Corporate Strategy
Portfolio shape, capital allocation, and the two or three moves that will actually matter in five years.
Global strategy & operations counsel
Clear answers to expensive questions.
Meridian advises boards and executive teams on the decisions that move enterprise value — portfolio, operations, and the discipline to see both through. Senior people, small teams, measured outcomes.
$12B
Client value delivered over the past three years, verified against baseline
94%
Of engagements come from returning clients or their direct referrals
46
Markets where our partners have led work across four continents
8.4×
Median measured return on fees across completed transformations
Trusted by boards at
NORDWAVE
Astrelle
COBALT RIDGE
Vantiga
Ferrier–Locke
OKTAVE
01
Expertise
Six practices. One standard: advice we would take with our own capital.
We deliberately stay narrow. Every practice is led by partners who have run the function they now advise on.
Operations & Supply Chain
Cost, resilience, and speed — engineered at plant, network, and contract level, not in the abstract.
Digital & Technology
Technology investment tied to P&L outcomes, not roadmaps that outlive their sponsors.
Organization & Leadership
Operating models, succession, and the incentives that let strategy survive contact with Monday morning.
Risk & Resilience
Scenario discipline for the exposures that don't announce themselves — concentration, continuity, reputation.
Transactions & Integration
Diligence, integration, and separation — value protected on both sides of the signature.
02
How we work
Four phases. No theater in between.
Diagnose
Weeks 1–4A small senior team pressure-tests the question itself. Roughly half our engagements change shape here — far better in week three than in month six.
Design
Weeks 5–10Options priced, sequenced, and stress-tested with the people who will own them. We write recommendations your CFO can audit — decisions and owners, not decks.
Mobilize
Weeks 11–20We stand up the delivery machine alongside your teams: governance, milestones, and the first proof points on the board before quarter's end.
Embed
OngoingWe leave capability, not dependency — playbooks, trained operators, and a measured, scheduled exit. Our best clients need us less each year.
03
Results
Outcomes we can put numbers against.
Selected engagements, anonymized by agreement. Every figure below was measured by the client's own finance function.
Consumer banking · Cost transformation
A universal bank takes $340M out of its run rate — without touching the customer promise.
Twelve years of acquisitions had left the bank with four core platforms, nine operating models, and a cost base drifting three points ahead of revenue. The board wanted cuts; the executive team feared the usual across-the-board damage.
We rebuilt the cost architecture around the eleven journeys customers actually notice, consolidated everything they don't, and sequenced the program so savings funded the next wave. Complaints fell while the cost base did.
“The first advisors we've worked with who treated the run rate as an engineering problem rather than a negotiation.” Group Chief Operating Officer
$340M
Annual run-rate savings, audited by the client's finance function
5.8 pts
Improvement in cost-to-income ratio over two reporting years
18 mo
From mandate to full run-rate — nine months ahead of board plan
Industrial · Supply network redesign
$120M of working capital released from a forty-plant manufacturing network.
A diversified manufacturer had grown its network deal by deal for two decades. Inventory buffered every seam: between plants, between regions, between systems that had never been reconciled.
We mapped the true cost-to-serve for every product-lane pair, redesigned the network around eleven anchor plants, and rewrote supplier contracts around reliability rather than unit price. Lead times fell by nearly half — and stayed down through two demand shocks.
“They found the cash our own systems couldn't see. Then they showed our people how to keep finding it.” Chief Supply Chain Officer
41%
Reduction in average order lead time across the redesigned network
$120M
Working capital released and redeployed within eighteen months
99.2%
On-time-in-full delivery sustained through two demand shocks
Healthcare · Operating model
A hospital group treats 22% more patients with the estate it already owns.
Demand was rising six percent a year; the capital plan said new buildings, a decade of construction, and debt the balance sheet couldn't carry. The question we were asked: is there another way?
There was. Theatre scheduling, discharge pathways, and diagnostic capacity were each running to a different clock. We synchronized them around patient flow, moved decision rights to unit level, and converted the capital plan into a far smaller, targeted program.
“We were about to spend a decade building. Meridian showed us the capacity was already inside the walls.” Group Chief Executive
22%
Increase in treated patients on the existing estate, year over year
31%
Reduction in median elective waiting time across all sites
$85M
Deferred construction capital redirected into clinical capacity
Energy · Portfolio strategy
A generator reweights its portfolio ahead of the curve — and the market pays for it.
The board knew the asset mix had to change. What it lacked was a sequence: which assets to exit, in what order, at what price discipline, and where the proceeds would earn their keep.
We built the divestment ladder around forward price scenarios rather than book value, negotiated from a position of optionality, and redeployed proceeds into contracted capacity before the repricing the market later confirmed.
“Every banker showed us a transaction. Meridian showed us a sequence — and the sequence was worth more.” Board Chair
$1.4B
Capital divested and redeployed across a three-year sequence
2.1×
Total shareholder return versus sector index over the period
30%
Reduction in portfolio emissions intensity, independently verified
04
Perspectives
The Meridian Brief
Short, argued, and occasionally wrong in public — because a point of view you won't defend isn't one.
Why most cost programs refund themselves to the P&L within two years — and the three we studied that didn't.
The difference isn't discipline. It's whether the cost architecture changed, or just the numbers.
The quiet death of the single global supply chain — and the regional lattice replacing it.
Resilience is no longer a premium you pay. Priced properly, it's a discount you collect.
Succession is a strategy problem. Boards should treat it like one.
The best succession plans we've reviewed read like investment theses — with the same rigor about downside.
05
Start here
Bring us the problem that doesn't fit the org chart.
Working sessions are led by a partner, cost nothing, and end with a written point of view — whether or not we proceed together.
- A partner replies within two business days.
- Conflicts are checked before we read a single document.
- If we're not the right firm, we'll say so and suggest who is.
Received. A partner will be in touch.
Expect a considered reply within two business days — including, if useful, a short note on how we'd frame the problem.