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Case Study

Executing a Services Carve-Out and Standing Up the Finance Function

Team Size
1 Managing Director, 1 Director, 1 Vice President
Project Duration
6 months

The Situation

A sponsor was pursuing the acquisition of a $250 million global services business through service offerings in the  U.S., Canada, and the U.K. The Company was to be divested from a $6.5 billion public company, but had cumbersome, inefficient back office processes. The Company was stood up as a “greenfield” company and required significant lifts to stand up global banking & treasury, finance operations, payroll, and internal/external reporting. Accordion was engaged to support the carve-out planning and execution in order to develop and establish the Company’s standalone finance & accounting function.

Services

Carve-Out Planning & Execution

Finance Function Assessment & Design

13-Week Cash Flow Forecasting

The Execution

Diligence

  • Standalone Costs Model: Reviewed seller’s pro-forma standalone overhead costs for G&A and developed a model of standalone run-rate costs & one-time carve-out costs.
  • Transition Services Agreement: Supported the Sponsor through numerous iterations of the TSA, including seller negotiations, and operationalization of the TSA through new transitional processes between the Company and seller.
  • Finance & Accounting: Developed an organization model for the Company’s F&A function by conducting a Q&A with seller’s F&A leads to understand various processes.

Post-Signing & Close

  • Cash Management: Developed and maintained a 13-week, monthly, and daily cash flow forecast to closely monitor cash and debt globally and managed lender covenants and testing.
  • Reporting: Provided FP&A surge support for Management, Board, and Lender reporting
  • TSA Operationalization: Implemented new TSA finance processes between the Company and seller and developed and ran the finance function and critical cash in/out processes.
  • Banking & Treasury: Executed projects to open new standalone bank accounts, transition acquired accounts, and implement lockbox and other treasury products.
  • Shared Service Center in India: Played a leadership role to develop the strategy and execute setup and hiring of a 250+ employee shared service center in Chandigarh for offshore finance & accounting, IT software development, and operations functions.
  • Audit and Tax: Led the Company through its first audit, tax filings, purchase accounting, and balance sheet conversion to move offline financials into the new ERP system.
  • Accounting: Developed and validated accounting policies for the standalone Company.
  • Annual Budget: Supported the CFO through the first standalone budget process.

The Results

Our Accordion team was critical to the carve-out planning and execution for Day 1 (closing) and Day 2 (exiting the TSA and all support from Seller), particularly through hands-on leadership for cash management, global banking stand-up, offshore shared service strategy and execution, and the first year’s audit. We continue to support the Sponsor and Company with value creation initiatives, liquidity, covenant, & daily cash management, and leadership of the Finance & Accounting stand-up.