Michael Bates

Michael Bates is a Managing Director in the Corporate Finance & Restructuring segment of FTI Consulting and is based in Sydney.

Michael has 12 years of experience across a wide variety of distressed and non-distressed corporate advisory matters. In recent years, Michael’s primary experience has included undertaking a number of cash and working capital management assignments, independent business and diagnostic reviews for both private and public sector participants, distressed debt restructuring, turnaround planning, commercial and financial due diligence and financial modelling.

Michael has extensive industry sector experience across a range of industries including mining services, construction, resources, manufacturing, property, retail banking and financial services and telecommunications.

Relevant experience

• Secondment into Origin Energy’s retail business unit to help improve its cash forecasting and reporting. Michael was responsible for managing a team within Origin Energy, helping develop a reporting model which was integrated into the IT system to ultimately provide the FP&A  team with better visibility of cash (as requested by the board).
• Project Cammeray – cash management advisor to a large Australian engineering and construction company with turnover in excess of AU$3 billion. Michael helped develop dashboards and trackers as well as a group cash flow template and reporting methodology.
• Project Lachlan – cash management advisor to a large multinational engineering group with turnover in excess of AU$5 billion.  On this engagement, Michael undertook a diagnostic review of existing cash management practices, performed divisional bench marking analysis and assisted separate BUs meet revised cash conversion targets.
• Project Hexagon – independent business review and subsequent debt restructure of a listed manufacturer (turnover of AU$200 million) equipment for OEM mining customers which has operations in Australia, North America, South America and Asia.
• Project Orion – independent business review and subsequent debt restructure of a private drilling manufacturer (turnover of $300 million) and allied service provider to coal mining and materials handling industries.
• Project Hack – pre-acquisition due diligence for the purchase of an automotive parts supplier on behalf of Holden.
• Project Build – advisor to a large listed Australian construction company which had a subsidiary in the Middle East (including on-site viability assessment of projects).
• Project Deady – construction of a three-way financial model for a listed Australia TMT Group in relation to one of its digital investments (turnover of AU$50 million) to assess the impact of various scenarios.
• Project Harvester – assisted in the pre-acquisition commercial due diligence on behalf of a private equity business looking to acquire one of Australia’s largest construction businesses.