I build the models myself
Shaun O’Reilly, Founder, More than advisory. Chartered Accountant. Brisbane.
How I got here
I studied Mathematics at the University of Manchester, then joined PwC in 2013 and spent the next decade working on businesses in difficulty. Restructuring, turnaround and operational improvement, first in the UK and then in Australia. In 2024 I joined Alvarez & Marsal as an Associate Director in their turnaround and restructuring team.
The work was always the same shape underneath. A business is under pressure, the information is incomplete, a decision has to be made within weeks, and somebody has to build the analysis that the decision rests on. I was usually that person. I have built short-term cash flow models in businesses that had none, analysed retail store performance to advise on how to respond to market changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and scored a childcare operator’s entire centre network so its executive team could agree what to sell.
What I noticed over this time is that the model outlasted the project. Long after the engagement closed, the client would still be running the file I built with their team. That was the part of the job with the longest life.
Why I started More than advisory
Two things bothered me about how finance advisory is usually sold.
The first is the report. A consultant arrives, works out what is wrong, writes it down and leaves. The analysis is fine and the business cannot repeat it. Six months later the numbers have moved and the report is stale.
The second is software. You buy a tool that does most of what you want, and the remaining part, which is usually the part specific to your business, you never get. You pay for it every year regardless.
More than advisory does the thing I kept ending up doing anyway, on purpose. I build the model with your team, in the room, so they understand every assumption in it. I teach them how it works while it is being built. Then I hand it over and go. No licence, no subscription, nothing of mine left in your business that you have to keep paying for.
I do not think this is anything new. I think it is what people expected they were buying in the first place.
The sign, the funnel and the name
My degree is in mathematics, so the mark is a maths sign: >, which means “more than”.
The sign is split at the point so it reads as a funnel, which is most of my job. I usually arrive when a lot is going on and there are more options than time. My work is to narrow that down to a few steps the business can act on. The three steps on the lower arm stand for those, and your team takes them with me.
The name comes from the same place. Advice was only ever the first part of the job. I join your team for a period, build the model with them and hand it over, so the work carries on after I leave.
What I have worked on
More than a decade in restructuring and operational improvement at Alvarez & Marsal and PwC, in Australia and the UK, at Associate Director level for the last several years.
Some of what that involved: short-term cash flow models and cash processes for businesses with liquidity pressure, running a crisis management office at a global logistics company after successive cyber-attacks, a site-by-site diagnostic for a childcare operator that led to the sale of 20+ centres, scenario and exit cost modelling for a business unit of a global FMCG group, store network options for a large national retailer, and an analysis toolkit that automated standard financial analysis across an entire advisory practice. Nine of these are written up as case studies.
The restructuring background is the reason I work the way I do. In that environment you never have complete information, the deadline is set by the cash rather than by anyone’s preference, and being approximately right on Tuesday beats being exactly right in a fortnight. It teaches you to find the few numbers that decide the answer and to ignore the rest. It also teaches you to sit with people on the worst week of their working life and be useful rather than impressive.
Qualifications
- Chartered Accountant
- BSc (Hons) Mathematics, University of Manchester
- Former Associate Director, Turnaround and Restructuring, Alvarez & Marsal
- Former Associate Director, Operational Restructuring, PwC Australia, and Manager at PwC in the UK
How I work
I am based in Brisbane and can travel to Melbourne and Sydney as required. I work in person at the start of every engagement and remotely for most of the build.
I do the work myself. There is no delivery team behind me, and if you speak to me about an engagement, I am the person who will turn up and build it. If a piece of work needs skills I do not have, I will say so and help you find someone who does.
I say no to work reasonably often. If a model will not change a decision, or the timeline cannot produce something honest, or the problem is not one I am good at, I would rather tell you in the first conversation than find out in week four.
If you want to talk it through
Send me two lines: what you need and when you are free. I read and answer every email myself.
Get in touch