Financial Services Operations Manager - M&A - Delivering Deal Value

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Job description

In Deals we solve the important problems that stand in the way of value being created, sustained, realised or protected for our clients - working together to aid responsible recovery and growth.
We put together major mergers and acquisitions and resolve business crises - from international take-over bids to financial crime investigations and cases of insolvency. Our teams work on iconic deals with national and global clients as well as operating and investing in businesses, new ventures and entrepreneurs in our local market and communities. It's both a responsibility and a privilege to guide our clients through moments that matter deeply to them. Our breadth of clients in an ever-changing market means we need to be agile - responding when we need to, in a way that really makes a difference.
We draw upon our deals experience across many industries to support and partner with our clients, to positively impact society and the communities in which we operate. The insight we create, coupled with the innovative tools and methodologies we use to access and evaluate the data that matters, contributes to the success of our clients in all Deals situations. We encourage our clients to think more broadly - connecting their actions today with their successes tomorrow. We help our clients throughout the Deals lifecycle to create lasting value for their businesses.
Each of our key areas within Deals, delivers services to the market individually or together by combining our specialists to provide comprehensive client solutions.

About the team
Delivering Deal Value (DDV) is a market leading team that assists Corporate and Private Equity (PE) clients in a wide range of high impact business situations. The majority of our work is in the Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) space, with a focus on the operations and IT challenges both pre and post deal. We help clients achieve maximum value on their deal transactions by solving transformational and complex challenges. The M&A Deals we work on range in size from £50m to over £5bn and our clients include the most well-known brands and businesses in the world.

The Financial Services sector team within DDV provides M&A advice and support to insurers, banks, asset managers, payments providers, fintech firms, hedge funds and other financial services players. We are looking for excellent candidates to join the current team of 25 dynamic and friendly people who have a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines.

We recruit proactively from industry, consulting, private equity and audit to create a great blend of experience on each project. This blend of backgrounds helps us learn from each other and stay at the top of the market delivering fantastic results for our clients on landmark deals.

About the role
You will identify, plan, shape and support the creation of lasting value for our financial services and private equity clients as they undergo mergers, acquisitions and disposals. We work across the deal life cycle, from identifying value creation opportunities and conducting due diligence, to executing carve out and integration programs, realising synergies and creating value for our clients.

A career in the DDV team is a unique and rewarding challenge. The work is at the front of our client's strategic agenda, often complex and done under tight deadlines. As a result, there are extraordinary opportunities for personal growth, learning new skills and career development.

Whilst the team is London based, deal activity is global, therefore projects can involve travel at short notice.

Your responsibilities
As a Manager, you will work as part of a team of problem solvers with extensive consulting and industry experience, helping our clients solve their complex business issues from strategy to execution.

The Manager role is a leadership role at project level. As such, you will be expected to take on a leading role on engagements and management of project team members within 6-12 months and contribute to business development efforts where possible alongside your project responsibilities.

Specific responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Proactively assist in the management of a portfolio of clients
• Develop strategies to solve complex technical challenges
• Assist in the management and delivering of large projects
• Train, coach, and supervise junior staff
• Oversee the financial management of client projects
• Be actively involved in business development activities to help identify and win opportunities to work with new/existing clients
• Contribute to the development of your own and the team's technical skills
• Develop a strong internal network within PwC
• Keep up to date with industry news and developments

There are plenty of opportunities to build your personal and professional networks. Consulting is a relationship industry after all. We have weekly team newsletters, monthly team meetings and monthly socials, together with an annual away day. The team is a collaborative and supportive environment with lots of chances to socialise across our team and the wider business.

Who we are looking for
Professional experience We expect successful applicants to have:

• Experience of working in a consulting role in financial services, or a transformation role in industry, ideally banking or insurance
• Experienced in M&A, synergy, integration and/or carve-out, and/or on change projects, restructuring or business improvement
• Comfort around financial analysis and understanding of the drivers of financial information
• Demonstrated ability to quickly assess the performance of a business (or elements of it) and outline improvement opportunities based upon limited information and/or interactions with senior management
• Ability to quickly understand large amounts of information and draw out hypotheses and key messages
• Extensive experience around operational and IT analysis to understand business processes, their associated costs and potential issues as well as opportunities for improvement
• Comfort in understanding the impact of different operating models on commercial, financial and operational aspects of a business, ideally in the context of a transaction
• Ability to review performance improvement plans, cost reduction plans and capital expenditure needs
• Knowledge of the key issues and challenges currently facing the financial services sector

Despite the above guidelines, we are keen to hear from candidates who don't necessarily meet all the criteria but are a fantastic match for the personality characteristics below.

Personality characteristics
Our highest performers are usually:

• Nice people! We work hard together, so we hire people who treat their colleagues well, who are not hierarchical and enjoy creating a happy culture even when under pressure
• Extremely comfortable around C-suite or senior stakeholders, as most of our work is done at this level; you don't need to be an extrovert, but confidence definitely helps
• Comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity in a project environment, and excited by the idea that you may not know what country you will be in next week
• Extremely handy with Excel and PowerPoint. Much of our work involves detailed analysis and report writing, so it is critical you can work with these tools
• Naturally curious; we love people who can apply logic and problem solving to difficult business problems

Nice to have
MBA or other business management qualification
Other post-graduate or accounting qualifications are welcome

Our recruitment process
We try to keep our recruitment process as lean and efficient as possible. For 90% of our applicants we have a simple 5 step process consisting of:

CV application
Online tests
In-person case study and interview with members of the team
Partner interview
Offer

If you fit the requirements for this role and find the opportunity as exciting as we do, please get in touch and submit an application as our open positions fill quickly.

Deals
Our Deals business is an exciting, fast-paced and an ever-growing business that focuses on deals and crisis situations for our clients. Collectively, we deal with the types of situations you hear about regularly in the news and we provide support, insight and analysis to the management, shareholders and financiers of business.

Not the role for you?
Did you know PwC offer flexible contract arrangements as well as contingent work (ie temporary or day rate contracting)?

The skills we look for in future employees
All our people need to demonstrate the skills and behaviours that support us in delivering our business strategy. This is important to the work we do for our business, and our clients. These skills and behaviours make up our global leadership framework, 'The PwC Professional' and are made up of five core attributes; whole leadership, technical capabilities, business acumen, global acumen and relationships.
Learn more here:

The Deal
We want all of our people to feel empowered to be the best that they can be, which is why we have 'The Deal'.
Find out more about our firmwide Employee Value Proposition:

Diversity
Valuing Difference. Driving Inclusion.
We work in a changing world which offers great opportunities for people with diverse backgrounds and experiences..... click apply for full job details