Jack Prouty

President - M&A Leadership Council

Jack. Prouty is the managing partner of Prouty, Montgomery and Partners (PM+P) and a subject matter expert in the field of mergers and integrations.  He has over thirty years of line management and consulting experience working with Fortune 1000 companies on effectively integrating acquired companies, repositioning/transforming their business for improved market success and conducting large scale change programs for bottom-line benefits. With PM+P, Mr. Prouty’s work has focused on assisting executives of major companies across the life cycle of transactions: acquisitions, mergers, consolidations, joint ventures, divestitures, and roll-ups. Mr. Prouty’s role is to manage a multi-discipline consulting team that will work in the trenches with client teams through the various stages of an integration to ensure successful planning and implementation. The emphasis is on addressing all the strategy, people, process and technology areas so during the process the value of the deal is realized. While Mr. Prouty has a depth of industry and functional knowledge and experiences, his role is to bring to clients his specialized expertise in what it takes to effectively execute a successful integration. 
 

Mr. Prouty’s professional experience includes the following:

• Assisted over 60 companies in various pre- and post-acquisition integration planning and implementation projects. Scope of work has included integration risk assessment during the Due Diligence process; working with the senior executives of the acquiring company to “jump-start” the integration strategy and planning; working across the cross-company functional teams on the integration planning and implementation activities; managing the cultural and people issues while assisting the two organizations through the change process; running the program management office; and working within the client organization to build in-house competencies in effective merger integration and transferring PMP’s tools and methodologies to the organization to support this on-going effort.
   
• He is a nationally recognized expert in Mergers and Acquisitions. His point of view on business integration issues have been widely solicited and has been quoted in such magazines as Business Week, Chemical Week, CFO Magazine, Red Herring, Deal Magazine, Mergers & Acquisitions, and  eCFO Magazine as well as numerous newspapers such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.
   
• Mr. Prouty is a frequent speaker on the subject of merger integration. He conducts over 20 workshops and seminars a year on the subject, through Step-Change Management, The Conference Board, Fulcrum and other educational forums, where he offers valuable insights and lessons learned in how to improve success in integrating acquired companies.
   
• Led the turnaround and profitable growth of a Midwest retailer as a member of the Executive Team.  Activities included market repositioning, core process redesign, more effective leverage of information technology, cultural change, people skills upgrades, financial management and control, post-acquisition consolidation and integration, and creative cost reduction/margin improvement/revenue growth programs.  Resulted in significant sales growth coupled with greater profitability improvements.
   
• Managed multi-discipline consulting/client teams in charge of major business change programs for a large number of Fortune 500 companies (in industries such as consumer products, chemical manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and financial services).  This work has focused on strategy formulation, operational improvement, process re-engineering, and business transformation enterprise-wide or in specific business units/core processes.
   
• Assisted a number of major Fortune 100 companies in significantly reducing overhead and operating costs, integrating essential support services within the business units to achieve improved service/value alignment, improving the use of information systems and services to more cost effectively support the business and its goals, instilling a more customer-focused orientation, and implementing change programs for continuous improvements.

Prior to starting PM+P and its predecessor company, Step-Change Management, Mr. Prouty was Partner-in-Charge of Business Integration for KPMG, LLP. Earlier as a Vice President at Gemini Consulting he had worked with Fortune 100 companies on large scale change programs and business transformations.  He has also worked as Senior Vice President and CFO of Finance and Administration for Younkers Retail Department Store.  As a member of the Executive Committee, he was employed to assist in the financial turnaround of the company and directed the merger of Brandeis Department Stores into Younkers, Inc.  He has also been the COO of AirOcare, Inc. and spent his early consulting years at Arthur D. Little and A.T. Kearney.

 
Mr. Prouty received his Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of California in Santa Barbara.  He was awarded a Masters of Business Administration from the UCLA Graduate School of Management.  
 

Mr. Prouty has always been a frequent speaker and writer on the subject of Merger Integration, Business Transformation and Strategic Information Technology.  He has been a member of the American Management Association, the National Retail Federation (Executive Committee of Finance and Information Technology), and has served on miscellaneous professional and non-profit boards.