Duff & Phelps appoints Managing Directors in Mumbai office

Global financial advisory firm Duff & Phelps has made two promotions to Managing Director level in its Mumbai office: Sanjay Ray and Shreyansh Vora.

Ray has been a Senior Advisor at the firm’s valuation advisory services department for more than five years. He was previously a Director at valuation firm American Appraisal, and made the transition when the latter was acquired by Duff & Phelps in 2015. He was at American Appraisal for five years before making the move.

Prior to that, Ray was an Assistant Manager in the financial advisory services team at Big Four accounting and advisory firm Deloitte. Over the course of his 18-year career, he has advised on financial reporting and tangible asset valuation for clients across India and the Asia Pacific, spanning a variety of sectors including steel, power, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and a number of others.

Vora is a transaction advisory services specialist who joined Duff & Phelps from Deloitte more than a year ago. He has since been involved in due diligence at the firm, and will now take over as Managing Director of the Transaction Advisory Services division. Vora spent more than six years at Deloitte, where he worked on corporate merger & acquisition support and private equity investments.

Over the course of a professional career that spans nearly two decades, Vora has advised on over 200 transactions, often in the form of end-to-end support on deals. Based in India, he has supported a number of global clients with entry into the Indian market and vice-versa.

Both Ray and Vora’s promotions are part of a wave of 32 promotions to managing director level that Duff & Phelps has made across its global operations, with four in Asia, ten in Europe and the rest in the United States. The firm operates across 25 countries worldwide with just under 4,000 professionals, with four India offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and New Delhi.

The firm offers a variety of financial advisory services, including support with valuation, disputes & investigations, restructuring, taxation, alternative assets and a variety of others. In January, Duff & Phelps was acquired by the Global Investor Consortium for just over $4 billion, giving Stone Point Capital and Further Global the majority stake.

The new ownership signalled plans for ramping up global operations, and the wave of promotions across global offices now is presumably a move in this direction. Global expansion plans will presumably be challenged by current Covid-19 induced circumstances, although financial advisory services might come into significant demand in the near future as businesses take measures to mitigate the financial damage.

At any rate, Ray and Vora take charge at a time when the M&A transaction landscape in the country is more vibrant than it has ever been, although it remains to be seen how Covid-19 will impact this scenario.