Case Studies

Arbano Group Case Studies

The cases below describe recent Arbano Group work. Client names are held back where the mandate makes that appropriate. Numbers are given where they can be defended.

Transactions & Operations

A Carve-Out for a Sponsor-Owned Industrials Group

The Client: A sponsor-owned industrials group operating in three regions, held by a mid-market North American private equity firm for six years by the time Arbano Group was engaged.
What Was Happening: The sponsor's fund was closing on its hold-period exit window. Two of the group's three regional businesses were performing to plan. The third was structurally different from the other two and was holding back the multiple a full-group sale would attract.
What Arbano Group Was Asked to Do: Write the carve-out case for separating the third regional business, run the pre-sale operational preparation for the other two, and hold both workstreams inside one recommendation to the sponsor's investment committee.
What The Work Involved: Arbano Group's Transactions and Operations partners co-led the engagement. The carve-out case rested on a standalone operating model for the divested business and on a set of transitional service arrangements the acquirer could underwrite. The pre-sale work on the retained businesses focused on the working-capital position and on the operating cadence the next owner would inherit.
Where The Client Ended Up: The third regional business was sold to a strategic acquirer at a multiple the sponsor's investment committee had modelled as an upside case. The remaining two-region group went to auction the following quarter and cleared at a valuation the sponsor's original underwriting had described as the base case for the full group.

Strategy & Organization

A Growth Strategy for a Consumer Brand After Its Category Stopped Growing

The Client: A premium consumer brand held by its founding family, sold in North America and Western Europe, with a category position that had defined the segment for a decade.
What Was Happening: The category the brand had grown up inside had stopped growing. Larger competitors had consolidated into conglomerate ownership and had begun competing on price. The founding family and the CEO the family had recently brought in from outside were holding different readings of what to do about it.
What Arbano Group Was Asked to Do: Write a growth strategy the family, the CEO, and the board could hold together. The mandate was framed as a strategy question and understood inside Arbano Group as an organization question sitting behind it.
What The Work Involved: Arbano Group's Strategy and Organization partners co-led the engagement. The strategy work identified adjacent categories the brand's operating advantage would carry into, and priced the investment case for entering them. The organization work described the operating cadence the family and the CEO would run the business through, and the escalation points that would keep the two aligned once the strategy was in market.
Where The Client Ended Up: The brand entered the first of the adjacent categories in the year after the memo was signed off, and has continued into a second. The top line has moved above the level at which it plateaued, and the founding family and the CEO have continued to run the business inside the operating cadence the engagement wrote.

Technology & Risk and Regulatory

A Core-Systems Remediation for a U.S. Life and Annuities Insurer

The Client: A large U.S. life and annuities insurer, publicly listed, with a policy administration platform that had been in service longer than the supervisory expectations now applied to it.
What Was Happening: The insurer's lead state supervisor had raised a finding on the core policy administration platform and had asked for a remediation program in response. The insurer's board had a technology program in flight that had been designed before the finding landed and could not answer to it as written.
What Arbano Group Was Asked to Do: Rewrite the technology program so that it could answer to the supervisory finding, and write the board memo that would carry it. The engagement was scoped as a technology mandate and understood as a regulatory one.
What The Work Involved: Arbano Group's Technology and Digital and Risk and Regulatory partners co-led the engagement. The technology work assessed the platform against the finding, identified the components that had to be replaced against those that could be remediated in place, and wrote a phased plan the CIO's delivery function could execute. The regulatory work wrote the supervisory response and prepared the executive team for the meetings with the supervisor that followed.
Where The Client Ended Up: The remediation plan was accepted by the lead supervisor within the response period the finding had opened. The insurer's delivery function has been executing the plan since. The board has continued to receive quarterly written updates in the format the engagement established.

Strategy & Operations

A Portfolio Review for a Regional Health System

The Client: A non-profit regional health system operating across two states, with a service-line portfolio that had grown by acquisition over the preceding decade and a half.
What Was Happening: The system's operating margin had compressed over successive quarters. The CFO and the COO held the view that the compression was structural and sat inside a small number of service lines. The CEO and the board wanted a reading of the portfolio before deciding which service lines to invest into and which to withdraw from.
What Arbano Group Was Asked to Do: Write a portfolio review across the system's service lines, priced against the operating model each service line would need to run inside. The mandate was framed as a strategy question and delivered as a strategy and operations recommendation.
What The Work Involved: Arbano Group's Strategy and Operations partners co-led the engagement. The strategy work read each service line against demand, reimbursement, and the local competitive position. The operations work priced the operating model each service line would need to reach a defensible margin, and identified the service lines that could not be brought there inside the timeframe the board would accept.
Where The Client Ended Up: The board accepted the review's recommendation to invest into a smaller number of retained service lines and to wind down the ones the operations reading had flagged. Operating margin has recovered across the retained portfolio in the year and a half since the memo was signed off.

Transactions & Risk and Regulatory

A Capital Structure for a State Infrastructure Authority

The Client: A state-level infrastructure authority in the United States, with a capital program covering surface transport and water assets, financed against a revenue base priced by bond issuance and supplemented by federal and state funding.
What Was Happening: The authority's capital programme had grown faster than the revenue base its bond issuance was priced against. A new federal funding route had opened, and the authority's leadership had months rather than years to design a capital structure that could receive it and hold up to legislative and rating-agency scrutiny.
What Arbano Group Was Asked to Do: Design the capital structure. Write the risk framework beneath it. Prepare the authority's leadership for the legislative and rating-agency conversations the structure would have to survive.
What The Work Involved: Arbano Group's Transactions and Risk and Regulatory partners co-led the engagement. The transactions work priced the layered funding against the authority's forward revenue profile. The risk work wrote the framework the authority's board would use to monitor the structure once it was live, and prepared the leadership for the rating-agency conversations that ran alongside.
Where The Client Ended Up: The capital structure was approved by the state legislature in the session following the memo. The federal funding was drawn in the fiscal year that followed. The authority's subsequent bond issuance was received in the market on terms the leadership had presented as the base case.