Kantar Group

WPP plc division, Carve-out, Bain Capital

Consultant, Finance Crave-out and Transformation

Kantar is a global data, insights and consulting companies, with over 30,000 employees in more than 75 countries.  

Victoria was brought in to quickly "stand up" the Group Finance function of the newly carved out business of Kantar Group and to take on the management of the advisers that had been brought in to support the carve-out.  The incumbent CFO was an experienced divisional CFO, but had no private equity experience, or of managing the broader finance remit (tax, treasury, legal etc) in this environment.

Key highlights

• Stood up a team of interims and transitioned to permanent staff, for tax, legal, accounting and consolidation, and treasury, for a business with >$5bn revenue and >$500m EBITDA
• Managed the closing process (multiple closes) and associated material restructuring including negotiating with the seller in respect of leakage and cost bearing
• Implemented a cash culture in a business which had previously no focus on cash.  This included implementing direct cashflow forecasting and driving working capital improvement programmes delivering a $250m y-o-y improvement over 9 months 
• Drove the year end close/ audit for the first year post close, with a particular focus on the PPA
• Supported liquidity planning as the CV19 pandemic took hold, taking point with the new shareholders
• Executed the first upstream USD loan out of the Phillipines following a change in regulation