Corporate Development (M&A) Lead - French speaker

Native or fluent to native standard, French speaker, with Investment Banking experience to join a French technology services business , to be based in London.

The opportunity:

Join a senior, high performing and highly active Corporate Development team with a long track record of successful buy and build value creation. In addition to your French language fluency you will need to be equally high performing, diligent, conscientious and committed. Performing well in the team could see you invited into the equity pool after 12 months or so (not on day one).

Location: London

The company:

Confidential - the company is a large well respected group operating a diverse but complimentary set of multi-media services and SaaS solutions and acquires complimentary businesses across the technology, software, data platform and B2B media sphere.

The role:

The strategy for the group is to create value through M&A and therefore the Corporate Development team is central to the businesses strategy. The team is seeking to add a new member to the team to initially support and eventually take responsibility for all aspects of M&A deals, from origination through execution and integration.

Your responsibilities will include:

• With the rest of the team, you will take a lead role in M&A strategy and development of a clear and consistent framework for assessing potential acquisition opportunities.
• Working with the Executive Chairman, CEO, CFO, Head of Corporate Development and other senior stakeholders to develop and maintain an acquisition pipeline.
• Assess acquisition targets including working with stakeholders to understand risks and opportunities, development of valuations and underlying methodology and propose deal structures.
• Work with colleagues to develop financial models to form a view of the business performance and returns.
• Lead financial diligence of a transaction where deal size does not warrant third party adviser support.
• Facilitate and project-manage other internal and external Due Diligence (Financial Legal, Commercial, Tech, People, Operations).
• Build strong relationships with target companies, with internal stakeholders and contributors, and external advisors such as lawyers, bankers, and investors.
• Prepare high quality papers/presentations to allow the CEO to understand the strategic rationale, financial appraisal and diligence conclusions of an acquisition.
• Facilitate the development of integration plans for new acquisitions.

Requirements:

• You should come from an Investment Banking background to VP level. This can be also in addition to other prior experience in a related field.
• Native, or fully fluent French speaker
• Excellent analytical and technical skills and understanding of M&A concepts with strong commercial acumen.
• Ability to create financial models and good understanding of valuation methodologies.
• Confidence dealing with senior stakeholders and be comfortable presenting investment cases.
• Sector experience not required, but ability to understand diverse business models essential.
• Good project management skills and desire to take ownership of work.
• Wants to take responsibility and earn autonomy.
• Able to take critique and robust debate.
• Takes a long term career view.
• Honesty and integrity essential.
• Able to work in the UK without sponsorship.