Steadying a listed adtech platform's finance function through M&A and the debt markets
How Oakfyn stepped in as Interim CFO to reorganise a finance department, carry it through acquisitions and integration, and stand behind investor reporting and a multi-hundred-million-euro bond programme.
- Client
- Listed European adtech platform
- Profile
- Public bond + equity issuer, acquisitive
- Engagement
- Interim CFO
- Scope
- Reorg, M&A finance/tax DD, PMI, investor reporting, debt raise
The situation
A publicly listed European advertising-software platform was scaling fast — acquisitive, capital-markets-active, and under the reporting obligations that come with both listed equity and listed debt. But the finance function had not scaled with the business. Responsibilities were unclear, processes were inconsistent across entities, and the department was being asked to support transactions and investor disclosure it wasn't yet structured to carry.
Oakfyn was brought in as Interim CFO: not to keep the seat warm, but to reorganise the function, lead it through live transactions, and make sure the numbers going to investors and bondholders were ones the company could stand behind.
The mandate
The engagement spanned five connected workstreams, each running against live deadlines rather than in a quiet planning phase:
Reorganisation & restructuring
Rebuilt the finance department around clear ownership, defined processes, and roles that matched the scale and obligations of a listed issuer.
M&A support (finance & tax DD)
Led the finance and tax due-diligence streams through the company's acquisitions — buy-side review, quality-of-earnings scrutiny and tax-structuring input.
Post-merger integration
After deals closed, drove the work of folding acquired entities into the group — aligning charts of accounts, reporting calendars, controls and teams.
Investor reporting
Owned investor-grade financial reporting, including quarterly reporting to equity and debt investors, at the cadence and quality a listed company is held to.
Debt rounds
Supported the company through the debt capital markets, including a senior unsecured bond programme in the multi-hundred-million-euro range.
What Oakfyn did
Reorganised the function first
Before supporting a single transaction, Oakfyn established who owned what. A department unclear internally cannot produce numbers a bond investor trusts externally — so structure came first, then throughput.
Ran finance and tax DD under deal pressure
Across the acquisitions, Oakfyn led the diligence — testing quality of earnings, normalising for one-offs, and surfacing the tax and structuring issues that change a deal's economics before they become post-close surprises.
Integrated, not just acquired
Oakfyn led the post-merger change management — consolidating reporting, aligning controls and policies, and bringing acquired finance teams onto one operating model.
Stood behind the investor numbers
Oakfyn prepared the quarterly reporting that went to investors, held to the standard expected of a listed issuer with both equity and bonds outstanding.
Carried the company into the bond market
For the debt programme, Oakfyn delivered the financial backbone behind the raise — the figures, the investor narrative, and the credibility under questioning that decides whether a bookbuild is oversubscribed or undersold.
An interim CFO in a listed, acquisitive business is judged on two things: can the team produce numbers investors trust, and can the company keep transacting while you fix it. Oakfyn was hired to do both at once — and did.
Anonymised does not mean unquantified.
- Multi-€100M
- Bond programme supported
- 4
- Acquisitions integrated
- 20 days
- Quarterly close cycle
Beyond the numbers, the engagement left the company with a finance function fit for its obligations: clear ownership, transactions diligenced and integrated rather than left half-done, investor reporting leadership could defend, and a debt raise the market could believe in.
Why this engagement worked
Most interim finance support fails one of two ways: it either restructures the department but stalls the live deals, or it fights the fires and leaves the structure as broken as it found it. Oakfyn refused the trade-off — reorganising the function and carrying it through M&A, integration, investor reporting and the bond market in parallel. The throughline was sequencing: structure and ownership first, so everything built on top rested on a function that could bear the weight.
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The profile this fits
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Client name withheld at the client's discretion. Figures are presented in anonymised, rounded form and exclude non-public information.