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Building a finance function for a commercial and strategic Livingbridge-backed buy-and-build

Challenge:

Brainlabs is a founder-led digital marketing business that took investment from Livingbridge in 2019. They embarked on an accelerated M&A journey, transforming the business into an international player across UK, Europe, America and APAC. Finatal were engaged to lead the search for the CFO, M&A Director, FP&A, Controllership, Integration and data resources.

Action:

Having placed Olivier as the new Group CFO, we had a strong understanding of the standard of finance function he sought to build to support the global expansion strategy. With a background across Apple’s Emerging Markets division and EQT’s VFS, Olivier had clear expectations of a best-in-class finance function for Brainlabs.


We were selected based on our seamless working model, whereby multiple practices can work together in tandem to support a team build. In short, Brainlabs had enhanced M&A and FP&A capacity, full-time integration resource and multiple core finance hires completed to enable the next phase of international growth.

Impact:

Livingbridge successfully exited their investment to US PE buyer, Falfurriss Capital Partners. Finatal made over 20 hires over 4 years and every permanent hire supported through the first deal cycle were retained by the new owners. Brainlabs continues to expand globally and is now one of the most well-known digital marketing agencies in the world.