Registration and Breakfast
Speed Networking
Opening Panel: Deal flow and market trends
Cheap financing and a flurry of mega deals could be a precursor to turbulent times, as seen in 2007; this panel will evaluate where we are in the cycle to inform future impact on deal flow. Speakers will also discuss political situations across Europe and consolidation trends.
- Where are we in the cycle? Is now the right time to sell?
- European protectionism and the ongoing impact of Brexit
- Transformational M&A: Understanding the deal landscape in the aftermath of mega-deals
- Which sectors are ripe for consolidation?
- What is the outlook for Asia linked M&A?
Insight into successful deal making and new frameworks for business
This panel discussion explores the decision-making processes of organisations and strategies used to execute M&A deals with success.
- New business models:
- What are the benefits and risk for corporates that pursue the private equity model
- When to use JV and tightly bound partnerships instead of M&A
- Insight into successful cross-border deal transactions
- Acquiring start-ups: How to find the right one? How do you scale up and what to consider in the process and business model?
Networking Break
Presentation: CMS Deal Terms
CMS will highlight the key developments within sale and purchase agreements from the past 12 months, trends in deal structures and how deal terms compare between different European regions and the USA.
Panel discussion: Risky business
- Understanding the impact of GDPR throughout the M&A process:
- What effect can it have on realising synergy, how will it affect your business on an operational level and how do you factor this into your business
- plan?
- Discussions should you have with targets to mitigate risk?
- How companies are managing their acquired but not integrated companies?
- How are multinationals dealing with this?
- How can insurance help deal risk? What does it cover? Examples of how organisations have used insurance to cover themselves
Presentation: Abandoned Acquisitions – why do some deals fail to complete?
- Why are some deals more likely than others to fail?
- What factors are significant predictors of deal failure?
- What can acquirers and targets do to increase the likelihood of successful deal completion?
This presentation, based on a 25-year study of over 78,500 worldwide M&A transactions by the M&A Research Centre at London’s Cass Business School and Intralinks, seeks to answer these questions, providing insights, advice and sometimes counterintuitive conclusions.
Networking Lunch
Panel discussion: Decisions in Divestments
- Understanding spin off trends across Europe
- Spin off’s as a strategy to manage debt
- De-conglomerisation as a corporate strategy
- Activist pressure as a trigger
- The process behind identifying opportunities through spin offs and appropriate timing and understanding the value of your portfolio
- What are the best practises to prepare your businesses for a spin-off and understanding how to best manage the process?
- What are the best ways to leverage your IP and royalties stream?
- Understanding tax complexities involved in the process
- Cases of a successful spin off
Tech talks: Incorporating innovation and new technologies into the M&A processes
- How are companies using new technologies to shape M&A due diligence?
- What are the best ways to determine the value added? And how do you monetise these technologies?
- Bloc-chain in action
- Understanding the changing roles of the workforce as a consequence of new technology and what do you need to plan for?
Networking Drinks
Catherine Ford
Editor-at-Large
Acuris
Catherine Ford is the Editor-at-Large for the events division of Acuris. She is a consultant editor to event programmes, and engaged in the development of timely editorial content for global corporate finance, M&A and capital markets related conferences and events. She routinely moderates discussion panels at conferences across the region. She has worked for ACuris since early 2002, holding a number of senior editorial roles in the company’s European, US and Asia-Pacific head offices.
Tobias Koester
Managing Director
Goldman Sachs
Tobias covers financial sponsors for Goldman Sachs in Europe and is also responsible for our sponsor business in the German-speaking region. In addition, Tobias leads the execution of mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, debt finance and restructuring projects for financial sponsor clients in selected situations. Before his current role, Tobias was responsible for the German Leveraged Finance business. He currently works in the London office and was previously in New York and Frankfurt. Tobias was named managing director in 2008. He earned a pre-diploma in economics from the University of Freiburg and a licentia rerum oeconomicus from the University of Basel.
Alessandra Castelli
Editor
Dealreporter
Alessandra leads the European operation of Dealreporter. She has been in financial journalism for over 10 years having covered large scale of M&A deals across different sectors and regions.
Prior to this post, Alessandra was deputy editor for Dealreporter Europe and Head of Italian coverage where she coordinated all coverage on the market.
Alessandra's team provides intelligence for the equity and fixed income markets that is tailored to hedge funds, proprietary trading desks, security lending, ECM syndicate desks and institutional fund managers.
Norman R. Rafael
Chief Corporate Development & Investor Relations Officer
Armacell International
Norman R. Rafael has been Vice President Corporate Development at Armacell since July 2015. He joined Armacell on 1 September 2014 and has more than 18 years of professional experience. Previously, Norman held senior positions within investment banking and capital markets at UBS, Credit Suisse and a German private bank.
Lori Vokes
Director of Global Sales Acquisition Integration
Cisco
Lori Vokes is the Sr Director of Sales Acquisition Integration. She leads the integration of all sales capabilities of Cisco acquisitions from early due diligence and go-to-market strategy through to full integration. The vision and objective is to position acquisitions to drive growth and capture market transitions for Cisco.
