Six appointments, each spent learning where volume risk sits

Mandate

Reduce the company's dependence on its largest customer and on combustion-engine content, and give the board a capital-allocation process able to decline an award.

Outcomes

• Led the US$640m acquisition of Quenmore Heat Transfer in June 2022; integration savings reached US$24m a year by 2025.
• Sold Engine Cooling to Corrander Capital Partners for US$790m in March 2024; net debt fell from 2.6x to 1.5x adjusted EBITDA within a year.
• Staged battery-thermal capacity, building one plant instead of three and avoiding about US$230m of idle capital.
• Reduced the largest customer's share of revenue from 34 per cent in 2021 to 23 per cent in 2025.
• Raised documented USMCA-qualifying content in Mexican module shipments from 58 to 91 per cent during the 2025 tariff changes.

Decisions in context

Our chief executive asked me to lead strategy in March 2021, after I had shown the board a run-off analysis of the business I was then running. The mandate was blunt: we were too dependent on one Detroit-based customer and on parts for engines that would eventually stop being built, and the board saw awards as good news without seeing the capital behind them. In five years we bought Quenmore Heat Transfer, sold Engine Cooling, staged our battery-thermal capacity and kept our Mexican module plants through the 2025 tariffs. Each decision faced serious internal opposition, and each cost something visible. I lead a team of 34 with five direct reports, present at every board and Finance Committee meeting, and own no operating P&L. Revenue fell from US$4.48 billion in 2021 to US$3.72 billion in 2025 as we reshaped the portfolio, while our largest customer's share fell from 34 to 23 per cent.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; pursuing one independent directorship with the consent of Tallisford's board.

Mandate

Protect margins in a business whose new awards were shrinking, and decide which plants and product lines had a future.

Outcomes

• Held the EBITDA margin at about 12 per cent through the 2020 shutdowns.
• Consolidated two Michigan operations into one plant, cutting fixed cost by US$17m a year.
• Won a charge-air cooler award for a hybrid pickup programme worth about US$70m a year at peak.
• Built the business's first ten-year run-off model by product line, later used in its sale.

Decisions in context

Tallisford recruited me in January 2018 to run Engine Cooling, my first operating P&L: US$1.15 billion of revenue, five plants and about 4,300 people making radiators, charge-air coolers and oil coolers. The business was profitable but losing share of new awards as customers planned hybrid and electric platforms. I consolidated two Michigan operations, cutting US$17 million of fixed cost a year, and kept margins near 12 per cent through the 2020 shutdowns by bringing furloughed lines back in the order customers' schedules required rather than all at once. I also built a ten-year run-off model for every product line, which showed the business worth more to a committed buyer than to us. Presenting that model to the board in late 2020 led directly to my next role. Running the unit gave me what consulting and private equity had not: the experience of carrying a P&L whose decline I could slow but not stop.

Reason for the move

Asked by the chief executive to become chief strategy officer after presenting the run-off analysis to the board.

Mandate

Build a corporate-development function and plan for a truck market that swings by a third between peak and trough.

Outcomes

• Completed four acquisitions in trailer and bus components totalling US$310m.
• Wrote the business case for the Apodaca plant, opened in 2016 with 1,100 employees.
• Made mid-cycle volume the valuation basis for every transaction.
• Led the 2016 capacity review that closed one Kentucky line during the downturn.

Decisions in context

I joined Stellbrook in August 2013 to build its corporate-development function. The company made brakes, wheel-end parts and air systems for heavy trucks, trailers and buses, and its earnings followed the North American truck cycle closely. When production fell by about a third between 2015 and 2016, the case for diversifying into trailer and bus components became urgent, and we completed four acquisitions totalling US$310 million. I insisted that each be valued at mid-cycle volumes, which cost us one deal we wanted and spared us two we would have regretted. I also wrote the business case for a new plant in Apodaca, Nuevo León, which opened in 2016 and employed 1,100 people by the time I left. My team was nine people, and I reported to the chief executive. I left because I had spent fifteen years advising on, investing in and planning for other people's P&Ls, and wanted to carry one.

Reason for the move

Wanted to run a P&L rather than advise one, and Tallisford offered a business unit in the product family where I had started.

Mandate

Buy and stabilise supplier assets sold out of the 2009 restructurings, then prepare them for sale.

Outcomes

• Led operational diligence on nine supplier acquisitions, of which three closed.
• Served eleven months as interim chief operating officer of a metal-stamping portfolio company, removing one surplus press line.
• Took two portfolio companies to sale, returning 2.4 times invested capital.
• Diversified one portfolio company from four customers to eleven before its sale.

Decisions in context

I joined Ferrisford in January 2009, as the restructurings in the US auto industry put supplier plants and product lines on the market at distressed prices. My job was to judge which of them could be stabilised and to help run the ones we bought. I led operational diligence on nine opportunities; we bought three. At one, a metal-stamping company with four customers and more press capacity than they would ever need, I spent eleven months as interim chief operating officer, closing a surplus line and winning new customers until it had eleven. Two of our companies were sold during my time, returning 2.4 times the capital invested. Private equity taught me to value a business at mid-cycle volume and to think about its next owner from the first day, habits I still use. I left because a holding period is too short to live with the consequences of a strategy.

Reason for the move

Wanted to own a strategy inside one company for longer than a holding period.

Mandate

Advise automotive suppliers and their lenders on footprint, pricing and portfolio questions.

Outcomes

• Worked on 14 engagements for automotive suppliers, leading eight as engagement manager.
• Built the plant-footprint cost model used in four studies of relocation to Mexico.
• Advised a lender group on a supplier's liquidity crisis in 2008.

Decisions in context

I joined Harwick Lane's Chicago office in July 2002, two months after finishing the evening MBA, and became an engagement manager in 2005. Almost all my work was for automotive suppliers deciding where to make things and which things to keep making. I built a plant-footprint cost model that compared US, Mexican and Canadian sites on labour, freight, duties and launch risk, and it was used in four relocation studies. I learnt how differently a supplier looks from the customer's purchasing office, the lender's credit committee and the plant floor. In 2008 I advised a group of lenders to a supplier that was running out of cash as volumes collapsed, and saw how fast fixed costs built for peak volume can overwhelm a business. I left at the end of 2008 because I wanted to own operating outcomes rather than recommend them, and private equity offered that sooner than industry did.

Reason for the move

Moved to private equity to take operating responsibility for the kind of businesses I had been advising.

Mandate

Engineer modules to customer packaging requirements, then lead the launch of a module for a new minivan.

Outcomes

• Launched the minivan module in 2000 on schedule and within its tooling budget.
• Reduced module mass by 1.1 kg through a redesigned blower housing.
• Wrote the internal review showing why the programme lost money at actual volumes, which changed how Halverton quoted tooling.

Decisions in context

I joined Halverton in July 1997, two months after graduating in mechanical engineering, as an application engineer fitting heating and air-conditioning modules into customers' vehicles. The work meant long days between the Dayton plant and customers' engineering centres, negotiating over millimetres of packaging space and grams of mass. In 2000 I became program engineer for a new minivan module and led a team of six through launch, on time and within a US$14 million tooling budget. The minivan then sold about 130,000 units a year against a quoted 240,000, and our two dedicated lines ran half empty. I wrote the internal review that explained the losses, and Halverton began quoting tooling separately as a result. That review, and the evening MBA I finished in 2002, moved me from engineering towards the commercial and strategic questions I have worked on since.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work on the commercial decisions that had left our plant tooled for volume that never arrived.