Assistant Director, M&A Analytics at Ernst & Young (EY)

The opportunity

At EY-Parthenon, our unique combination of transformative strategy, transactions, tax and corporate finance delivers real-world value – solutions that work in practice, not just on paper. Benefiting from EY’s full spectrum of services, we’ve reimagined strategic consulting to work in a world of increasing complexity. With deep functional and sector expertise, paired with innovative AI-powered technology and an investor mindset, we partner with CEOs, boards, private equity and governments every step of the way. Join the fastest growing and most innovative deal analytics team in the UK.

We are disrupting the traditional financial due diligence model through our use of data analytics and advanced technology tools. We help our clients through the process of acquiring or divesting assets to meet their strategic goals. As we work across multiple sectors and regions, the nature of our work often provides the opportunity to work on complex assignments that involve working with colleagues across a variety of disciplines, countries and service lines.

Our core work is during the exciting and high speed financial due diligence phase of an M&A process. Using data and analytics in due diligence to assess the target company’s financial performance and business projections, we can identify opportunities and risks that will have an impact on the final value of the asset. We have to clearly communicate our findings to our clients, their banks and their investors. The Transaction Analytics team are integrated with and work alongside the core due diligence teams to provide additional deeper insights and challenge value drivers with innovative solutions and advanced digital capabilities.

Companies are collecting more data with a plethora of sources beyond standard financial accounts including everything from geolocation data to social media posts. Our expertise and challenge is to use data analytics at speed in due diligence to identify and understand trends that would otherwise be hidden!

Your key responsibilities

Given the speed of deals, you will be working across multiple projects alongside experienced financial due diligence (FDD) professionals. You will have the opportunity to continue to develop your skills to perform financial due diligence alongside technical training in a range of situations and sectors.  When working on projects you will almost always be working as part of a wider cross service line team with the growing opportunity to reach out to other teams in the commercial and strategy divisions

In your role as a Assistant Director you will have responsibility for understanding the key business drivers, co-developing our approach with the client, agreeing value measurements with the client, providing value to the client through insights, factual conclusions and advice. You will project manage teams and work closely with all members as well as forming strong internal links within Transaction Diligence and other departments in EY both in the UK and internationally to form multi-disciplinary teams. You will gather, verify and assess information to formulate views as well as plan, prepare and review deliverables in various forms including written reports, presentations and discussions with the client. In addition, you will:

• Plan and monitor the progress of the team
• Share your technical and other knowledge with your team and the department
• Build on and develop internal and external networks through personal contacts
• Understand the capabilities of the firm and look for opportunities to sell additional services to our clients
• Play a role in business plan initiatives (e.g. key accounts, recruitment, client service framework)
• Being a true business advisor to the client and establish yourself as a key client contact

Our clients are typically Private Equity and corporates of varying sizes, up to FTSE100. As we continue to grow the team you will have the opportunity to build out your own client relationships and internal networks to share knowledge or build a sector-specific profile

We heavily encourage continued learning and constant innovation so our business tomorrow will be a revolution of our business today

Skills and attributes for success

• Financial and Commercial acumen to understand our client’s challenge
• Be able to gather, verify and assess information to formulate conclusions
• The ability to analyse at pace and know where to focus attention
• Strong attention to detail with a logical and methodical approach
• Demonstrable experience in planning, preparing and reviewing deliverables in various forms including visualisations, written reports, presentations and discussions with the client
• Team working and communication skills
• Ability to communicate key messages to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Attention to business development both with clients and in innovation
• Individuals who are innovative, entrepreneurial and eager to learn.

To qualify for the role, you must have

• Strong commercial experience and/or relevant industry or transaction experience (including financial due diligence experience).
• Understanding of data manipulation and integration analytic tools (e.g. Alteryx, SQL, Excel)
• Excitement to learn and share knowledge through the training of others.
• A passion to provide high quality service to your clients.
• Experience of coaching and mentoring team members
• Extensive experience of Stakeholder and client communication

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Have an ACA, ACCA or equivalent qualification
• Experience with data visualisation tools (e.g. PowerBI, Tableau)
• Experience in advanced analytics languages (Python, SQL, R)
• Experience of leading teams and working in a high paced transaction environment with a solid understanding of how Analytics can bring value throughout the transaction life cycle.
• Be an effective time manager, able to keep calm when under pressure to meet deadlines
• Be a team player with the ability to build effective relationships at all levels