Catalant names Tye Howell managing partner of private equity
The on-demand consulting platform hands its PE practice to a former operating partner as sponsors keep leaning on flexible advisory over fixed engagements.
Catalant has appointed Tye Howell as managing partner of its private equity business, giving the on-demand consulting platform a former operating partner to run a practice that already counts three-quarters of the top 100 PE firms by AUM among its clients, according to citybiz.
Catalant positions itself as "Consulting 2.0," assembling purpose-fit teams of independent experts and operators around specific portfolio company problems rather than selling a fixed engagement structure. The company markets the model as an alternative to conventional consulting for both PE sponsors and Fortune 500 buyers.
Howell's brief covers the next phase of growth for the PE practice, which the company says works with three-quarters of the top 100 private equity firms by assets under management. The work centers on value creation and transformation initiatives across sponsor portfolios, according to the announcement.
"I spent years as an operating partner wishing I had access to a model like Catalant's." , Tye Howell, Managing Partner, Private Equity at Catalant, in the company announcement
Howell framed the operating-partner problem in the announcement: portfolio companies need expertise that can be deployed quickly against specific value creation priorities, then adjusted as those initiatives evolve. He argued that scaling from an individual expert to a larger team lets a portfolio address operational needs without committing to a fixed consulting structure.
The hire is a signal about who Catalant thinks its buyer is. Operating partners at sponsors sit between the deal team and the portfolio CEO, and they are the ones who decide whether a value-creation gap gets filled by an internal hire, a Big Three engagement, an independent operator, or a platform like Catalant. Putting a former operating partner in charge of the practice puts a peer across the table.
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What to watch next: Catalant's next disclosed engagement or revenue data point on the PE side, and whether competing platforms respond with their own operating-partner-level hires.
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