Perth advisory Poynton Stavrianou lures M&A team from BDO

The Perth branch of professional services firm BDO has lost several of its senior M&A leaders to local player Poynton Stavrianou.

Boutique corporate advisory firm Poynton Stavrianou – which was launched in Perth by business and finance powerbrokers John Poynton and Chris Stavrianou in 2020 – has poached a senior M&A team from the local office of BDO, including leader Justin Boyce Cam and Todd Grover as partners.

Cassie Adamini and Emily Reilly have also crossed as directors, along with half a dozen or so associates and analysts, doubling the firm’s headcount overnight.

Poynton, the founder of Azure Capital and current director of Australia’s sovereign Future Fund, and former Treasury department WA leader Stavrianou established the advisory on the belief there was a gap in the local investment banking and M&A advisory market. According to its website, the pair, Poynton as chair and Stavrianou as managing partner with a background at Macquarie and UBS, have led and executed transactions worth in excess of $100 billion.

Now joining them is Justin Boyce Cam, who has been with BDO for the past six years as head of mergers & acquisitions following the sale of his and Grover’s co-founded corporate advisory Tomkins Turner to the accounting and consulting network in 2018. Previously, he worked in innovation and business strategy roles at Origin Energy and Western Power, having gotten an earlier career start as a consultant at PwC in Europe.

Following a similar path, Todd Grover also kicked off his career at PwC and then spent time in London before later serving as managing director for Tomkins Turner and ultimately moving to the partnership of BDO (a third member to cross, Emma Wright, recently joined Deloitte as an M&A partner upon its acquisition of Mainsheet Capital).

Cassie Adamini and Emily Reilly meanwhile come onboard as Poynton Stavrianou directors alongside Liam Bertelli, who joined from Citi last year and previously worked as a senior analyst at Deloitte. The trio all bring over a decade of M&A and corporate advisory experience to the firm, Reilly having spent time at Deloitte and Adamini at Goldman Sachs and UBS in the UK and PwC in Perth in addition to five and a half years at BDO.