David Tapnack

I’ve been at PwC nearly 20 years, and in that time I’ve worked across consulting, risk assurance, as well as deals. That’s covered a wide range of sectors from industrial products to business and financial services to health.  The has allowed me to develop the ability to take insights from one sector and to see how they might solve a problem in another.

For example, an industry that is challenged by extremely tight margins can offer invaluable insights about margin management to one where margin is less of an issue. Operating models is another area where different sectors can learn a lot from each other.

I am the Chief Operating Officer of one of our Deals business units and I also founded and grew a self-contained business within PwC - Financial Decision & Analysis, which uses state-of-the-art data & analytics to help clients make faster, sharper business decisions.

I firmly believe the successful companies of the future will combine operational and commercial excellence with the ability to exploit deep data. It’s that powerful combination which will create genuine competitive advantage.  

And, as a COO,  I’ve had to make decisions about how best to run the business, from pricing and transforming our operating model, to the range of services, to the targeting of customers in a very challenging and dynamic competitive environment. That’s brought its own insights.

For the last twelve years my main focus has been on serving Global Private Equity houses. That sort of work teaches you the importance of focusing on what really matters. In other words, what’s really driving value, whether that’s profit growth, or cash generation. You then tailor what you do to making that happen, even if that means taking some unorthodox approaches from time to time.

I also invest a lot of time on the personal aspects of the deals I work on – the different priorities of the management team, the CEO, the investors and the stakeholders. That’s important because there will be tough decisions to make, and you need to know what people’s agendas are.

In terms of landmark deals, I worked on Apollo’s acquisition of Alcan Engineered Products from Rio Tinto, for example. That involved orchestrating a large PwC team combining sector know-how, cost reduction, working capital expertise, and skills in operational excellence and transitional service agreements.  

We worked with Apollo through the initial preparation for the transaction, to its execution, to the detailed post-deal work optimising the firm’s people, processes and systems to deliver the best possible value. That included exploring new opportunities to grow the topline and reduce costs, such as a shared services centre, and more streamlined approaches to procurement and production. Apollo said it was the best prepared they’d ever been for any deal.

In my view, getting the right team is the single most important element of a Deal Value Architect’s role – having the experience to pinpoint the most important priorities and allocate resources accordingly. In other words, ‘prioritise and execute’.