Alasdair Steele Partner Head of Equity Capital Markets CMS

Alasdair is a Partner in our Corporate Team at CMS London and Head of Equity Capital Markets. He specialises in UK and cross-border corporate finance, including public and private M&A, strategic investments and primary and secondary equity issues, as well as regularly advising on infrastructure consortia and corporate joint venture arrangements. He regularly advises quoted companies and financial intermediaries on the UK Listing Rules, Prospectus Regulation Rules, Disclosure and Transparency Rules, AIM Rulesthe Takeover Code and general company law. Alasdair has a particular focus on the Infrastructure and Technology sectors and regularly visits clients, investors and advisers in China and India.

Anu Aiyengar Global Head of M&A JP Morgan

Anu Aiyengar is the Global Head of Mergers & Acquisitions at J.P. Morgan, a member of the Global Banking Management team and serves on the Steering Committee of Women On the Move for JPMorgan Chase.

Since 1999, Anu has advised both domestic and international clients on nearly $1 trillion dollars’ worth of transactions including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures/separations, leveraged buyouts, proxy contests, unsolicited transactions and special committee assignments.

Transactions she advised on include: She recently advised on Subway's sale to Roark Capital Group, Omni Logistics's merger with Forward Air, United Parcel Service, Inc.'s acquisition of MNX Global Logistic, Ortho Clinical Diagnosic’s sale to Quidel, Maxar Technologies to Advent International, LVMH on its acquisition of Tiffany, E*Trade on its sale to Morgan Stanley, Home Depot on its acquisition of HD Supply, Navistar on its sale to Traton, Siemens Healthineers on its acquisition of Varian, Allergan on its sale to Abbvie, Standard Industries on its acquisition of W.R. Grace, and Waddell & Reade on its sale to Macquarie.

Anu serves on the Board of Trustees of Smith College and is on the Board of Youth INC and Dress for Success. She is also a founding member of the Smith Business Advisory Council.

Anu was named to Barron’s “100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance” list and recognized by American Banker as one of the “Most Powerful Women in Finance”. She was also the recipient of the “Impact and Innovation Award” by Dress for Success, the “Rising Star Award” by Women’s Bond Club, and the 2022 Ascend A-list award.

Anu is involved with several initiatives across J.P. Morgan and Wall Street to recruit, mentor and develop women. Anu is often a panelist and speaker at industry events including Wall Street Women’s Forum, Women Corporate Directors, Women’s Private Equity Summit, The Asian Women in Business, and the South Asian Bar Association Leadership Awards. Anu is frequently quoted in the financial press and interviewed on CNBC and Bloomberg TV.

Anu holds a BA in economics from Smith College and an MBA from Vanderbilt University. She lives in New York City with her husband.

Cas Sydorowitz Global CEO Georgeson

Cas has more than 25 years’ experience in international investor relations and shareholder identification and has been with Georgeson since 1998. As responsible for Georgeson’s Global activism and M&A practice, he has been involved in the highest profile M&A and activist situations.

Cas has a longstanding knowledge of Global proxy voting mechanics and key governance matters affecting issuers and shareholders globally. Having worked for several activists and against many more he has in-depth experience in how activists run their campaigns and the different stakeholders they look to influence in sensitive activist campaigns.

Prior to joining Georgeson he had five years’ experience in international investor relations and shareholder identification. While honing his skills in the US, Cas has been in the UK since 2002.

Delaney Brown Head of Capital Solutions Bregal Investments

Delaney is Head of Capital Solutions, working across the Bregal platform and its underlying strategies to deliver optimized strategic solutions for all clients. Delaney joined Bregal Investments following ten years at CPP Investments where he was Head of Funds & Secondaries, Private Equity, responsible for managing a team of 50 professionals investing in funds and secondaries across buyouts, growth equity, venture capital and co-investments in Europe and North America.

Prior to joining CPP Investments in 2013, he spent eight years at Hermes GPE LLP as Head of the Americas, focused on both private equity fund investment and co-investment. Before that, he was an Associate Director with Almeida Capital in London for five years and a Research Scientist for GlaxoSmithKline in the UK.

