and look forward to seeing what the year has to offer.

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Best in Contractor Accounting - UK

No Worries offers accounting services tailored to suit the needs of professional contractors working in the UK who want to operate either through their own limited company, or through an umbrella company.

Company: No Worries Company Services Limited Name: Candice Fourie Email: candice@no-worries.co.uk Web Address: www.no-worries.co.uk Address: Unit 18 Elysium Gate 126 New Kings Road London, SW6 4LZ Telephone: 020 7731 1117

No Worries was kicked off in 2003 by two New Zealander’s living and working in London. The aim was to deliver an outstanding, easily accessible accounting service. We pride ourselves on our outstanding customer service delivered in easy to understand, plain English backed up by robust, easy-to-use cloud based software.

Our commitment to providing contractors with effortless access to their company operations, and personalised accounting support at a competitive price, remains our number one driver.

The contractor accounting sector is ever changing with consolidation of larger contractor accounting firms, and new private equity owners coming into the marketplace. We pride ourselves on our independence from external shareholders which makes us nimble, and responsive to both our clients, and to the regular statutory and legislative changes the contractor sector face.

In order to become truly successful not only do you need to have a great idea of what your clients want and need, but also make sure you listen to them. We have bespoke software developed in-house that is not only cloud based, but is also tailored to our clients specific needs and continues to evolve as laws, times and clients’ needs change. But we are not just an online tool. We make things easy for our clients to understand, and manage. Every client has a dedicated account manager, and a team to support them. We are available through email, telephone and face to face meetings.

Excellent customer service makes you stand out in the crowd. We will try to do anything and everything that we can to assist our clients, and make sure that they understand what they need to be doing to maximise their position. We don’t advertise, and all business comes from word of mouth, so keeping our clients happy is at the very core of what we do. The annual summer event we hold for clients, and our quarterly breakfast tax briefings around London are popular ways to meet clients, and discuss current events affecting accounting and tax for contractors.

We keep ourselves up to date with the developments, and changes through a number of ways. Lots of listening and reading, attending seminars and conferences, and staying in touch with the relevant professional bodies is key. We are in the process of re-engineering of our online system and software, and we have some very exciting changes and updates coming out in the new tax year.

As we look ahead to the future we are excited about the role technology will play in our sector, and evolving our accounting and tax services for contractors to keep ahead of tax and statutory filing changes. As well as keeping up with the demands our clients place on us from the contractor landscape they operate in. And as the first cloud-based accounting firm to operate in the UK, we intend to keep making tracks and not follow well-trodden paths.

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Book-Keeper of the Year - West Midlands

Norman Bookkeeping & Payroll is a specialist company offering excellence in all aspects of bookkeeping, account management, payroll control, VAT, invoicing and chasing debts, making them essentially an outsourced accounts department, dedicated to providing a professional commitment to day-to-day accounting. Managing Director, Rob Burnell gives an overview on his dynamic and dedicated company.

Company: Norman Bookkeeping & Payroll Ltd Name: Rob Burnell Email: info@normanbookkeeping.co.uk Web Address: www.normanbookkeeping.co.uk Address: 1A Birch House, Birch Lane Business Park, Aldridge, WS9 0NF Telephone: 01922 456105

Norman Bookkeeping & Payroll were established in 2010, to offer a back office accounting solution to small and medium sized businesses both in the West Midlands and nationally.

Our clients are either small or medium sized businesses with a typical turnover of about ÂŁ500k, although we have clients either side of that figure. We deal with a wide range of business sectors from IT consultants to restaurants, from manufacturers to musicians, among others.

Our commitment to client service means building a relationship of trust, offering peace of mind and value for money. To achieve this we ensure that all new clients are listened to and their requirements and problems are thoroughly understood, in order to meet their accounting needs.

Currently one of the biggest problems within the accountancy industry is adapting and keeping pace with new IT technology, such as cloud based accountancy software, mobile phone apps and tablet solutions. Equally, clients expect a more contactable and fast service, in order to meet the challenges of an ever more complex business environment. Norman Bookkeeping & Payroll have invested considerable expense, training and time into meeting these growing challenges. Our staff have excellent and up-to-date knowledge, with training in IT accountancy software and solutions, with the latest cloud technology playing a key part in the expansion of our national services.

