Cowen Partners in Forbes: The Case for In-House Tax Leadership at PE Companies
Cowen Partners Executive Search President and Founding Partner Shawn Cole was published in Forbes Business Council with a value-creation argument private equity operating partners don’t hear often enough: an in-house tax leader is one of the most overlooked levers for driving return across the hold period.
In his article “Hidden Value Creator: The Business Case For Bringing Tax Leadership In-House At PE-Backed Companies,” Shawn opens with a scene he’s watched play out repeatedly.
A sale process is underway, buy-side diligence pulls the tax workstream, and it surfaces deferred liabilities, incomplete transfer pricing documentation, and planning opportunities that should have been captured years earlier. The compliance was current and the outside advisors were competent. The gap was structural: no one inside the company owned tax as a strategic function during the hold.
The central distinction is between reactive and proactive. Outside advisors do excellent work on the questions they’re asked, but they aren’t on the distribution list for the operating budget, and they don’t call the CFO to flag a planning opportunity before anyone thinks to raise it.
An in-house tax leader asks the questions before the CFO knows to ask them, and that difference compounds across the hold in ways that show up directly at exit.
The article lays out where that value comes from, including effective tax rate compression through proactive planning, cash tax savings built into deal structure, cleaner diligence packages that protect valuation, faster close timelines, and smoother add-on integration for acquisition-heavy platforms.
Shawn also takes on the headcount objection directly, arguing that a $300,000 to $500,000 tax leader pays for itself quickly against a single captured planning opportunity or a transfer pricing position corrected before diligence rather than discovered during it. His guidance on timing: make the hire within the first 18 months of the hold, ideally alongside the first add-on or international expansion, when complexity is rising and the compounding runway is longest.
Read the full article in Forbes.
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