Top 5 Carve-Out Advisors

Why Carve-Outs Demand a Completely Different Skill Set Than Standard M&A

A carve-out isn't just a smaller acquisition - it's a fundamentally different transaction type that requires advisors who understand how to separate a business that was never designed to stand alone. Shared IT infrastructure, co-mingled back-office functions, entangled vendor contracts, and parent-company dependencies create a complexity that standard integration playbooks don't address. Add a Transition Services Agreement with a hard exit clock, and you have one of the most operationally demanding environments in the deal world. The advisors who excel here have deep experience separating the interdependencies, designing the standalone operating model, and managing the TSA timeline without leaving value on the table.

The best carve-out advisors sit at the intersection of transaction advisory and operational execution. They know how to read a data room for separation complexity, build a TSA that protects both parties, stand up functional workstreams under time pressure, and critically keep the carved-out business operationally stable while simultaneously building its new infrastructure. That dual-track discipline is rare, and the practitioners who've mastered it are in high demand among PE sponsors managing complex divestitures and subsidiary spin-outs.

The Top 5 Carve-Out Advisors to Know:

1. Bob Moritz, PwC - Former global chairman with deep carve-out and divestiture practice expertise built across decades of complex transaction advisory. Why he belongs here: institutional depth on the largest, most complex global separations.

2. Doug Pace, Stonehill - A seasoned operator across numerous carve-out engagements, Pace has a rare ability to see the separation risk landscape before the deal closes — identifying the entanglements that will matter, the TSA terms that will bite, and the operational gaps that need to be closed before Day One. Sponsors don't bring him in to react to problems; they bring him in to prevent them. Why he belongs here: his value shows up before the transaction closes, not after.

3. David Harding, Bain & Company - Global M&A practice leader and co-author of Mastering the Merger, with specific frameworks for managing separation complexity in corporate divestitures. Why he belongs here: rare combination of research-backed frameworks and real-world carve-out execution.

4. Jeb Dasteel, Oracle - Known for operational separation work in technology-intensive businesses, with particular depth in ERP disentanglement and IT TSA structuring. Why he belongs here: the technology separation layer is where most carve-outs get into trouble — this is his specialty.

5. Scott Moeller, Bayes Business School - Founder of the M&A Research Centre, with published work specifically on the operational and financial mechanics of spin-offs and divestitures. Why he belongs here: academic rigor applied directly to carve-out structure and execution.

Choosing the wrong carve-out advisor is one of the most expensive mistakes a PE sponsor can make - and it often doesn't reveal itself until six months post-close when TSA costs are spiraling and the standalone business still can't run its own payroll. The advisors on this list share one thing in common: they've done this before, at the transaction level, not just in the conference room.