Olivier Petit, founder of IpsoFinance

IpsoFinance is Olivier Petit's independent practice. For over 25 years he has led finance and corporate development in mid-sized international groups — listed, LBO, fund- and family-owned — and run their external-growth and transmission deals.

An operator and a dealmaker

As Group CFO of companies such as Manutan (listed on Euronext, 23 European subsidiaries), Amplitude Laser Group (management- and PE-owned) and Sofema (aerospace & defence trading), he has built finance functions from the ground up and run a broad scope: controlling, treasury, consolidation, tax, legal and information systems.

On the deal side, he has completed 25+ transactions (buy- and sell-side) across 15+ countries. At Groupe RG (LBO – Ardian / Latour Capital) he led the external-growth strategy and closed 17 acquisitions across 9 countries, helping scale it from €150M to over €800M in revenue. Earlier, based two years in the United States (Houston), he managed the financial post-merger integration of the Compaq–HP and Compaq–Digital Equipment mergers.

Today

Through IpsoFinance, Olivier acts notably as a CFO advisor to the Groupe SOCODA network (around 200 independent distributors, ~€3.3bn in aggregate revenue), supporting leaders on finance-leadership, financing and M&A matters.

Education

Chartered Accountant (Expert-Comptable), Master in Finance (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). He lectures on M&A and Private Equity at IAE Paris-Sorbonne.