Keynote Private Equity Panel - Where are Managers placing their retail and consumer bets?

SPEAKERS:

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Bill Cooling is responsible for originating new investment opportunities, diligencing new business opportunities, structuring transactions and working with our partner companies. Bill has spent more than 15 years focused on the global consumer and retail sectors. Prior to joining TSG, Bill served as Managing Director and Head of Consumer/Retail Mergers & Acquisitions at Jefferies. While at Jefferies, he also served as Co-Head of the Global Junior Resource Initiative for the Investment Bank. With a focus on advising high growth businesses, his clients have included Morphe Cosmetics, Elemis, Amplify Brands (Skinny Pop), Kendra Scott, PetIQ, Too Faced, and Varsity Brands.  In 2019, Bill was recognized by The Deal as Consumer/Retail Dealmaker of the Year.

Prior to Jefferies, Bill was a Managing Director at Gleacher & Company. He began his career working in the Consumer, Retail & Healthcare Group at J.P. Morgan.  Bill received a BA, with honors, in Government from Georgetown University.

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Erin Edwards joined TZP Group as a Partner in July 2020.  Prior to TZP, Erin spent 10 years at North Castle Partners, a private equity firm focused on consumer investments that benefit from healthy living and aging trends.  During her time there, Erin focused on originating, executing and monitoring investments across a wide range of sub-sectors in the consumer industry including food and beverage, vitamins and supplements, sports nutrition, beauty and personal care, and fitness.  Erin worked closely with the executive management teams and stepped in as interim-CFO on several occasions to help those teams maximize shareholder value. Prior to joining North Castle, Erin was an investment professional at AEA Investors, where she focused on the execution and monitoring of investments across various B2B and B2C segments, and Insight Venture Partners, where she sourced, executed and monitored various investments across the software and technology verticals. She also worked as Director of Corporate Development at Acronis Software, where she helped lead various financial and strategic initiatives. Erin graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Economics.

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Katie Harris Storer joined Blackstone in 2020 and is a Principal focused on consumer growth equity investments.

Prior to joining Blackstone’s Growth Equity team, Katie was a Vice President at The Carlyle Group focused on U.S. buyout investment opportunities in the Consumer, Media & Retail sector. Previously, Katie worked at Wellspring Capital Management, a middle-market private equity firm in New York and at Deutsche Bank, where she focused on the consumer and retail sectors.

Katie received an M.B.A from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in business administration from Washington & Lee University.

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Simon Jewkes is a Principal in our Strategy and Transactions practice based in New York and serves as Grant Thornton’s National Managing Principal for the Retail industry. He focuses on bringing the firm’s Advisory, Audit and Tax services to private equity and corporate clients and has worked on more than 200 transactions on both the buy-side and sell-side across a broad range of industry sectors in North America and Europe on deals ranging in size from $5 million up to $30 billion. Simon is our Consumer Products and Retail Transaction leader and has led teams including financial, tax, IT, HR, insurance and operational due diligence. He has broad experience working across the Consumer and Retail industry and PE clients have included Eurazeo Brands, Mistral Equity, Tengram, TZP Group, Vintage Capital and Alleghany Capital. Corporate clients that Simon has worked for include Franchise Group Inc, Estee Lauder, Church and Dwight, Target, Vitamin Shoppe and Dicks Sporting Goods and he has recent experience of working with SPAC’s. Simon's specialization includes QoE and profitability analyses, net working capital and net debt analysis, review of financial projections, cash flow modeling and purchase agreement consultation. Simon also has experience of cost savings and synergy analysis, merger integration, carve-out transactions, restructuring, refinancing transactions and IPO readiness.