Ron L.
Asset Management Analyst (Part-time)
Experience
Sep 2024 - Present
1 year 4 monthsLondon, United Kingdom
Asset Management Analyst (Part-time)
Emerging Market Equities-Focused Firm
- Built end-to-end NLP pipeline processing 10,000+ earnings transcripts using spaCy and transformers to extract sentiment, risk indicators, and management tone shifts for emerging market equity investment decisions
- Evaluate model-generated predictions against realized market outcomes, systematically identifying reasoning errors and validating output accuracy across 500+ investment cases—directly applicable to LLM evaluation and quality assurance
- Fine-tuned FinBERT models for financial sentiment classification achieving 0.85 F1 score; apply transfer learning techniques to domain-specific text classification tasks
Aug 2023 - Aug 2024
1 year 1 monthKuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Assistant Manager – Transactions & Financial Due Diligence
Grant Thornton Consulting
- Led buy-side Quality of Earnings (QoE) analyses for M&A transactions up to £5.2M, normalizing EBITDA by identifying and adjusting for 200+ non-recurring items, aggressive revenue recognition practices, and one-time expenses; built comprehensive adjusted P&L models bridging management accounts to IFRS financial statements
- Conducted detailed Net Working Capital (NWC) analyses including peg calculations, cash conversion cycle modeling, and seasonality adjustments; identified £800K+ in trapped working capital and developed target NWC mechanisms for purchase price adjustments
- Managed virtual data room (VDR) reviews processing 5,000+ documents; performed transaction-level data analysis on datasets with 50,000+ rows using Power Query and VBA automation to aggregate and normalize financial data from disparate sources
- Supported forensic accounting investigation of alleged £17.2M misappropriation over 19 years, applying statistical pattern recognition and anomaly detection algorithms to identify suspicious transaction patterns and control weaknesses
- Delivered client presentations to private equity funds and C-suite executives, translating complex financial analysis into actionable investment insights and deal negotiation points
- Mentored and quality-assured work of 8 junior consultants, establishing systematic review frameworks that reduced error rates by 35% and improved deliverable quality
Aug 2022 - Jul 2023
1 yearKuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Senior Consultant – Transactions & Financial Due Diligence
Grant Thornton Consulting
- Originated £200K engagement through client development; executed comprehensive buy-side financial due diligence for £9.8M private equity investment, analyzing 3 years of financial data across 12 business units including revenue quality assessment, customer concentration analysis, and gross margin bridge creation
- Conducted bi-monthly independent business review (IBR) for bank-mandated monitoring engagement, building automated Excel dashboards with VBA macros processing 5,000+ monthly data points to track KPIs, cash flow covenant compliance, and early warning indicators
- Built regression models testing 200+ variables to identify key value drivers; validated management assumptions through bottom-up market analysis and benchmarking against comparable companies
Oct 2021 - Jul 2022
10 monthsKuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Consultant – Transactions & Financial Due Diligence
Grant Thornton Consulting
- Led buy-side financial due diligence for £9.8M acquisition of Bursa Malaysia-listed subsidiary, building multi-scenario DCF models with terminal value calculations across 15 revenue streams; identified £1.2M in EBITDA normalization adjustments
- Conducted comprehensive revenue and cost analytics, creating detailed waterfalls to explain historical performance drivers and stress-test management projections; performed customer contract analysis and churn modeling
Jan 2020 - Sep 2021
1 year 9 monthsKuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Audit Associate
Grant Thornton Malaysia
- Managed 4-year IPO audit for construction services group preparing for Bursa Malaysia listing, executing statistical sampling and substantive testing on 2,000+ transactions with 99% accuracy validation
- Performed analytical procedures identifying anomalies and trends in financial data; developed audit testing strategies based on risk assessment and materiality calculations
Summary
PhD in Finance candidate (Bayes Business School) specializing in NLP-enhanced financial risk prediction, supervised by Journal of Finance and Journal of Accounting & Economics-published faculty. Former Assistant Manager at Grant Thornton with 5+ years executing buy-side/sell-side M&A transactions (£50M+ aggregate value). ICAEW Chartered Accountant. Core expertise: LLM evaluation, financial modeling, forensic accounting, and systematic quality assurance.
Languages
English
NativeMalay
IntermediateChinese
IntermediateEducation
Sep 2025 - Sep 2029
Bayes Business School
PhD in Finance, NLP-Enhanced Risk Prediction · Finance · London, United Kingdom
Sep 2024 - Aug 2025
Bayes Business School
MSc International Accounting and Finance · International Accounting and Finance · London, United Kingdom · Distinction
Certifications & licenses
ICAEW Chartered Accountant (ACA)
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales
CFAB Certificate
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