Engagement
Having known the Vista team well and also Akber, the Chief Strategy Officer at Finastra for some time, they knew that we are specialists in the corporate development space and came straight to us for their hiring needs in this area.
The Company
Formed in 2017 by the merger of Misys and D+H, Finastra provides the broadest portfolio of financial services software in the world today - spanning corporate banking, retail banking, investment management, managed services, and treasury and capital markets. Today, 48 of the world’s top 50 banks use Finastra technology. They are backed by Vista Equity Partners an American private equity firm specialising in software, data, & technology.
Situation
Backed by Vista, a buy-&-build strategy was implemented to grow the business. In order to do this, a best practice M&A team would be needed to carry this out. Akber came to us to hire for the Head of M&A position to drive both deal origination and deal execution.
Solution
Due to the sector in which Finastra sits, Akber made it very clear that relevant sector deal experience would be the most important factor in finding this person. Using our knowledge of strengths on advisory firms, we turned our attention to the boutique banks where there are many that are technology specific. We mapped the market and provided a shortlist of candidates in a short space of time.
By meeting each candidate, we discussed in great detail the deals they had been involved with and the relevance. Another key factor was to find a dynamic and commercial individual who could not only build relationships internally, but with key figures at Vista Equity. After four rounds of interviews, including online tests, we successfully placed a IBD Director from a boutique tech bank who had extensive sector deal experience. We have since placed two more M&A and strategy roles into this team in an ongoing project.
