Carve-outs entail significant operational complexity – but offer tremendous potential for value creation if done well.
Independence enables businesses to think bigger, move faster, and fulfil their true potential. But getting to that point is no mean feat, with management teams often finding themselves overwhelmed in the early stages and unsure where to begin. Having a clear framework and the right people in place makes all the difference.
With experience of backing businesses spanning over 25 years, including 12 carve-outs, Inflexion has identified a number of areas that are key for carve-out success, with governance and planning paramount for success.
Strategy and financial alignment
Carve-outs are often businesses that have competed internally for capital, expertise and management attention within a larger group, and independence provides the chance to reset that – often invigorating management. Once the operational foundations are in place, the next challenge is agreeing a strategy and aligning financial resources.
Our approach begins by giving the new entity its own identity – from rebranding through to establishing a culture that reflects its own ambitions rather than its former parent. We then work with management to identify untapped customer demand and market opportunities, and devise how the business can respond differently – whether through people, product innovation, or investment in technology.
The impact this shared vision and newfound independence can have on the people driving the business should not be underestimated as the team is galvanised around a shared purpose and motivated by a compelling equity story.
People and processes
Notoriously complex, carve-outs need the right leadership, experienced support and a pre-agreed plan for success.
We often appoint a dedicated Transformation Lead or Chief Transformation Officer (CTrO) early in the process. This role provides clarity, coordination and accountability from day one. Alongside this, we deploy functional interim experts – whether CFO, CIO, CHRO or CPO – who can step in to either lead the transformation directly or backfill permanent roles, ensuring business-as-usual operations don’t stall while the carve-out progresses.
Certain areas are critical to address early. IT must be separated quickly, covering systems, databases, licences and hardware. Finance requires establishing stand-alone processes, including bank accounts and liquidity management. HR is equally pressing, with employment contracts and new office space often needing rapid solutions. And where appropriate, thinking about existing custom is of paramount importance, so novating supplier and client contracts should be addressed.
The overarching priority is to move to independent systems and processes well before any transitional service agreements expire. Achieving operational autonomy swiftly not only reduces risk but also gives management the freedom to focus on the business itself rather than disentangling legacy arrangements.
Fast decision-making
Carve-outs require speed in the early stages – a marked shift from typical captive units which can be accustomed to slow, consensus-driven processes, with decisions often delayed by a lack of information, expertise or even empowerment.
The appointment of a dedicated Chief Transformation Officer (CTrO) and Transformation Board supports fast decision-making. The focus is on creating a culture of pragmatism: avoiding the process paralysis that can creep in over minor issues, but while still maintaining rigour on the details that matter. By backing decisions with data and moving at pace, the new business can grow in confidence and thus momentum.
Access to M&A
Invigorated by fresh empowerment, newly independent businesses often see acquisitions as a route to accelerate growth – but they may lack the capital, team or pipeline to make it happen. From the outset, we make financial firepower for M&A part of early discussions, ensuring leadership knows it is a realistic lever. We often also bring curated lists of highly relevant targets to the table early, often adding to their own ambitions or helping to start an origination list from scratch to help management visualise opportunities. Where M&A is central to the strategy, our goal is to unlock deals within the first 6–12 months post carve-out, giving the business momentum and scale from the very start of its journey.
Carve-outs in action: aosphere
In 2024, Inflexion’s Partnership Capital fund made a strategic investment alongside Allen & Overy (A&O) and US-based investor Endicott Capital into aosphere. The purpose was to create a standalone, technology-driven subscription platform with the infrastructure, commercial firepower, and independence to scale globally by carving it out of A&O, its former parent.
Fast decision making and swift execution featured heavily when creating the right organisational structure and processes: within the first year, aosphere hired a full functional leadership team, including a CFO, CTO, and CHRO, supported by an experienced CTrO to oversee the transition. With Inflexion’s guidance, the company mapped and implemented standalone IT, finance and HR systems, ensuring it exited transitional service agreements well ahead of schedule. “You don’t usually get the luxury of building cutting-edge systems from scratch inside a large corporate – independence gave us that opportunity,” recalls Chair and Co-Founder Marc-Henri Chamay. “Inflexion were invaluable in advising us here, recommending systems for us to choose from and then the interims they’d put forward implementing them.”
The commercial function was also redesigned, shifting towards a more structured sales-led culture. Dedicated account managers, revenue operations specialists and a formalised commission structure doubled the size of the commercial team in the first year, strengthening aosphere’s ability to engage clients. This bore fruit quickly: “We still grew revenues at double digits despite the transition, launched a new vertical in crypto, and completed two strategic acquisitions,” recalls Marc-Henri.
This strategic M&A has broadened aosphere’s product set. Within 12 months of independence, aosphere acquired Switzerland-based BRP Bizzozero, an adjacent provider serving private banks and wealth managers. It was a long-considered but previously unattainable target. Then in late 2025, aosphere acquired Investment Navigator AG, a fintech specialised in the digitisation of cross-border compliance. This further strengthened aosphere’s digital offering and opened the door to developing and marketing new technology-driven legal and compliance solutions.
Aosphere has also continued to invest in innovation. In 2025, the company soft-launched “Intelligent Search,” an AI-powered tool that allows clients to ask natural-language questions and receive jurisdiction-specific answers in seconds – making its deep legal content more accessible for time-pressed users.
The end of 2025 saw aosphere name Robert McKay as CEO, bringing over 20 years of experience leading information-based analytics and decisioning workflow solutions that drive regulatory compliance, reduce risk, and improve operational efficiency. His appointment saw Marc-Henry transition from CEO to Chair.
With more than 1,400 global clients and a platform increasingly powered by data and AI, aosphere is clearly thriving, illustrating how independence and the right partners can unlock growth. “The first six months were tough, but now we’re operating at full speed,” Chamay says.
Ambitious businesses can grow faster with the right capital and expertise, with Inflexion’s flexible funding offering minority or majority capital and access to a sizable team to accelerate growth. The Inflexion team has significant experience in supporting the growth of a number of carve-outs of different sizes, including Ocorian, Finanzen, Global Data Healthcare, Axiom GRC, aosphere, Curinos, Giacom, BES Group, Rosemont Pharmaceuticals, THE, Marley, and Kynetec. All have access to Inflexion’s value acceleration strategies of M&A, digital enhancement, international expansion, commercial effectiveness, sustainability and talent management.
