About
Allan Gasson

Business Consulting

Strategist – Troubleshooter – Facilitator

Allan Gasson

Allan is a dedicated strategic management consultant who works with a wide variety of businesses and organisations, from public listed companies to family run firms, in developing effective corporate strategies that not only offer support and guidance but also generate sustainable growth.

He is passionate about helping companies and organisations overcome barriers by working with them to develop and achieve strategy alignment for CEOs, NEDs, boards and business units. A particular interest is the ‘role of the corporate centre’ and how it adds value through its intervention into business units whilst ensuring compliance and governance, and the design and operations of shared services.

Allan has worked across a number of different industries and sectors, including consumer, travel, hospitality & leisure, gaming & betting, defence, public services and manufacturing.

Regardless of the project size, Allan brings the same level of vigour to all his engagements. He is particularly interested in:

  • Developing growth and support strategies for online branded businesses.
  • The role of the corporate centre and its impact on organisation design.
  • Creating value in organic and inorganic growth.
  • Portfolio optimisation.
  • The alignment of strategy with Exco, NEDs and business unit heads.
Allan Gasson Business Consultant
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Background

Allan originally trained as a civil engineer before moving into business development and later working as a management consultant for Bain & Co. In the late 1990s, Allan founded Burlington Consultants, a boutique strategy consultancy firm, building the business to 50 fee earning consultants.

He worked with international family businesses right the way up to major global corporations, including:

  • Extensive work across 12 PE firms supporting their M&A strategies and target evaluations.
  • Collaborating with Microsoft across 146 projects that were executed globally.

In 2005, Allan sold Burlington Consultants to Deloitte and joined them as Strategy Partner where he focused on growth, performance improvement, organisation design as well as M&A for businesses and organisations worldwide, and played a critical role in completing five acquisitions between 2013 and 2016.

Key roles at Deloitte included:

  • Lead Relationship Partner for Britvic, Ladbrokes, and Wolseley.
  • Board Director of Deloitte Innovation Investments Ltd.
  • Chairman of the Acquisition Review Board.
  • Lead Partner for Business Development (M&A).

Leaving Deloitte in 2016, Allan launched Allan Gasson Ltd and has since worked on a number of global projects with HNW and UHNW clients, including:

  • Conducting an operating model review for an online FMCG health and beauty product company with investment from Unilever Ventures.
  • A portfolio review for an UHNW family that involved 23 business units, reviewing governance structures, making recommendations on restructuring around compliance and governance functions, and the separation of the business from the family.
  • Advisor and investor to an online cosmetics start-up.
  • Review of a business in Saudi Arabia incorporating making recommendations in respect of selling the business due to succession issues.
  • Developing a comprehensive turnaround plan for an underperforming branded restaurant group comprising of 480 restaurants.
  • Developing a business case for two professional services companies from different geographical locations to merge.

Allan is also an Advisor and Acting Chairman to Fairgrove Partners Ltd and Advisor to Atlantic Bridge Capital.

Outside of management consultancy, Allan is a keen golfer and sailor, with a love of tennis, cycling, Bridge and travel (when time allows!).

Contact Allan
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Testimonials

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When we were growing really fast as a start up, Allan set out our target operating model with a particular focus on our value chain and organisation structure and how the organisation would have to evolve as we get even larger and more complex.  This was extremely useful to me and having this clearly laid down on paper gave me great insight

5
CEO of start up Cosmetics Company, now acquired by Multinational Cosmetics Company
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Allan has worked with us over the last 6 years on different businesses reviewing the past performance uncovering the key drivers of over or underperformance, their current competitive position and future potential and required investment to capture this identified growth. Allan’s work has been excellent and supported some very tough decisions that we have had to make.

5
CEO of Listed Business – Hospitality and Leisure
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Allan, and his team, worked as a strategy consultants for Microsoft for a period of 12 years completed 146 projects for various parts of the Microsoft business around the world in North Amercica, South America, Asia and Europe. His work always surfaced and addressed the critical issues we faced with recommendations on how to improve our methods and approach to selling and distributing our products into the markets via distributors, resellers, VARs and end multinational customers

5
Ex Head of Operations in Europe
Microsoft
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Allan supported us reviewing our governance at the top board level and also at the business unit level. Areas of governance included, purpose, budgeting, accountability, risks, remuneration and reporting. We had a number of people participating in this review. The process has given us clear guidance on areas where we need to improve and put better systems in place and a different culture to support the businesses and all stakeholders.

5
Joint Head of Family Business
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For a number of business units we needed a 360 degree review how attractive were the markets and how well positioned were the businesses to deliver shareholder returns. Allan analysis included looking at the capital intensity of the business and what level of performance was required to cover the cost of capital in each business. This exercise provided us with great insight as to the level of challenge we face and how going forward we should allocate our capital across the portfolio.

5
Chairman of Business Units in Logistics Services