Associate , Private Equity Performance Improvement

Job Title : Associate, PEPI

Location: Madrid

Department: Private Equity Performance Improvement (PEPI)

Alvarez and Marsal’s dedicated PEPI professionals work with Investors and their portfolio companies to provide independent analysis and end-to-end services across the investment life cycle to deliver results regardless of the economic cycle.

Through our PEPI practice, Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) offers assistance to private equity-owned portfolio companies working directly with company management. A&M's involvement reassures all stakeholders the company is taking important steps to address its problems & maximize its value.

Purpose of the role:
Alvarez & Marsal’s Private Equity Performance Improvement (PEPI) business is rapidly growing its high-performance European team. To continue our success and to support our ambitious growth plans for the future, we are currently looking for an Associate to join our Madrid team in Spain.

This is a fantastic opportunity for you to use your outstanding financial acumen, operational capabilities and problem-solving skills to become an integral part of our successful ‘hands-on’ team. As a valued member of the A&M Pan-European PEPI team based in Madrid, you will be working on high-impact projects throughout Europe and across the entire private equity life cycle, from pre-acquisition support (operational due diligence, carve-out, merger integration), to transformation, performance improvement and operational turnaround/restructuring, through to supporting the exit.

As an Associate, you will be working closely with Senior Directors and Managing Directors in a flat team structure. You will likely lead key work streams and benefit from constant exposure to the senior members of the team and client, and gain ‘on-the-job’ learning and development, leveraging on their substantial experience. As well as validating and executing on operations-focused problem solving and transformation activities on our clients’ projects & portfolio companies. You will also have the chance to contribute to business development activities, discuss and suggest the development of innovative offerings for our market and considerably nurture and enlarge your professional network as well.

**Responsibilities**:

- Be an active part of the teams supporting private equity firms and their portfolio companies in their pre-acquisition and performance improvement activities;
- Analyze historical company performance to identify key trends and red flags; including financial metrics (P&L, CFS, BS), operational metrics and analysing heavy data sets using pivot tables;
- Perform benchmarking of financial and operational metrics to identify areas of potential underperformance;
- Identify and validate performance improvement initiatives; create implementation plans and lead implementation of initiatives alongside company management;
- Synthesizing information after research and analysis into high-quality client (financial) reports and recommendations;
- Managing important workstreams, including leading/mentoring junior A&M and client staff & owning key business processes to solve client problems;
- Leading meetings with senior PE clients, portfolio company clients and other third parties regarding your workstreams and areas of focus;
- Leading pitch preparation alongside Managing Directors and other senior staff as well as assist in pitches and contributing to business development & marketing activities;
- Producing extensive financial and/or operational modeling analysis e.g. cash flow models & projections;
- Read financial statements and derive immediate conclusions from it (mainly P&L and cash flow statement) whilst linking to operations;
- Identifying resource needs and milestones to project manage & accomplish assigned work by agreed deadlines;
- Begin building your own network of contacts/referral sources with professionals/institutions.

**Requirements**:
Essential:

- A high-grade bachelor’s degree (or equivalent/higher) from an accredited top-tier university in engineering, business, or a similar discipline;
- Proven experience within a leading strategy/operational Consulting house is preferable. If not, we require experience from either within Private Equity, Corporate Finance or Operations;
- Strong problem-solving skills and financial background combined with a deep understanding of key business and operational drivers;
- Excellent analytical, financial modeling, writing and presentation-building skills; attention to details and striving to produce zero-defect deliverables;
- Fact-based and analytical approach, solution-focused, action-oriented, determined to make a difference and not afraid to challenge the status-quo; self-starter with entrepreneurial flair;
- Familiarity with the private equity lifecycle;
- Ability to prioritize - especially in highly pressured situations;
- High integrity, characterized by the ability to deliver difficult messages;
- Excel modeling skills - structure