Alvarez & Marsal has strengthened its Private Equity Performance Improvement practice with the appointment of Tania Howarth as managing director.
Howarth’s arrival follows that of Jason Spencer, who also joins the practice as a managing director, bringing two decades of significant M&A experience. The latest appointments are indicative of the success of the firm’s European Private Equity Practice, which has seen the team size nearly triple over the past three years.
Howarth has more than 30 years of experience leading business transformation programs across the FMCG and technology sectors. She spent 10 years at Nomad Foods Europe where she served as COO and business transformation director, group hr director and CIO. During this time, she led major carve-outs and post-acquisition integration projects with a focus on delivering significant value creation across the cost base. She also designed and deployed a cultural transformation program to drive performance improvement across the business.
Prior to Nomad Foods, Howarth held the positions of CIO for Europe and Africa at Coca-Cola and CIO for PepsiCo UK. In these roles, she was responsible for change leadership in a number of cross functional business programs. More recently, Howarth has advised global private equity funds on complex carve-outs, including the Unilever Spreads business.
Jason Spencer, who has also joined A&M’s Private Equity Performance Improvement practice as a Managing Director brings more than 25 years of M&A experience in technology-centric roles in both industry management and advisory roles. This includes a spell at SABMiller working on the integration of the Peroni and Grupo Bavaria acquisitions in both Europe and South America.
Mike Trenouth, managing director and co-head of A&M’s European Private Equity Performance Improvement practice said: “Carve-outs are becoming an increasingly key focus with our private equity clients as large corporates seek to offload non-core assets which require complex separation and contain high value creation potential as stand-alone businesses.
Tania’s unrivalled experience will be of great value to our private equity clients. She joins our private equity practice at an exciting time, with Jason Spencer having recently come on board to support clients with the technology aspects of transformation.”
