Inside the perfect storm - Tom Jack prepares to move to Alvarez & Marsal

And why Convex is better off with Knights than RGB PLC

When Tom Jack caught up with Richard Fleming over lunch in Leeds in the Autumn of 2023, he said he could immediately sense that something genuinely exciting was happening at the burgeoning team at Alvarez & Marsal, as the UK consulting giant built its UK presence.

The pair of them are both well-established highly regarded turnaround professionals. A tanned and toned Australian, Fleming had left his senior berth at KPMG in 2017 to head up A&M’s restructuring team in the UK, now some 65 strong, and had known Jack ever since their paths briefly crossed at EY a couple of decades earlier.

The two probably compared a formidable list of companies they’d rescued over the years. Fleming oversaw the disposal of gold, nickel and copper mines and mining rights in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; as well as acting as the administrator of Leeds United Football Club.

It would be impolite to speculate whether dealing with former Leeds chairman Ken Bates was preferable to negotiating with heavily armed private militias and warlords in Africa.

For his part Jack’s career had taken a slightly different path since leaving EY 8 years previously to join the Leeds-headquartered mid-market private equity investor Endless.

In that time he’d had investment and board level experience, trusted to represent the partnership on businesses like the retailer American Golf, Essential Fleet Services (a HGV fleet provider), James Briggs (an Oldham based chemicals manufacturer, which was sold to Tetrosyl), Yorkshire Premier Meats (a specialist meat processor which acquired the larger Smithfield Murray poultry business based in Trafford Park), Moda Furnishings, and the luggage company Antler.

That lunch in Leeds was the start of a conversation that will lead to Jack joining A&M next Monday (15 April 2024) in a new position as managing director in the Financial and Operational Restructuring Team.

Over spectacularly good bacon rolls and coffee one morning, in a cafe called The Locks in Marple, close to where we both live, Jack explains his move. And it isn’t quite what you’d think.

In doing so it very subtly serves as a very good summary of how the professional services market is changing in response to structural economic forces. 

“People have said to me that I’ll be back to taking insolvency appointments. I still have a licence, but I’m not going to reignite it.”