A selection of recent buy-side M&A, diligence, integration, and value-creation work. Current and confidential clients are anonymized. Estimated figures are labeled as such.
Managed sourcing and screening, built and stress-tested transaction models, and coordinated legal, finance, tax, and operating diligence across a live pipeline. Supported purchase-agreement negotiations and established post-close workplans and governance that gave each deal an owner and a plan on day one. Five acquisitions ranging from $5M to $100M of enterprise value closed over roughly two years, and the sponsor renewed the engagement five times.
Led a 40-person cross-functional team, built and reviewed the transaction analysis, coordinated diligence, and negotiated underperformance provisions. Presented the transaction and its risks to senior leadership and the board. The deal completed at roughly $800M, with approximately $45M of purchase-price protection tied to target performance.
Built a standardized pre-LOI underwriting process applied across 30+ RIA and accounting-firm target evaluations. Each one reconciled seller data, normalized partner compensation and earnings, assessed revenue quality and client concentration, and translated the findings into valuation, consideration, and contingent-payment recommendations. The output let a serial acquirer underwrite targets in parallel to one standard.
Reconstructed market share from project-award data rather than relying on installed-base claims, tested switching costs and customer behavior through expert interviews, normalized historical performance, and mapped buyer-specific commercial synergies. Delivered a board-ready commercial case, a normalized earnings bridge, a synergy assessment, and a prioritized diligence agenda that separated structural risk from timing effects.
Designed and fielded customer research using conjoint, Van Westendorp, and Gabor-Granger methods, then translated willingness-to-pay findings into revenue and margin scenarios. Cross-checked the survey evidence against transaction and invoice data. The roughly 8% of pricing headroom became a core underwriting assumption and helped move the target from pass to close.
Discounts ranged from 10% to 70% with limited governance, average discounts ran near three times the sector norm, and core products were priced below market. Steven combined usage telemetry with invoice data, built price waterfalls, and simplified more than 50 SKU configurations into three tiers, then set discount guardrails and a 12-month rollout plan for communications and migration.
An operator with more than 15 properties lacked a central PMO, consistent executive reporting, and clear ownership of savings initiatives. Steven established a six-workstream PMO, created weekly steering committees and issue escalation, and consolidated executive and board reporting, then quantified roughly $7M of annualized labor savings across operating-model, workforce-management, and technology workstreams. The governance and reporting cadence was built to keep running after the engagement.
Mapped 18 investment and portfolio workflows, identified approximately $5M to $8M of savings opportunities, and redesigned the quarterly reporting process from roughly two weeks to three days while retaining source traceability and human review. The figure reflects identified savings opportunities rather than realized savings.
Analyzed approximately 126,000 support tickets across 96 support groups and 20 cost centers, normalized an inconsistent ticket taxonomy, and isolated performance variation. More than 99% of work fit roughly 27 common categories, and comparable work showed 14x to 71x variation in resolution time. The analysis defined the data and governance changes required before the technology migration could deliver.
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