Post-Spin Portfolio-Coherence Board Adviser

The mandate

Separation created an independent group containing household self-care brands, specialist pharmacy products, emerging digital services and manufacturing assets that previously drew strategy, science and channel leverage from a broader parent. The board repeatedly returns to whether the portfolio has a coherent right to win or is merely a set of assets that happened to be separated together. Management presents category plans individually, leaving shared capabilities, capital competition and strategic incompatibilities insufficiently challenged. The adviser supplies a continuing portfolio lens while the first independent planning cycle closes.

The cadence comprises four days each month: one chair consultation, two management challenge sessions and one evidence day with category or market teams. Six scheduled strategy-and-investment committee meetings are included, as are responses within two business days for time-sensitive portfolio papers. Three visits will test claimed channel, science or manufacturing synergies in operating settings. The adviser will maintain a question ledger so recurring assertions are resolved with evidence rather than repackaged at successive board meetings.

The appointment runs for ten months through approval of the second independent resource-allocation round. The committee may authorise a further three-month term only if a major category decision is deferred by regulatory or separation constraints; renewal is neither automatic nor linked to transaction activity. At month eight, the chair and adviser will assess which portfolio questions can return to normal governance and which require a different specialist voice.

The adviser has no line authority or executive responsibility and cannot direct category leaders, allocate capital, commission acquisitions, approve disposals, value assets, change manufacturing footprints or speak for the group. Directors retain portfolio choices and executives remain accountable for plans. The adviser may demand clearer comparisons through the chair, challenge the strategic basis of a paper and recommend that a decision be staged, but cannot turn independent challenge into shadow management.

Current or prospective work for direct category competitors, activist investors, likely buyers, separation counterparties, key contract manufacturers or transaction advisers must be disclosed before materials are shared. A relevant conflict can require restricted papers, recusal or termination at the chair’s direction. The adviser may hold other non-competing board appointments, provided response commitments remain workable. Compensation cannot depend on a sale, acquisition, category exit or any preferred strategic outcome.

Why the board wants this voice

Most directors know the inherited businesses deeply but learned them inside the logic of the former parent. Management needs permission to build an independent identity, yet enthusiasm for autonomy can make every category appear strategically essential. The board wants an experienced consumer portfolio thinker who can separate real shared advantage from separation nostalgia without arriving with a deal thesis.

What you will own

• Press directors to state the parenting advantage claimed for every category in operationally testable terms.
• Test shared science, channel, brand, manufacturing and data capabilities against standalone cost and execution evidence.
• Compare capital requests through common strategic, regulatory, resilience and capability-consumption lenses rather than headline growth.
• Surface portfolio tensions where channel conduct, evidence standards, risk appetite or operating cadence cannot comfortably coexist.
• Challenge management’s build, partner, hold, harvest and exit cases without promoting transaction activity as the default.
• Maintain the board question ledger, evidence gaps, scenario dependencies, dissent record and scheduled decision calendar.
• Shape a repeatable portfolio-coherence review that directors can continue after the advisory term concludes.

Candidate qualifications

• Has advised or led a consumer-health portfolio through separation, reshaping or independent capital-allocation choices.
• Can evidence decisions where apparent category synergy disappeared after channel, science or manufacturing assumptions were tested.
• Understands regulated self-care products, pharmacy channels, brand investment, contract manufacturing and regional category economics.
• Has challenged boards without becoming an unofficial chief strategy executive or representing a transaction sponsor.
• Can compare strategic parenting advantage with the practical cost and distraction of maintaining shared capabilities.
• Brings independence from obvious buyers, activists, direct competitors and advisers pursuing contingent post-spin assignments.

Non-negotiables

• Can attend all six London committee sessions and complete three agreed category-market evidence visits.
• Will disclose competing boards, investor ties, buyer relationships and transaction mandates before receiving restricted papers.
• Has made portfolio choices under post-separation constraints; diversified-company strategy alone is insufficient.
• Will leave directors with an evidence discipline rather than a one-time ranking of attractive businesses.

1. 49 words maximum. Which claimed post-spin synergy have you disproved, and what operating evidence changed the board’s view?
2. 49 words maximum. What present commitments or transaction relationships would require disclosure to this committee?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you test parenting advantage without turning the review into an asset-sale exercise?