LAVA couldn’t be happier to announce Sunil Samani’s arrival as our newest Associate Director, taking the M&A team to 14 after a busy summer of rapid growth.
Sunil joined EY on an internship while still at university, before progressing to a grad program to allow him to complete his accountancy qualifications while gaining real-world exposure to the deals environment. The next four years were spent working closely with PE houses to rationalise their portfolios and transform their investments in the post-financial crash world, before he decided to take the leap into banking. He joined the global equity sales desk at Goldman Sachs where he spent five years researching and pitching investment options to institutional investors before heading back to EY to partner with mid and large cap PE houses across a huge range of deal types and industry verticals.
One specific area of expertise was especially attractive to LAVA, namely Sunil’s recent work with several global independent school consolidators on their refinancing processes. While proudly industry-agnostic, LAVA is heavily involved with the education sector having delivered several high profile deals in the space, including the recent sale of L’Ecole des Petits international schools to Globeducate.
This wealth of experience supporting the Private Equity industry to identify targets, optimise bolt on strategies, sell companies and manage refinancing has all led to an exceptional range of knowledge in the financial due diligence space. LAVA’s related technical prowess was therefore one of the major draws for Sunil in considering his options, but another key attraction was the ability to work much more closely with entrepreneurs.
At LAVA, not only are you working directly with entrepreneurs and owner-managers on a daily basis – but the model allows you to really own a deal through to completion and take responsibility for the learnings, both good and bad.
Sunil Samani Associate Director
Further, LAVA’s unique culture had a role to play, with Sunil explaining: ‘Having had the opportunity to meet with the entire team, as well as clients and competitors, it quickly became clear that the perfect culture exists to really take the company where it needs to go.’ Sunil explained that the palpable passion of the entire team, as well as the impressive momentum of the past year, convinced him that everyone was pulling in the same direction and that LAVA presents an environment in which he can thrive.
LAVA partner, Simon Woodcock, hadn’t initially intended to add another team member so soon after other recent joiners, but Sunil’s impressive resume and complementary capabilities made him difficult to resist.
It’s not every day that a brilliant AD crosses your desk, so we’re incredibly lucky to have found three such candidates in such a short space of time, and we’re really excited to see what this expanded capacity and expertise can bring to LAVA and our clients.
Simon Woodcock LAVA Partner
Outside of the office Sunil likes to keep active but can’t abide the gym, instead enjoying running, racket sports and five-a-side football; as well as spending time with his wife Divya and their two young children in the brief periods when he’s not ferrying one or both of them to swimming lessons.
