Vijay Chari joins Alvarez & Marsal in Melbourne team
Continuing its run of senior hires across Australia, global consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal has hired Vijay Chari as a Senior Director in Melbourne.
A member of the Private Equity Performance Improvement practice, Vijay Chari brings more than 10 years of experience in large-scale performance improvement programs, corporate strategy and mergers and acquisition, as both an advisor and a corporate practitioner.
He joins Alvarez & Marsal from Kmart Group (a division of Wesfarmers Group), where was Head of Group Strategy responsible for the commercial assessment of strategic opportunities across new markets and capabilities, enterprise-wide corporate planning and investor relations.
Previously, Chari worked at Boston Consulting Group, serving clients in the US and Australia and operating as a leader within the Consumer & Retail and Corporate Finance & Strategy practices. Prior to this, he worked at investment bank UBS serving clients in the natural resources sector.
Throughout his career, Chari has supported clients across multiple ownership structures (listed, family-owned, franchise, and investor-backed) with performance improvement programs, in a range of industries, with a focus on consumer and retail.
His recent experience includes launching a third-party e-commerce fulfilment service offering for a marketplace operator, rolling out a digitised store operating model to drive a 5+% increase in sales for an omnichannel retailer, optimising the store and distribution centre network of a discount department retailer resulting in EBITDA uplift of $40+ million and driving multiple category and store clustering strategies for large retailers.
Chari also has M&A-related experience, including supporting the development of the business case, transitional service agreements and implementation plan for the $10 billion demerger of an Australian retail conglomerate, developing a business plan for a fuel and convenience retailer ahead of a successful trade sale, and handling pre-deal due diligence for an acquisition in the retail space.
Commenting on the appointment, Timo Schmid, who heads the Alvarez & Marsal’s Private Equity Performance Improvement practice in Australia and New Zealand, said: “Vijay’s experience across investment banking, top tier consulting and industry is a highly valuable addition to our team. His expertise as corporate operator complements our ‘hands-on’ offering for value creation in Private Equity.”
