AlixPartners announced it has continued to bolster its IT-advisory offering for the financial-services industry with the addition of Michael B. Flynn and Edward B. Niestat as managing directors, who join Seth Rosensweig, also a managing director who joined AlixPartners earlier in the year. All are based in New York.
AlixPartners offers technology and information-management advisory services for financial-services clients including commercial and retail banking, investment banking, capital markets, asset management and insurance, with a focus on aligning technology, business intelligence/analytics and data to support critical business issues around customer behavior, profitability, new channel strategies, strategic risk and finance, operations improvement, and regulatory and compliance reporting.
"It's no secret that the financial-services sector is facing unprecedented pressures today, from flat yield curves to tough post-financial-crisis regulations to the brave new world of mobile; however, truly effective information management can not only assist with these challenges but also offer big opportunities in and of itself," said Meade Monger, managing director at AlixPartners and head of the firm's global Information Management Services unit. "At AlixPartners, we pride ourselves on not only being expert in Big Data and analytics but more important, in having the experience, expertise and nimbleness to know how to make sense of them and truly bring their benefits to the bottom line. And Mike and Eddie, along with Seth, all bring deep expertise in leading complex technology-integration, information-management, and analytics and reporting projects across virtually every financial services domain."
Flynn joins AlixPartners from Ernst & Young, where he was a partner in the financial-services industry practice. He built and led the data-analytics and data-reporting practices, focusing on building innovative technologies and solving data problems for pressing business issues. Some of his major engagements included developing wealth-management analytics for alternative-investment performance, sales strategy and campaign effectiveness; leading a transformational analysis and reporting project on a $100 billion distressed-loan portfolio, which facilitated the securitization of assets and increased liquidity in a loan-pooling process; creating transaction-monitoring analytics for a $1 billion asset management company, supplying the company's risk officer with metrics across multiple portfolios and managers; leading the development of a global IT program-management and cost-optimization solution for a global financial firm; and developing forensic testing programs by using industry-leading business intelligence tools for several leading asset management companies.
Niestat joins AlixPartners from Argus Information & Advisory Services LLC, a leading provider of analytics, information and solutions to consumer banks and credit card companies, where he was senior managing director and global head of sales and business development. In this position, he assisted leading North American and British banks with account-level benchmarking, managed applications and consulting, and advisory services focused on strategy, product development, pricing, risk management, and data warehousing and analysis.
From 1994 to 2008, Niestat held a series of progressively senior positions at PA Consulting Group Ltd., culminating as senior partner and head of that firm's financial services practice in the U.S., which he established and built to a team of 23 professionals. His other accomplishments included the development of economic capital allocations for operational risk in line with Basel II Accord requirements for a major U.S. bank, saving the bank $15 million annually in capital costs; the reengineering of a major international bank's risk management function, saving the bank over 30% in annual regulatory compliance costs; and the creation of detailed risk reports and supporting infrastructure for a major U.S. bank.