Fairlead Advisors
Hands-on engagements + intelligence

You can’t steerwhat you can’t see.

Management runs the company. You steer it. We make sure you can see it.

Embedded operating leadership for PE-backed companies: asset management, sell-side, restructuring, fundraising, and finance, with the tools we build inside the work.

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80+embedded engagements
16sectors
2010operating inside portfolios since
Two problems

Every portfolio company has two problems.

Problem one

Information

The visible problem. Revenue, margin, cash: the numbers every sponsor manages and a crowded market of firms offers to fix.

Most of the market competes here.

Problem two

Performance

The harder problem. Knowing what is actually happening inside the company: the visibility LPs hold sponsors accountable for.

Most sponsors only solve one of the two.

What we do

Five ways we take the seat.

1

Asset management

The operating partner or board seat, and the week-to-week that comes with it: budget and capex discipline, plan versus actual, the reporting cadence the fund expects.See the scope
2

Sell-side preparation and execution

Clean historicals, a defensible forecast, a data room that already exists. The same team that runs the company runs the process to sell it.See the scope
3

Restructuring

13-week cash as the operating document, lender and covenant conversations, a cost structure taken down to what the business can carry.See the scope
4

Fundraising

Capital raise preparation and execution: model, materials, diligence file, including project finance and tax equity for development-stage platforms.See the scope
5

Finance and back-office management

Interim CFO, COO, and Controller seats with the team underneath: monthly close, AP and AR, audit support, G&A and vendor discipline.See the scope
How it runs

Operating discipline, on the sponsor’s clock.

Embedded leadership

Fractional and interim CEO, CFO, COO, Controller. You don't get one person: you get the team.

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Overhead discipline

G&A reduction, vendor management, 13-week cash forecasting, covenant compliance.

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Real-time visibility

Sponsors see what's happening without depending on management, or Fairlead, to tell them.

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Exit-ready

The same team that runs the company runs the process to sell it.

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The field

No competitor solves both halves.

WhoOperatorsVisibility
Big 4Partial team on site; no live visibility between reports.
Restructuring firmsSenior people, engaged late; no live data.
Solo fractional CFOsOne person; no platform behind them.
AI & data vendorsSoftware without operator access to the business.
FairleadBoth halves, integrated, at portfolio scale.
Results

Selected engagements.

Three of eighty-plus. Metric first, in the operator’s vocabulary.

KKR2020

Cordia

$1.9B carve-out, stood up as a standalone platform

Fairlead embedded through the $1.9B carve-out of a district energy platform, with Adam Carte as interim CEO: the finance function, the reporting, and the operating cadence a standalone company needs from day one.

Interim CEOOperating PartnerM&A
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PE-backed2016–2018

Cadre Proppants

3× run-rate EBITDA in 18 months

Tripled run-rate EBITDA in 18 months: embedded finance leadership through the turnaround and into the exit.

Interim CFORestructuring
See the engagement
Ares2022

GRP Holdco

$82.5M tax equity raised

Ran the tax equity process for a 116 MW biomass platform with Ares-led project debt: $82.5M raised with the same team that ran the monthly close.

Interim CFOM&A
See the engagement
See all results
The compounding asset

AI gets better with operators behind it.

Fairlead has fifteen years of them, inside the companies.

More data doesn’t make AI smarter. An operator who’s done the job does, and every engagement adds another one.

  • Builtinside the seat
  • Usedon live work
  • Reusedacross the portfolio

When a $720K utility claim landed on a portfolio company’s desk, Solaris returned a four-option decision memo, every number traced to its source, with ~$360K in expected savings on the table. Learn more

15years inside the companies
since 2010

Designed for how PE actually works.

Our compensation is tied to the sponsor’s success. We earn alongside the sponsor, not in front of them, and current fees run a fraction of Big 4 and investment-bank rates.

Success-linkedScales with the situationA fraction of Big 4
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