Acuity Knowledge Partners - Delivery Manager - Strategy Research & Analysis

Opportunity:

- This is for the position of a Delivery Manager in the Private Equity & Consulting division, one of the fastest-growing segments within the firm. The position will report to Assistant Director, Private Equity & Consulting

- It will offer the opportunity to work with leading global private equity funds and corporations. The role provides good exposure to various aspects of the private equity industry.

- Typical engagements would involve (but not be limited to) the following:

- Client Management: Understanding project request, discuss project, negotiate deadline, handling client queries

- Company Profiles / Industry analysis and dashboards: Company profiles, Deep dive industry studies on focus sectors, periodic monitoring of key industry drivers and performance indicators for specific industries

- Financial modelling: Investment valuation using appropriate methodology (comparable valuation analysis, DCF etc.). Supporting clients on detailed financial models including market sizing, DCF analysis, M&A and LBO models

- Due diligence: Analyze PE Funds track record. Calculating fund multiples and IRRs using cash flows and performing various fund analytics such as attribution and value creation analysis

- Target screening & Analysis: Identification and analysis of potential targets through analysis of markets, products, services and financial synergies

- Peer group benchmarking & competition landscaping: Identifying players operating in relevant industry, mapping them by geographies, sector or other parameters, benchmarking shortlisted players on various KPIs

- Investment opportunity identification: Identifying emerging and high-growth sectors for investment assessment through market analysis such as market size, historical and projected growth rates, emerging market trends, key drivers, etc.

- M&A and strategic analysis: Identification and analysis of potential targets through analysis of markets, products, services and financial synergies

- Analyzing investment themes / strategies: Evaluating attractiveness of the overall sector / geography / company focused investment themes and strategies of the fund

- Investment Memorandum: Creation of Investment memorandums, identifying key investment highlights & concerns, market opportunity, financial analysis, product analysis, arriving at potential valuation of the target company, return & sensitivity analysis

- Portfolio company monitoring: Periodic tracking of business and financial performance indicators of portfolio companies and benchmarking those with their peer group for timely identification of upside and / or downside triggers

- Project Management: Project structuring, planning, conceptualizing output, leading a team of 2-3 analysts, reviewing team's work, signing-off before delivery

Responsibilities:

- Project Management:

- Understand client requirement, scope projects, manage end-to-end execution and delivery (work allocation, research, analysis, quality control, delivery)

- Translate client objectives into clear deliverables with associated priorities and constraints; Brainstorm creative approaches, drafting strategic frameworks, manage project capacity and decide on assignment timelines

- Experienced in all types of secondary research (databases, statistics and ministry/ industry/ association websites), as well as, general research (company websites, SEC Filings, research reports, news articles etc.) and primary research involving discussions with industry players/ stakeholders

- Handle multiple work streams, as required

- Take complete ownership of all quality related aspects

- People Management

- Lead projects independently and guide a team of analysts and associates in daily tasks to ensure that the work is on course to meet clients- objectives

- Manage team morale to be able to navigate through pressure situations

- Provide effective, on-time and objective feedback to team members and be involved in their overall grooming and development

- Client Management:

- Manage and maintain client relationships - would include regular interaction with client(s) to strengthen the relationship and identify opportunities to act as a solutions provider

Qualifications/ Required Background:

- CFA/ MBA from Reputed institution

- More than 6 years of experience in strategy research and analysis, preferably across industries

- Excellent at using MS PowerPoint; command over MS Excel to process varied data sets in spreadsheets (Pivots, charting etc.) is highly desirable

- At least 2 years of experience in managing a team, as well as, directly communicating with clients. Experience in managing client communications solo will be considered an added advantage

- Experience in handling projects independently

- Experience working across databases such as Capital IQ, Factset, Preqin etc.

- Strong written and verbal communication skills

- Ability to work effectively under tight deadlines

- Superior problem solving abilities and strong analytical thinking to seek the why, how and so-what of a problem statement and ability to think multiple/alternative solutions to a given problem. Adept at synthesizing information to generate insights