Independent counsel for the decisions that define a company.
Meridian Advisory is an independent financial and strategy consultancy. For eighteen years we have advised founders, boards, and investors through mergers, valuations, capital raises, and the moments where the right call is rarely the obvious one.
of the financial crisis
Built in a crisis, on a conviction the market had forgotten.
When Eleanor Hartwell founded Meridian in 2008, she had watched conflicts of interest distort advice across the industry. She built the firm on the opposite premise: counsel a board could trust precisely because it was for sale to no one else.
Eighteen years on, the discipline is unchanged. We charge for advice, not transactions. Every recommendation is anchored to a model we will defend line by line. And the partner who wins the mandate is the partner who delivers it — there is no associate hiding behind the work.
- Fee-only advice with no transaction-linked incentives
- A named partner accountable on every engagement
- Models, memos, and assumptions documented and shared
Six principles that govern
every mandate.
These are not aspirations on a wall. They are the standards a client can hold us to, and the reasons boards come back to Meridian decision after decision.
Independence first
We take no commissions, hold no inventory, and answer to no product desk. Our only incentive is the quality of the advice we give you.
Evidence over opinion
Every recommendation is anchored to a model, a comparable, and a documented assumption. We show our work — and our working.
Precision in the detail
A single basis point, one misplaced covenant, an unexamined assumption — in finance the details are the strategy. We do not round them off.
Confidentiality, absolute
Boards trust us with the decisions they cannot discuss anywhere else. Discretion is not a policy here — it is the foundation of the practice.
Partner-led, always
The partner in your first meeting is the partner reviewing your final model. No hand-offs to associates, no diluted accountability.
Long after the close
A transaction is a moment; a relationship is the work. Most of our mandates come from clients we first advised more than a decade ago.
The partners and directors
who do the work.
Eleanor Hartwell
Founding Partner & Chief ExecutiveTwenty-two years in corporate finance, formerly head of M&A advisory at a bulge-bracket bank. Leads the firm’s most complex board mandates.
Rajiv Anand
Partner, Mergers & AcquisitionsHas advised on more than 80 closed transactions across industrials and technology. Known for sell-side processes that hold their price.
Catherine Mwangi
Partner, Valuation & FairnessA chartered valuation specialist who has signed off on fairness opinions for nine public-company boards. Precise to the basis point.
Daniel Fenwick
Partner, Risk & StrategyFormer group treasurer turned strategist. Builds the scenario models that let boards see around the next corner before they reach it.
Sofia Klein
Director, Capital MarketsStructures debt and equity raises for growth-stage companies. Has placed over $4B of capital with institutional investors.
Marcus Okafor
Director, RestructuringGuides distressed and special-situation mandates with a steady hand. The person you want in the room when the timeline is unforgiving.
Aiko Tanaka
Director, ESG & GovernanceAdvises boards on the disclosure, governance, and sustainability questions that increasingly decide a deal’s outcome.
James Vasquez
Director, ResearchRuns the firm’s in-house research desk. Every memo that leaves Meridian passes across his desk for a second set of numbers.
Members, registrants, and affiliates of
Eighteen years of measured outcomes.
Numbers a board can verify, earned across cycles that tested every assumption.
A firm built one disciplined decision at a time.
- 2008
Founded against the storm
Eleanor Hartwell opens Meridian Advisory in the depths of the financial crisis, on a single conviction: boards needed counsel free of any conflict. The first three clients are still with the firm.
- 2012
The valuation practice
Catherine Mwangi joins to build a dedicated valuation and fairness-opinion desk, giving public-company boards independent sign-off they could defend to regulators and shareholders alike.
- 2016
Cross-border mandates
Meridian advises on its first $1B cross-border acquisition. The firm opens a London office and begins advising European boards on transatlantic transactions.
- 2020
Strategy & risk formalised
Daniel Fenwick establishes the risk and strategy practice. Scenario modelling becomes a core service as clients navigate an era of unprecedented uncertainty.
- 2026
Eighteen years, one standard
Now a team of partners and directors advising on more than $24B in transactions, Meridian holds to the discipline it started with: independent, evidence-led, partner-delivered counsel.
Facing a decision that
cannot afford to be wrong?
Whether you are weighing a transaction, defending a valuation, or planning the next chapter of your company, a Meridian partner will sit down with you — in confidence, with no obligation. We respond to every enquiry within one business day.