Duff & Phelps has appointed Ven Balakrishnan as a managing director in the firm’s Transaction Advisory Services practice. Balakrishnan will lead the firm’s Strategy and Commercial Diligence offering and will be based in London.Balakrishnan has over 25 years of experience, including 15 years as managing director/partner, providing strategic and financial advice to clients at the board level. His diverse experience spans across sectors such as data and media, software and technology, travel and leisure, business services and manufacturing. His breadth of strategy and sector experience enables him to apply pattern recognition to problem solving, while challenging conventional sector thinking.
Ray Newman, Managing Director and Global Leader of Transaction Advisory Services (TAS) at Duff & Phelps, says: “Ven is a recognised transaction leader with rich experience across a variety of sectors. As our TAS practice continues to grow, having someone of his calibre join our firm will enable us to forge new partnerships and find greater opportunities. I’m thrilled to welcome Ven to our team.”
Balakrishnan joins Duff & Phelps from Grant Thornton where he was the lead partner of the Strategy Group, focusing on advising dynamic, fast-growing companies and mid-market PE investors. He led diligence on transactions with deal values ranging from EUR 50 million–800 million. Before Grant Thornton, he was a partner in EY’s Commercial Advisory (Transaction Advisory Services) group. In this role, he led commercial due diligence engagements across a variety of sectors and transaction sizes on the buy- and sell-side, as well as in restructuring/financial distress situations.
