ATTRIBUTES:

• A thirty-year career in industry analysis, international corporate finance and investment covering both private sector and government sectors.
• Obtained a First class honours degree in Commerce from Melbourne University and after brief period in economic history research joined the Federal government where he was involved in industry studies in the Industries Assistance Commission and Treasury.
• A lateral and creative  thinker, and likes counter-factual analysis.
• Believes good results only come out of thorough understanding and excellent research, and in business,  an understanding of personalities.
•  He helps clients “see the obvious”, which often requires simplifying what seem to be complex problems.
• As a fluent French speaker, he has an intimate understanding of the cultural differences in doing business in Europe  and has developed good networks particularly in the UK, France and Italy.
  

 ACHIEVEMENTS:  

• Started corporate finance with Schroders in Sydney where he was involved in investment analysis, mergers and acquisitions advice and valuations.
• He was involved with private equity with Schroder Ventures, and worked in corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions at Wertheim Schroder in New York, then in Paris with Credit Agricole.
• Worked for two years as Investment Commissioner for Austrade in Paris advising French companies on investing in Australia.
• Made a specialty of advising French and Australian companies wishing to enter the respective markets. Some of his firsts include introducing CSR to the acquisition of Rinker Materials in Florida ( CSR was subsequently renamed Rinker)  and in Paris introducing  Nufarm to the acquisition of CFPI in Paris, the first stock exchange takeover by an Australian company in France.
• Has provided numerous valuations, negotiated numerous acquisition and capital raising transactions. He  has no particular sector preference but is led by opportunities and these days finds them mostly in agribusiness, mining and new technologies.
• He joined Arlington Capital Investors, a mid-cap activist European private fund manager in London as a Director and Head of Research where the task was to discover under-managed or badly-managed listed companies and design programmes  to improve their profitability and valuation. He left Arlington to set up a long/short mid-cap European hedge fund, but after eighteen month as someone with a longer-term, strategic view decided to go back to corporate strategic and financial advice, and fund raisings. He still does this today, with an emphasis on smaller companies.
• He  recently spent two years living in Venice managing a project which he created with a French client. He speaks Italian and French and lives, as he has done for twenty years, near the “ville rose” (Toulouse)

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