Moving forward, there are a number of exciting developments ahead, which will provide us with fresh, new challenges and opportunities. Our business has more than doubled in the last 12 months, with a number of new and exciting clients starting to work with us in the New Year.

The trend is for more and more companies to look at outsourcing their back office and accounts departments to firms like Norman Bookkeeping & Payroll, who have the knowledge and expertise to meet the adapting IT and cloud challenges. Even big accountancy companies like KPMG have moved into our market sector, which will give us the exciting opportunity to compete against one of the industry’s giants.

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Recognised Leader in Business Transformation & Change Management – UK

Steven Swientozielskyj is the CEO of Business Partnering Global LTD, and also has several directorship and Chairmanship roles. We spoke to him to get his insight and advice on business transformation and change management.

Company: Business Partnering Global LTD Name: Steven Swientozielskyj, CEO Address: Apartment 112 153 Great Ancoats Street Manchester Greater Manchester

Across the corporate landscape, organisational activities on both a global and national scale are more volatile, uncertain, complex, and subject to increasing ambiguity. Globally, the accountancy profession will have major challenges going forward. Existing business models are being disrupted with increasing pace in both the private and public sector. With this in mind, how the accountancy profession is going to add proactive support and added value insights will become an increasing challenge.

What will become critical to delivering success is the way in which companies utilise cash optimally, comply with legislation and regulations, speed up activities by cycle time reduction, as well as how they both improve and enhance the customer experience. This is known as the ‘4C Model’, and the real challenge and opportunity is to keep all of these factors optimised within the business model that serve their markets. I personally believe that this is what will generate and sustain success over the long term.

From my experience, applying this model has achieved phenomenal results. It has generated world-class standards, motivated staff to high performance standards and generated millions of pounds in savings in cash flows. To meet the client needs is simple; you start and end with customer service.

At the moment, Business Partnering Global Ltd is now focusing upon dissemination to knowledge, skills and competences globally. Major projects include the 2016 launch of Business Partnering, a practical handbook which will provide an educational platform for learning with our selected partners.

Looking ahead, the opportunities and challenges for the accountancy profession are both simple and difficult, and it is in keeping up with the increasing pace of activities and expectations on both individuals and organisations that is key. In tackling the opportunities and challenges, it is all about disseminating which innovations have been successful and learning from those which have been unsuccessful.

Personally, I have found that there is always a degree of resistance to new ideas and change in our industry.

As such, delivering and sharing practical thought leadership, succinct, successful models, and methods is both a global opportunity and individual challenge.

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Best Book-Keeping Company - London

Boogles Bookkeeping Ltd help people with their bookkeeping (day to day), as well as bookkeeping training on systems such as Quickbooks, Xero, Solibooks and various others. Their clients come from a range of industries including charities, arts organisations, service-based companies such as IT people, mechanics and one man bands starting up working from home. Sometimes they need help with a backlog, and other times they may just need a system setting up, which they can then maintain themselves.

Company: Boogles Bookkeeping Ltd Name: Lisa Newton Email: lisa@booglesltd.com Web Address: www.BooglesLtd.com and www.

WorkAsABookkeeper.com Address: 5th floor, 230 City Road, London EC1V 2TT Telephone: 020 3371 8894 (24 hr)

In an interview with Boogles Bookkeeping Ltd’s Lisa Newton, she reveals the current state of the accountancy industry, the importance of customer service, staying at the cutting edge of new developments and what the future holds for the business.

Please give me your views on the state of the accountancy industry in your region at present. What major challenges does it currently face and what are the major outside influence factors?

I think the accountancy industry is changing as there are more and more smaller companies who may want more help (hand holding), as opposed to established businesses. I think the major challenge is to get people to come forward for help in a timely manner and not at crisis point. There is a lot of opportunity for people to get online help at a fraction of the cost, so this could pose as a major challenge / threat to traditional accountants if they’re just competing on price.

In your view, what attributes should a company in your industry or sector possess in order to become truly successful and be able to provide the best possible service to its clients?

