Aon has promoted from within to lead its UK transaction advisory business, rather than bringing in an outside hire.
Piers Johansen has been named the new UK leader of Aon's M&A and Transaction Solutions arm, known internally as AMATS. He has spent over a decade rising through the business, working alongside colleagues across corporate finance and insurance-sector M&A on high-profile transactions.
Johansen's route into insurance is unusual for the sector. He trained and worked as an M&A lawyer at Norton Rose and then Skadden, one of the world's largest law firms, before spending two years seconded to the Takeover Panel, the body that regulates UK takeover activity. From there he moved into investment banking, taking a managing director and associate general counsel role within J.P. Morgan's investment bank in London, before joining Aon in 2015.
That background across law, regulation and banking is a fit with how Aon talks about its transaction advisory arm these days - not just a seller of warranty and indemnity insurance, but an adviser sitting alongside lawyers and bankers on complex deals. Johansen will report to Michael Carr, who leads AMATS across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and will stay based in London.
Johansen succeeds Anka Taylor and Ian McCaw, who had jointly run the UK side of AMATS for two years. Both are staying at Aon: Taylor moves into a client-facing leadership role in M&A insurance broking, and McCaw into transaction advisory, both within AMATS' wider EMEA operation.
Carr said helping clients "identify and capture value in event-driven and portfolio situations" through Aon's risk and human capital capabilities sits at the centre of AMATS' strategy, and that Johansen's background across law, banking and insurance gives him a useful range of perspective to draw on.
This is the latest in a run of senior moves across Aon's UK and EMEA risk and transaction businesses this year. Rob Kemp, who leads Aon's Commercial Risk business in the UK, welcomed the appointment as part of a push to connect different parts of the commercial risk operation more closely. He said AMATS continues to play "a key role" in developing opportunities for the group, and that he expects Johansen to help speed that up.
Private capital has kept buying into insurance broking and distribution, and that has kept Aon's transaction teams busy on deals from both sides - advising acquirers on due diligence, and helping sellers protect value through warranty and indemnity cover.
