Fig. 1, operator
Deals break on technology. My job is making sure they don't.
IT due diligence before the bid, carve-outs and integrations after the close, and the run-rate work in between. Fourteen years of it, for private equity funds and the companies they own.
Run the DD demoDiscuss a target
Assistant Director, EY-Parthenon. London. Available for select advisory engagements through Digital Diligence.
Fig. 2, assembly
What I do on a deal
IT due diligence
Red flags, quantified remediation, licensing cliffs, scalability against the growth thesis. Written for the IC, not the CTO.
Carve-out and Day-1
Separation blueprint, TSA catalogue and exit glidepath, readiness drills, vendor novation.
Integration and run-rate
Integration roadmaps that capture synergy without breaking operations. IT P&L transparency, vendor rationalisation, cyber uplift.
Fig. 3, worked examples
Case studies
| Sector | Situation | What I did | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | Multi-country carve-out on a tight clock | Day-1 blueprint, TSA catalogue and glidepath, readiness drills, vendor novation | Clean Day-1, TSA exit two months early |
| Healthcare | Several acquired entities, one operating model needed | Integration roadmap, application and infrastructure harmonisation | 15% opex synergy, no service loss |
| Private equity | Buy-side IT DD ahead of close | Rapid assessment of stack, vendors, scalability, cyber; remediation and growth capex quantified | $50m risk-adjusted view informed the bid |
| Financial services | Post-merger audit and regulatory pressure | MFA, incident response refresh, controls baseline, board reporting | First-time audit pass |
| Industrial | Global ERP migration to cloud, mid carve-out | Programme governance, cutover planning, hypercare | Order-to-cash stable inside three weeks |
| Energy | Leadership without unified KPIs | Modern BI stack and executive dashboards tied to deal KPIs | Time-to-insight down 35% |
Fig. 4, service history
Experience
- 2026 to present
Assistant Director, EY-Parthenon
- Technology strategy and transaction advisory for private equity and corporate clients.
- 2021 to 2026
Senior Director, Technology Transformation, FTI Consulting
- Led 20+ IT due diligence, reverse DD and sell-side DD engagements.
- Owned end-to-end carve-out and integration execution with zero critical Day-1 incidents.
- 2017 to 2021
Director, Technology Transformation, FTI Consulting
- Pre-deal assessments, separation planning and integration roadmaps across UK and Europe.
- $10m+ annualised savings through vendor rationalisation and operating-model redesign.
- 2015 to 2017
Assistant Manager, Deloitte UK, Banking and Capital Markets
- Analytics and modelling for financial clients; tooling that improved data quality and audit efficiency.
- 2012 to 2015
Data and Insight Analyst, Capita
- Designed a statistically robust RCT supporting national-scale programme decisions.
Digital Diligence
AI-assisted IT due diligence for PE and VC deal teams. Faster first-pass red-flag reports on data rooms, reviewed by a human who has done it manually for a decade.
Demonstrations
Two cut-down versions of things I actually build on engagements. Illustrative logic; the real method stays in the engagement.
Fig. 9, not to scale
Day-1 Runner
Every separation I've run, compressed into a 90-second arcade game. You are a carve-out. Legacy mainframes, licence cliffs and TSA extensions add months to your exit; synergies pull it forward. Reach month 36 and the deal dies.
Daily seeded run, global leaderboard, near-miss bonuses. Nobody on a deal team has beaten the Regulator sweep yet.
Fig. 5, connection
Contact
A target you want a second opinion on, a separation with an unclear TSA scope, or a role worth a conversation. Either way, this goes straight to my inbox.
jamal@sheikhly.co.uk
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