I think you need to be very responsive to customers – make yourself available 24 hours a day – or at least be speedy and get back to people quickly. I think being able to ‘educate’ your clients (and potential clients) in an easy, understandable, jargon-free manner, makes you more approachable and they’re more likely to come to you when they’re in need because they will have some experience of you, and they’ll trust you to know what you’re doing.

Working within such an evolving and dynamic industry, what steps do you take to ensure that your firm remains on the cutting edge of new developments? How do you ensure that you are always best placed to meet your clients’ needs?

We read industry articles and attend networking events and podcasts to hear what others are saying. But most importantly – we’re on the frontline! We talk to our clients, we do surveys and we make ourselves approachable and open to suggestions. We’ve commissioned independent client research in the past, to hear their views and opinions, and if anyone ever does leave, then we do have a client-exit questionnaire, to find out why and what we could do differently. We ask the staff regularly – what would be a really good idea for Boogles to do?

What does the future hold for your business? Are there any specific projects or major developments on the horizon that you would be willing to share with us?

We’ll be doing more training courses on the plethora of accounting software out there on the market. We’ll also be recruiting more partners to join our network and philosophy via the site: www.WorkAsABookkeeper.com because we’ve realised that there are a lot of people out there with the technically competent skills who want to do the work – yet aren’t marketers so struggle with finding the clients. Our solution is pain-free.

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Running on empty and overloaded from that acquisition?

RoseRyan finance pros can power you through it.

Whether you are running on fumes, growing like gangbusters or rapidly expanding with an IPO or acquisition, RoseRyan has the senior finance pros to get you through it. Our award-winning consulting firm based in Silicon Valley has the finance dream team that has helped companies get to the next stage for over 21 years.

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Most Innovative Finance & Accountancy Firm - California & Best XBRL Practice - USA

Based in Silicon Valley, RoseRyan is an award-winning finance and accounting consulting firm that gets you through any acquisition. We deliver specialized firepower exactly when and where it’s needed to companies of all kinds.

Company: RoseRyan Name: Maureen Ryan, Vice President Email: Please contact Maureen Ryan through RoseRyan’s website.

Web Address: www.roseryan.com Address: 35473 Dumbarton Court, Newark, CA 94560 Telephone: 510-456-3056

Recognized for innovation and strong leadership, RoseRyan has worked with more than 700 companies since 1993. We rank among the top accounting firms in our region and are known for our deep level of expertise, in-demand experience and passion for conquering the finance challenges of fast-moving companies.

While we specialize in supplementing teams in the tech and life sciences sectors, we can help companies in any industry overcome a remarkable array of finance transactions and issues throughout their lifecycle. Whatever stage you’re at and whatever milestone you’re approaching, RoseRyan can get you through it.

Powering Silicon Valley and beyond Four key factors drive our success as a finance dream team: • Total flexibility: RoseRyan matches services and talent to clients on the most nimble basis. Clients really appreciate our ability to deliver exactly what they want and need. We also offer highly flexible work arrangements for our senior-level pros, known as our gurus. That means clients get the freshest talent, people who bring their professional and personal best to every engagement.

• A collaborative culture. Our corporate culture is vibrant, heavy on collaboration and teamwork. We carefully defined and set our culture on course six years ago, and have been nurturing it ever since. Today we see many benefits from this strategic differentiator. We have an aligned team made up of friendly gurus with can-do attitudes. They leave their egos at the door.

• Emphasis on innovation. Working out of Silicon Valley, we are naturally all about thinking forward.

We love to dream up new solutions for making the work lives of our gurus easier and easing the burden of our clients’ financial complexities.

• Mighty technical accounting talent. RoseRyan brings a sophisticated, multi-layer approach to our work with clients by giving them access to senior-level, technical accounting talent that helps them navigate the toughest corporate quandaries.

We’re aces in helping companies through complex acquisition deals and the mountains of work during the aftermath. We’ve handled chaos, crushing deadlines, hyper growth, pre- and post-IPOs, the most complex accounting issues, tricky transactions and more.

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RoseRyan is the award winning finance and accounting consulting firm that can get you through the trickiest transactions.

Power through it.

Whether you are starting up, growing like gangbusters or rapidly expanding with an IPO or acquisition, RoseRyan has the senior finance experts to get you through it. Our Silicon Valley finance dream team has helped over 700 companies get to the next stage.