Agenda

Peter Blanc ACII is Head of M&A, Howden Group Holdings. He is based at Howden’s head office at One Creechurch Place in London.

Heading up Howden’s mergers and acquisition strategy allows Peter to fulfil his ambition of making Howden the world’s leading independent (re)insurance broker, employee benefits advisor and MGA.

With over 100 acquisitions of insurance broking and MGA businesses during his career, Peter is an industry veteran with decades of experience behind him. Notably, after starting his career in motor underwriting and then building his own commercial insurance brokerage, Peter has led three successful private equity exit events, totalling over £1.5 billion.  As CEO at Oval, he led the sale for £210m to Gallagher in 2014, and as Group CEO of Aston Lark, he led a round 1 sale for £325m in 2019 to Goldman Sachs and Aston Lark’s final exit to Howden for £1.1 billion in 2021.

Alongside these leadership roles, Peter has served as non-executive chairman of Hastings Insurance Services Ltd, as chairman of the Large Brokers’ Advisory Board at the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) and in 2022 he served as President of the Chartered Insurance Institute. Peter has recently been reappointed to the BIBA Large Broker’s Advisory Board.

Peter is a passionate advocate of expert-led insurance leadership, employee-owned businesses and the Early Careers Programme; in short, using his own experiences and expertise to help make a difference to those around him.

Peter lives in Colchester, Essex, where he is a proud husband and the father of three grown-up children. He can often be found keeping fit on a bicycle, going to the gym, or mucking out his daughter’s horses! 

Andrea is a Partner and Head of Financial Services for Inflexion where he is responsible for leading the origination and execution of majority and minority investment opportunities in this sector across Europe.

Prior to joining Inflexion, Andrea spent twelve years at Cinven where he covered Financial Services. During his time at Cinven, Andrea invested in several businesses including Avolon, Eurovita, Guardian, Just, Viridium and True Potential. Andrea began his career at Citigroup where he worked in the Investment Banking division.

Andrea holds a cum laude degree in Economics and Business Administration from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.

James O’Gara is based in London, joined Warburg Pincus in 2014 and co–leads the Financial Services team in Europe. James led the firm’s investments in the AA, McGill and Partners and Specialist Risk Group, and has also been involved with Warburg Pincus’ investments in Evelyn Partners (formerly Tilney Smith & Williamson), Blau Direkt, Max (formerly Leumi Card), Allfunds, IONOS by 1&1, Santander Asset Management, and DBRS. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, James was an investment professional at H.I.G. Capital. He received a BS in Business Administration from Georgetown University and an MBA from London Business School.

Daniel joined Aquiline's London team in 2019 and is a principal at the firm. Prior to joining the firm, he was a director in the financial institutions group at Deutsche Bank in London, where he advised on M&A and capital markets transactions across Europe. Previously, he worked in the financial institutions group at Credit Suisse and at Lazard.