He has also been a prior chair of the BVCA’s LP Committee.

Delaney holds a BSc (First Class Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Leeds

Jason Zemmel Partner CMS

Jason Zemmel is a Partner based in the CMS London office.

Jason advises a wide range of private equity houses, management teams, corporates, investors and advisers on the full range of private equity, M&A, corporate finance and other commercial transactions. 

John West Managing Editor M&A EMEA ION Analytics

Heading Mergermarket and Dealreporter editorial output across EMEA, leading a team of more than 50 reporters across both products.

Liad Meidar Founder and Managing Partner Gatemore Capital

Liad Meidar oversees all aspects of portfolio management including our direct investments.

Prior to founding Gatemore in 2005, Liad had a background in both finance and operations, including running a Seattle-based technology company incubator. Liad began his career in New York in leveraged finance at BT Alex Brown, the investment banking division of Bankers Trust (Deutsche Bank).

Liad has extensive experience as a board member of companies undergoing turnarounds, including Jazz Technologies, a publicly-traded semiconductor wafer foundry based in Newport, California, and MAG Industrial Automation Systems, a privately-held global machine tool builder with dual headquarters in Michigan, USA and Germany.

Liad is Chairman of GSE Worldwide, Inc, a fully integrated talent and sports marketing agency which is a Gatemore Partners LP portfolio company. He also serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council at Princeton University and on the Board of Trustees of the American School in London. He received an AB in economics from Princeton University.

Liana Logiurato NED Intesa Sanpaolo Bank M&A adviser

Leading Board adviser on over $100bn M&A deals and $20bn capital raisings. Creating stakeholder value by originating strategic opportunities for industry transformation & growth. Asian, European and American markets. Biotech, healthcare, technology, communications, industrials, chemicals, agriculture and financial services.

Louise Wallace Partner, Head of Corporate/M&A CMS

Louise Wallace is Head of the International CMS Corporate group, leading the team of over 1000 corporate lawyers globally, corporate lead for the Consumer Products sector and also has a very active Hotels & Leisure practice, being recognised as Band 1 for Hotel and Leisure M&A.

Louise was appointed as CMS Head of Corporate in January 2021 and she specialises in acting on some of the largest multi jurisdiction transactions and advisory work across the globe and is recognised in Chambers for M&A.  Most of her transactions have an international element, including recent transactions for, and advice to, for Invesco, Logistics Capital Partners and Associated British Foods as well as for long standing client including Advance Publications, Conde Nast, Lone Star, Patron Capital, DTGO and Nestle.

Mikhael Rawls Director Teacher Retirement System of Texas

Mikhael Rawls is a Director on the Private Equity team at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Mikhael leads the pension’s private equity fund investment activities across Europe and Asia. He is a member of the TRS Private Equity Investment Committee, tasked with evaluating all fund and co-investments, representing approximately $3 billion of committed capital per year.  In addition, Mikhael leads the private equity team’s portfolio construction efforts. Prior to this role, Mikhael worked in the External Public Markets team at TRS, supporting a $39 billion portfolio of externally managed public market assets. In this role, Mikhael maintained coverage of both hedge fund and long-only mandates across several geographies and strategy types.

Mikhael is a CFA Charterholder and received his B.A. in Economics from Harvard University.  Mikhael lives in London with his wife and four children. 

Sara Agullo Senior Managing Director, Global Corporate Development/M&A, GE Vernova

Sara has been with the General Electric Company for 20 years. In her current role, she is responsible for all corporate development and M&A activity across the GE portfolio outside of the US. Her broad international M&A experience spans both industrial businesses and financial services.

She started her career as a Financial Analyst in the Investment Banking division of Goldman Sachs in New York. Prior to joining GE, she was also a management consultant at McKinsey & Co.

Sara holds a B.A. in Economics with a Mathematics minor from Wellesley College and an M.B.A. from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).