Team
Names are withheld on this page. The reason is stated plainly below, and the names are given to you directly, under confidentiality, well before any decision is asked of you.
The principal
The person who will be in the building on the Monday after you leave.
Arete is led by a single operating principal, MBA, who will become full-time chief executive of the business we acquire. He is not an investor appointing a manager, and he is not a committee that meets quarterly.
That is a deliberately narrow claim. Arete has one principal. The four people described below are non-executive, hold senior positions elsewhere, and are not employees of this company. What each of them has done, they have done as a principal rather than as an adviser: their own business, their own decisions, their own name on the outcome. We say so because a buyer who overstates his bench at the website stage has already told you how the rest of the process will go.
What the four do provide is judgement on the questions that decide whether an acquisition of this size works: what to pay, how to finance it, who to hire, and what to do in the first year.
The advisory board
Former chief executive of a Singapore Mainboard-listed group and deputy chief executive of a Hong Kong-listed real estate investment platform. Listed-company leadership, capital raising, mergers and acquisitions, and shareholder exits.
Callable on capital structure, banking relationships, and the eventual exit path.
Co-founder of a regional manpower group operating across nine cities in Asia. Building and running people-intensive operating businesses, which is where most companies of this size actually break.
Callable on hiring, workforce structure, and the operational lift after completion.
Owner and president of a Japanese logistics and pharmaceutical group, operating as a principal rather than an adviser across North Asia for two decades.
Callable on the Japan channel, including customer introductions and supply relationships a Singapore company of this size cannot ordinarily reach.
Global mergers, acquisitions, initial public offerings and capital markets for a global conglomerate, across multiple continents and market cycles, in-house rather than as an outside adviser.
Callable on acquisition discipline, bolt-on transactions, and integration.
Names are withheld here because several hold current executive positions elsewhere and are bound by non-public disclosure restrictions. They are disclosed to you directly, under confidentiality, before any decision is asked of you.
The bench, in numbers
The figures are not a boast. They are the reason nothing about a transaction of your size will be unfamiliar to us, and the reason you will not be anyone’s first attempt.
How the board actually works
