Corporate advisory
Standing counsel to owners, chief executives and boards on growth, scale, operating model and turnaround.
William (Bill) Best · Corporate advisory, C-suite and board coaching
Counsel from someone who has carried the decision.
Garrett Lane Advisors is the practice of William (Bill) Best — over four decades as a chief executive, chief operating officer, chief financial officer and board member across real estate, mining, wealth and investment management, banking, fintech and professional services, and more than 120 M&A transactions and financings completed on both sides of the table.
Growth and scale, transactions and integrations, restructurings, governance, and the succession conversations nobody wants to start. Hands-on, not theoretical.
Garrett Lane Advisors40+Years in operating and board roles, C-suite throughout
120+M&A transactions and financings completed — buy side and sell side, debt and equity
$675M → $4.25BAssets rebuilt since 2016, with revenue from $10.9M to $32.7M
12.8×Profitability growth — with EBITDA compounding at 27.4% a year across the five years from 2021
$850M+Debt restructured as lead restructuring officer
Five practices, one practitioner
01
02
CEO & C-suite coaching
Confidential one-to-one work with chief executives and their direct reports, aimed at judgement rather than technique.
03
M&A, capital raising & financing advisory
Transaction readiness, debt and equity raising, buy- and sell-side support, and the integration that follows the close.
04
Board effectiveness
Board and committee reviews, director development, succession and the governance architecture underneath both.
05
Team facilitation
Top-team alignment where the strategy is agreed on paper and the executive group is not agreed in practice.
— Position
Why one adviser
A large firm sends a team, a methodology and a deck. That is the right answer for some problems. It is the wrong answer for a chair deciding whether to move on a chief executive, or a CEO deciding whether to tell the board how bad it actually is.
Those conversations need one person who carries the whole context and is accountable for the advice. I have sat in the operating seat for a turnaround, a consolidation, a court-supervised restructuring, a post-merger integration and a capital raise — not advised from the outside while someone else lived with the consequences.
Work is deliberately limited to a small number of engagements at a time, and I decline anything where I already act for a competitor or a party on the other side of a live transaction.
— Clients
Who I work with
- Founders, owners and family offices deciding whether to professionalise, sell, or hand over
- Chief executives and C-suite leaders in a step-up role or a first twelve months
- Chairs, lead directors and nominating & governance committees
- Private-equity and venture-backed boards through growth, scale and exit
- Businesses in turnaround, restructuring or post-merger integration
- Parties on either side of a transaction — preparing for one, running one, or living with one that has already closed
— Reach
Sectors and markets
Sectors
- Real estateDevelopment, construction, investment and management — retail, residential and mixed use
- Mining and resourcesExploration through financing to initial production
- Wealth and investment managementAdvisory channels, platforms and asset growth
- Banking and financial servicesCorporate banking, real estate lending and syndications
- FintechPlatform businesses and the operators who have to run them
- Professional servicesPartnerships, practice economics and post-merger integration
Markets
- North AmericaUnited States and Canada, with particular depth in Canada
- EuropeParticularly the United Kingdom and Ireland
- AfricaSub-Saharan, from mining and resource financing
- Australia and New Zealand
Based in Chicago and Toronto. Outside these sectors the practice is largely sector-agnostic — the questions a board faces do not change as much as the industry language does.
A first conversation costs nothing.
Ninety minutes on the decision actually in front of you. If it is useful, we talk about what a working arrangement looks like. If it is not, it is not.