David Okonkwo

David Okonkwo leads Halverson Reed's strategy and growth practice from New York, with particular focus on cross-border mergers and acquisitions involving privately held and family-owned businesses. He joined the firm in 2018 from Bain & Company, where he spent eleven years across the London and New York offices, ultimately leading the firm's industrials practice for the U.S. Northeast.

Okonkwo's engagements typically involve owners considering a once-in-a-generation transaction — a sale, a succession, a partnership with a strategic acquirer — and the strategic and operational work that determines whether the right transaction is identified, structured, and integrated. He has advised on transactions across the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, and Nigeria, and is comfortable working in environments where the financial sponsor and the operating company speak different languages, both literally and figuratively.

He holds an MBA from INSEAD and an MEng from Imperial College London. He is a Council on Foreign Relations term member and serves on the advisory board of a London-based educational nonprofit. He speaks English, French, Igbo, and serviceable German. He is based in New York and travels regularly.

His writing focuses on the integration patterns that distinguish acquirers who compound value from those who destroy it, and on the particular challenges of advising the owner-operator at the moment of sale.