Newly Appointed CEOs
What you inherited
is not what
you were told
You have 90 days before the board’s patience thins, the team settles into old patterns, and the window closes. This is the work that happens before the crisis arrives.
Pre-stress is harder to spot than distress. That is the point.
By the time a mid-market business looks distressed, the decisions that caused it are 12 to 18 months old. A newly appointed CEO inheriting a firm in this condition has very little time and very few options.
The firms we work with are not in crisis. They show early signals: margin drift, team misalignment, stalled initiatives. These are solvable problems — but only if they are identified and addressed in the first 90 days.
The 90-Day CEO Reset
A structured 90-day engagement that gives a newly appointed CEO a clear picture of what they have inherited, what requires immediate attention, and how to set the business on a stable footing before the board expects results.
Diagnosis
A rapid assessment of financial health, operational performance, technology spend and leadership alignment. A clear, unvarnished picture of where the business actually stands — not where it says it stands.
Prioritisation
The three to five decisions that will define your first year, with the noise removed. The sequencing is built so that the most important moves happen first, with the board prepared for each one.
Execution framework
You leave the engagement with a decision-making structure, a clear 12-month agenda, and a leadership team aligned around it. No consultancy to manage afterwards. No dependency created.
A specific engagement for a specific situation
This is not a general advisory service. It is designed for one scenario.
You have been appointed CEO of a mid-market firm — typically between £250M and £2B in revenue — in the UK or USA. The business is not in distress but it is not performing at the level the board expects or the market allows. You are zero to six months into the role.
You want an independent perspective from someone who has worked inside firms at this stage and has no interest in building a long-term retainer relationship.
You engage directly, with your CFO if appropriate. There is no internal routing through a CIO or COO.
Turnaround and value creation — a track record
Named clients. Named counterparts. Hard numbers.
| Engagement | Outcome |
|---|---|
| AOL Europe | Turnaround from losses of $600 million to profitability. Engaged directly by CEO Philip Rowley. |
| AXA UK | Turnaround from £100 million annual losses to profitability. Engaged directly by CEO Andy Homer. |
| Dendrite | Doubled firm value to $751 million. Engaged directly by President Joe Ripp. |
| Dubai Airport | Renegotiated $2 billion of debt during cash flow crisis for the Minister of Finance. |
| Nationwide | Senior executive with full P&L responsibility for Intermediary Markets business with £5 billion annual sales. |
| $18 billion | Total shareholder value generated across career — clients include AXA, Barclays, Capital One, HSBC. |
I have spent my career working with mid-market businesses at inflection points: firms that are either already in difficulty or showing the early signs of it. The work at AlixPartners gave me a precise sense of what these firms look like 12 to 18 months before the problems become public.
I work with a small group of experienced practitioners — former Kearney consultants and operational CFOs and COOs — brought in where the engagement requires it. The model is deliberate: senior people only, no juniors, no bloated teams. You get the thinking and the doing, without the overhead. Then we leave.
I work with CEOs and CFOs directly. That is the only way this kind of engagement produces honest results.
If you recognise your situation, the next step is a 30-minute conversation
No pitch deck. No sales process. A direct conversation about your first 90 days and whether this engagement is the right fit.