A flavour of the new partnership with LGG Advisors
We spoke to Thiago Guimarães from LGG Advisors regarding their strategic partnership with MAWW and their plans for future joint ventures.
Thiago spoke about how he started his business. He had been working in investment banking for Barclays in the TMT team (telecom, media and tech). At that time they were using a service provider based in India who were an outsourced contractor service. Thiago realised that this was a great business model as it allowed for added flexibility. However, he quickly realised that the skillsets didn’t match and there was also an issue with the difference in time zone, which would ultimately result in work delivery below expectations. In 2017, Thiago started LGG Advisors using the same business model but trying to fix the problems he had seen. He located his company in western Europe, in Portugal and now Spain, where there is total time zone alignment with Europe, and was able to access a fantastic pool of talent which were also cost-effective and well-trained. They recruited from PEs and investment banks people with the right skill set and experience.
Their first years were all about building up their credibility, track record and trust with clients. Once they were able to get to the proof-of-concept phase, they started scaling up very rapidly and began working with several high-profile clients, such as large and sophisticated investment banks, M&A boutiques and PE funds, which gave them lots of visibility. The first half of this year saw things slow down due to rising interest rates and signs of economic recession, but they are on a steady trajectory of growth. Thiago pointed out that uncertainty in the market actually works in their favour, as there is always a lag between clients having projects and them being able to recruit the necessary resources to work on those projects – a gap LGG’s service can fill in 24 hours if needed. Their USP is the ability to provide top talent with flexibility at a competitive cost.
They had a meeting with MAWW, where they met Rui Delgado, the Executive Director, who invited them to come to the Rainmaker Cconference in Copenhagen last year. They attended as a sponsor and also gave a speech about the industry. It was a great way to get to know people and see the incredible environment that MAWW has in its many members around the globe.
In this first phase, LGG is augmenting MAWW’s capacity and capabilities with Industry reports to showcase MAWW Industry groups’ knowledge and expertise.
The next phase, they hope that all members will be able to use their services on an as-needed basis, for initiating and executing corporate finance and M&A tasks.
They have found their partnership with MAWW to have been so far, a very interesting experience and are delighted with the opportunity to highlight and emphasise the expertise of Industry groups and help build the IG reports, supporting MAWW’s efforts to be a leading global M&A advisory network.