One on One with AlixPartners' William Callender

Following its August acquisition of retail financial services consultancy, Mercatus, AlixPartners continues to broaden its footprint in the financial services sector, this time by hiring William Callender as a Managing Director of the firm's Financial Services Practice. Callender joins AlixPartners from First Manhattan Consulting Group, where he headed its Risk Management practice. Callender says there will be challenges in the year ahead as the U.S. economy continues its slower-than-desired recovery, and that part of his role at AlixPartners will be to help clients recognize those challenges and turn them into opportunities. Callender sat down with Consulting One on One to discus his new role.

Consulting: Why did you decide to join AlixPartners?

Callender: I was familiar with the AlixPartners' name and their capabilities. In joining the firm, I was really impressed with a number of components. We have a model that is very focused on what clients are interested in these days: Solving important problems and developing solutions that are fact-based and targeted on the challenges facing clients as well as developing pragmatic solutions to go out and implement those ideas and recommendations to effect change. The capabilities of AlixPartners, both on a global and domestic basis and in terms of coverage and client relationships, were very compelling to me. My role will be to continue to develop and expand our capabilities around risk management—spanning anywhere from enterprise risk management to governance topics at the board and senior management levels to model development within clients for aspects related to credit risk and balance-sheet risk to help improve business decisions—whether in portfolio management, pricing and so forth.