April 2011
A T Consulting has been advising on several M&A projects with institutional and corporate clients: these projects are all nearing a conclusion
December 2010 - A busy finish to a busy year.
Most of the final three months of the year were spent working on managing a business in the hospitality sector that was in receivership. During my tenure sales increased by over 15% and we took over 10% of cost out of the business. The business was sold as a going concern.
A T Consulting has also been advising on a small acquisition in the agriculture sector.
June 2010 - A T Consulting advised on the potential acquisition of a services business based in Australia. A virtual team wasassembled with the company CFO co-ordinating activity from Australia. A T Consulting provided advice on the financial due diligence and alternative deal structures.
June 2010 - three years after developing the management reports and KPIs for a client, A T Consulting is working on enhancing these as the business requirements are now changed somewhat.
May 2010 - A T Consulting has been working with a NZX listed company over the last six months: the role has now reduced to several days a month mainting the gains secured during the change process where Tobin has been instrumental in a re-alignment of the finance and IT teams; in reducing overdue debt by 90% in one division; working on a systems implementation; and re-designing the management and Board reports.
30 September 2009 - A T Consulting advised an ASX listed company on the acquisition of a competitor of one of its NZ subsidiairies. At the same time, Tobin has been working with a private equity backed company to assess its finance function and manage the appointment of a new CFO.
10 June 2009 - Tobin recently facilitated a group at the New Zealand Entrepreneurial Summit. The summit consisted of around 150 New Zealand Entrepreneurs working together to formulate a series of ideas to benefit the NZ economy. In the morning ten teams developed their favourite two or three ideas as a group to present to the wider group. Our team contained people with very different backgrounds and interests, from private banking to R&D development via law and an executive search professional alongside a number of entrepreneurs in the IT, beverage, on-line education and early childhood sectors. The team worked together very effectively to develop the ideas. The plenary session in the middle of day resulted in a long-list of ideas being developed and in the afternoon these were explored further and from these a short list of five were presented to Commerce Minister, Simon Power. The short list included an over-arching cultural initiative "Give it a go, bro!" which is designed to foster an entrepreneurial spirit and is not, as one commentator has suggested, about telling Kiwis what to do, rather it enables Kiwis to do what they want. The other shortlisted ideas were more specific in nature. The day was a means to an end rather than an end in itself and teams have been developed to take each idea forward. All in all a very successful day enjoyed by all concerned. Thanks to Chris Simmonds and Tony Falkenstien who conceived and developed the idea; Tenby Powell and Sharon Hunter who chaired the event; and to ANZ, AUT and PwC who sponsored the initiative.