Carving out part of a business: latest practice

Matthew Woodgate, Partner, Grant Thornton Operational Deal Services 
Matthew co-leads the Operational Deal Services team and has been a deal specialist for over 23 years, providing operational advice to corporate and PE vendors and bidders around acquisitions, mergers and divestments. He specialises in helping clients to prepare for and execute divestments or acquisitions requiring separation/carve out, integrations and value creation pre- and post-deal

James Moore, Partner, Grant Thornton Transaction Tax 
James leads UK and international teams providing transaction-related tax advice to clients, predominantly corporates and infrastructure funds. He has been a tax specialist for over 19 years and his work largely focuses on due diligence, structuring, SPA input and modelling from a tax perspective.

Shakaib Qureshi, Senior Legal Consultant, Reckitt
Shakaib specialises in supporting in-house pharmaceutical and healthcare businesses deliver M&A, restructurings and pre or post-transaction optimisations and integration together with delivering senior level interim legal management.

He is currently advising Reckitt on global corporate restructurings as their Senior Legal Consultant.

Most recently, from 2019 to 2025, he worked as Senior Legal Counsel/Managing Director for Indivior (a NASDAQ listed pharmaceutical) where among other matters he supported the global legal M&A and pharmaceutical law functions in a hybrid role which also provided the administrative leadership to their EU operations based out of Dublin. He has led legal teams and critical transactions at Bayer and GE.

Chris Sharpe, Partner, Grant Thornton Transaction Advisory
Chris supports private equity and corporate clients with financial due diligence, both on the sell side and buy-side. He has led a number of carve-out transactions, primarily advising on the sell-side, variously in a vendor assist and vendor due diligence capacity, and working with other advisers to help clients navigate the complexities of these transactions.

Arnie Birss, Investment Director, Inspirit Capital
Arnie is an investment director at Inspirit Capital, an investment firm focussed on corporate carve-outs. In his time at the firm, he has led deals, exits and sat on portfolio company boards in a variety of sectors including consumer, industrials and business services. The commonality of all of Inspirit's investments is that they were all acquired through corporate carve outs, meaning he is an active practitioner and principal for this type of transaction.

Lee Harris, Partner, Eversheds Sutherland Corporate team
Lee is an M&A Partner in the Eversheds Sutherland Corporate group, based in London. He co-chairs Eversheds Sutherland’s International Corporate Reorganisation group and specialises in complex corporate transactional work. He has extensive experience implementing carve-outs for corporate sellers both domestically and internationally.

Aislinn Mae, Director, Grant Thornton M&A Technology Advisory
Aislinn co-leads the M&A Technology Advisory practice, supporting corporate and private equity clients on the technology dimension of transactions. She specialises in technology due diligence, IT carve-outs, integration and post-deal value delivery across sell-side and buy-side mandates. Aislinn brings client-side perspective, having previously delivered IT M&A activities for Unilever globally.