During Lori’s 13 year career at Cisco she has a number of positions both in Sales and Strategy and Planning. Lori was the Director for the British Telecom account leading the partnering business globally. BT is a significant partnership for Cisco covering all geographies, market segments and technologies. Delivering over $650M in revenue, it is one of the largest partners in Europe and Globally. To expand her background into the Consumer space, Lori also held the role of Operations Director for Linksys Service Provider where she was responsible for establishing the foundation to build and scale this business from $99M to over $400M in 3 years by selling Consumer and Small Business solutions through targeted SPs worldwide. Lori also spent many years as a Director of Strategy and Planning for Cisco’s European Markets, where she led the development, implementation, and measurement of Europe’s long range plan. Her key focus areas were organizational alignment, sales readiness and accelerating the time to market of strategic initiatives. In this capacity she led a core and virtual team, and incorporated all aspects of the business including countries, customer segments, marketing, operations, and technology and services. Some key strategic projects she led were Scientific Atlanta integration, start-up of the Emerging Markets theatre and development of the EMEA Vertical Go-to-Market model. Lori was also a member of Cisco’s Worldwide Sales Strategy and Planning team.
Prior to Cisco Lori was a management consultant with a Canadian consulting firm, Turnkey Management Consulting, leading and growing the Cisco EMEA account. She was also part of the leadership team that started up and took Group Telecom public when the Canadian telecommunications market deregulated. Throughout her career she has worked with various industries including oil and gas, manufacturing, airline, transportation, automotive, consumer goods, and medical technologies.
Lori has a Masters of Arts from Royal Roads University, Canada where she focused on Leadership and Growth in High Tech. She also has a Bachelor’s degree from the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies from Queen’s University, Canada.
Catherine Ford
Editor-at-Large
Acuris
Catherine Ford is the Editor-at-Large for the events division of Acuris. She is a consultant editor to event programmes, and engaged in the development of timely editorial content for global corporate finance, M&A and capital markets related conferences and events. She routinely moderates discussion panels at conferences across the region. She has worked for ACuris since early 2002, holding a number of senior editorial roles in the company’s European, US and Asia-Pacific head offices.
Emilio Zito
Head of M&A and Special Projects
EDF Energy
Emilio Zito is the Head of M&A at EDF Energy, based in London. He joined the UK company in 2011 and since he led, structured and executed a wide range of greenfield and brownfield transactions across the energy chain and related infrastructure.
Emilio started his career as an investment banker in London 14 years ago, covering natural resources, energy and power sectors. In 2008, Emilio joined the EDF Group's M&A & Investment team in Paris where he worked for more than three years on several French and cross-border transactions.
Originally from Milan, Emilio holds a MSc in General Management and in Business Administration from Milan Bocconi University and HEC Paris, respectively. He also graduated from the University of California San Diego where he gained a Graduate Certificate in Corporate Finance.
Emilio is an Italian native speaker, speaks fluent English and French, and basic Chinese Mandarin.
Philip Whitchelo
Vice President, Strategy & Business Development
Intralinks
Philip is responsible for the product, sales and marketing strategy of Intralinks’ Strategic Financials business. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the M&A Research Centre at Cass Business School, City, University of London. Prior to joining Intralinks in 2010, he worked for 17 years as an M&A investment banker and in management consulting. He began his career at Deloitte in London in the financial services practice and then worked at NatWest Markets Corporate Finance, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and in corporate development for The Rank Group Plc, as well as founding an M&A consulting firm. Philip holds postgraduate degrees in Finance and Computer Science and a BA in Linguistics, from the University of London.
Phil Dunne
Head UKI
Head of EY-Parthenon
Phil Dunne leads EY-Parthenon in UKI. He has more than 25 years of industry and consulting experience. Phil and his team provide a full range of transaction strategy support, including growth and market entry strategy, target identification, commercial due diligence, merger planning and integration, and post-acquisition synergy capture for both private equity and industrial clients. Prior to joining EY, Phil was A.T. Kearney’s UK Managing Partner and head of the M&A Practice, with global responsibility for Kearney’s Merger Integration proposition. He has extensive international experience working with clients in India, China, and North America as well as in Europe.
Adam Rosenberg
Partner and M&A Leader for Europe
Mercer
Adam is the M&A Leader for Mercer in Europe. He is an Actuary and consultant and works from both the London and Manchester offices in the UK. His main focus of work is advising private equity and corporate clients on all people related aspects of buying and selling businesses. Many of the acquisitions he has worked on have been large international deals and he is involved in project managing such assignments working with Mercer colleagues from around the world and also working directly with clients. He also has significant experience of advising on UK only deals.
Adam initially joined Mercer in 1995 where he worked on UK actuarial retirement issues. He then worked for the pensions department of a major accountancy firm for around 2 years before re-joining Mercer; during his time with the accountancy firm he worked alongside the corporate finance team providing benefit related advice. He is also a member of the Private Equity, Mergers andAcquisitions (or PEMA) team.
Adam holds a degree in Mathematics from Leeds University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries. Adam also holds a Diploma in International Employee Benefits.
Catherine Ford
Editor-at-Large
Acuris
Catherine Ford is the Editor-at-Large for the events division of Acuris. She is a consultant editor to event programmes, and engaged in the development of timely editorial content for global corporate finance, M&A and capital markets related conferences and events. She routinely moderates discussion panels at conferences across the region. She has worked for ACuris since early 2002, holding a number of senior editorial roles in the company’s European, US and Asia-Pacific head offices.