Richard Cleary
Verified Expert in Finance
Finance Expert
Austin, TX, United States
Toptal member since November 17, 2022
Richard is a Columbia MBA and CFA charterholder with 13 years of experience helping C-level executives at Fortune 500 companies. His work includes competitive benchmarking, KPI identification, budgeting, strategic planning, and linking plans to compensation targets to drive employee behavior tailored to a client's unique culture. Richard enjoys freelancing because he is passionate about aligning pay for performance and helping companies and those who work for them maximize value.
Career Highlights
Education Highlights
Certification Highlights
Case Studies
Expertise
- Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
- Economic Value Added
- Equity Research
- Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)
- Incentive Plan Design
- Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A)
- Root Cause Analysis
- Valuation
Work Experience
Vice President
Fortuna Advisors
- Led project teams of four consultants on major engagements, developing project plans, conducting executive interviews, preparing C-suite and board presentations, overseeing associate consultants, and proposing new projects.
- Designed short- and long-term incentive compensation plans acceptable to investors and proxy advisors while simultaneously achieving strategic objectives and shaping organizational culture.
- Prepared models and presentations for public company board meetings.
- Extracted market expectations embedded in stock prices by decomposing analyst targets and guidance.
- Valued business units to show wealth creation drivers and reallocated shared corporate expenses to these business units.
- Examined acquisitions and divestitures in EVs of $300 million, $500 million, $1.3 billion, and $2.1 billion.
- Valued capital budgeting projects ranging from $20 million to $350 million and ran Monte Carlo simulations.
Associate Director
Institutional Shareholder Services | EVA Dimensions
- Reported directly to the CEO of ISS Corporate Solutions with three direct reports and a revenue of $1.2 million. My primary role was to retain recurring revenue while identifying new leads and prospects.
- Collaborated with executives at Fortune 500 firms, including Ball Corporation, BorgWarner, a large NY-based beverage company, and an MI-based cereal maker.
- Benchmarked KPIs and identified improvement levers, automating this process into a quarterly reporting rhythm.
- Recommended best practices and cost savings opportunities.
- Improved the methodology on adjusted and marginal ROIC and EVA calculations, capitalizing operating leases, restructuring, R&D, and advertising.
- Valued business units for emerging market companies, including on-site projects in Argentina, Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, and Trinidad, becoming skilled in currency translation issues and international WACC calculations.
Equity Research Associate
CLSA
- Covered 16 companies in the gaming and lodging space trading in New York and Hong Kong.
- Published 44 research reports on the sector and specific companies.
- Tracked weekly and monthly economic data, including GGR, for different jurisdictions, building models to examine value creation levers and scenario analyses surrounding market developments and M&A.
- Provided valuable insights to buy-side clients, enabling better-informed investment decisions.
Senior Financial Analyst
EVA Dimensions
- Helped clients benchmark, set performance targets, analyze strategic plans, review M&A opportunities, and assess investor expectations to drive shareholder value.
- Improved the methodology on adjusted and marginal ROIC and EVA calculations, capitalizing operating leases and restructuring expenses, converting accrual accounts to a cash basis, and capitalizing and amortizing R&D and advertising expenses.
- Benchmarked performance on ROIC value drivers, recommending the adoption of peer best practices.
Senior Financial Analyst
Stern Stewart & Co.
- Assisted clients in value-based strategies, planning, corporate financial advisory, and compensation.
- Created a marketing screener ranking each company in the Russell 3000 by ROIC using Bloomberg automatic data updates.
- Examined proxy statements and recommended changes to management compensation structures.
Education
Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Columbia Business School - New York, NY, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Commerce
University of Virginia - Charlottesville, VA, USA
Certifications
Series 7, 63, 87, and 89
Securities and Exchange Commission
CFA
CFA institute
Skills
Finance
Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Equity Research, Valuation, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Economic Value Added, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Incentive Simulations, Capital Budgeting, Due Diligence, Financial Modeling, Three-statement Modeling, Profitability Analysis, Valuation Multiples, Valuation Modeling, Forecasting, Revenue & Expense Projections, Budgeting, Fundraising
Output Software
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint
Data & Analysis Software
Bloomberg, Capital IQ
Other
Finance, Compensation Programs, Root Cause Analysis, Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), Security Analysis, Regression Modeling, Investor Relations, Capital Allocation, Benchmarking, Cost Allocation, Research, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Strategic Planning, Incentive Plan Design, Financial Training, Change Management, Break-even Analysis, Investor Presentations, Pitch Decks, Reporting, Business Models, Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), Investment Banking, Fintech, Software as a Service (SaaS), SaaS, Business Technology, Excel Expert, Project Management, Management Reports, Dashboards, Excel VBA, Data Visualization, B2B
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