After experiencing record growth in 2011, Alvarez & Marsal continues to expand its global Private Equity Services practice with the addition of Managing Director James Ilaria in Washington, D.C.; Senior Director Matthew Miller in Philadelphia; and Senior Director Jeff Shaffer in Los Angeles.
“As we continue to enhance our private equity service offerings, we are bringing in new professionals whose deep operational, functional and industry expertise will help in driving value for our clients at all stages of the investment lifecycle,” said Nick Alvarez, managing director of A&M’s Private Equity Services Operations Group. “Jim, Matt, and Jeff each bring unique backgrounds and qualifications across numerous industry verticals that will be essential as demand for our services in operational and commercial due diligence and post acquisition performance improvement continues to increase around the globe.”
Having worked as an interim CEO and operating partner at Allied Capital, Mr. Ilaria focuses on performance improvement for mid-market private equity-backed companies. He specializes in commercial due diligence, value-creation planning, market assessment, growth platform development and cost reduction. He received his bachelor of sciences degree in chemical engineering from Rutgers College of Engineering and his MBA in marketing and finance from Columbia Business School.
With more than 30 years of operational, accounting and finance, technology, and executive leadership experience both domestically and abroad, Mr. Miller brings extensive profit and loss and CEO, CFO, COO, and CIO experience in middle market and large organizations. He has worked directly with private equity firms to provide due diligence, merger/integration, operational improvement and interim management services, and will focus on providing operational and accounting and finance improvement services to A&M clients. Prior to joining A&M he was a partner and managing director at MM Dillon & Company, where he assisted middle-market growth clients in the energy, healthcare and technology industries on the transaction side. Throughout his career, he worked in a number of industries, including energy, manufacturing, assembly, warehousing, distribution, logistics, and transportation. Mr. Miller holds a bachelor of sciences degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a MBA in Finance from the Katz Graduate school of Business, University of Pittsburgh.
Mr. Shaffer brings more than 16 years of IT and operational strategy and execution experience, primarily concentrating on due diligence, post-merger integration, carve-out planning and execution, IT strategy, systems integration and interim management. In his new position as senior director, he will lead diligence projects and IT assessments for private equity firms. Previously, he spent 14 years at Crowe Horwath, most recently as the practice leader for its IT Advisory Group in Chicago and Los Angeles. In this role, he developed a number of service offerings, including a global IT roadmap offering and established the current IT diligence offering. Prior to this assignment, he acted as interim CIO leading an eight-week carve-out and stand-up of an international chemical company, including establishing a working SAP environment, global telecommunication infrastructure, establishing co-location contracts and procuring new hardware to support day one operations. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in education from the University of Iowa.
The private equity services group of Alvarez & Marsal provides due diligence/acquisition support, performance improvement and business advisory services, portfolio management, turnaround management and exit support. The group has more than 150 professionals and has offices in New York, NY and Chicago, IL (www.alvarezandmarsal.com).
