Les Nemethy

Les Nemethy was born in Canada in 1957, of Hungarian immigrants who fled during the 1956 revolution. He has lived in the United States, India, Switzerland, Australia and Hungary, and has worked in over 40 countries.

He has been involved in the sale of hundreds of companies, from just about every perspective: financial advisor, lawyer, principal, government official, and development banker.

Over a decade he founded Euro-Phoenix (www.europhoenix.com), a leading emerging market corporate finance/M&A firm. Euro-Phoenix focuses on assisting owners of mid-sized firms attract fresh equity capital, find strategic or financial partners, or arrange full or partial exits.

Les Nemethy is a past CEO of Vivendi Telecom Hungary; senior expert with the World Bank; head of the transactions department in the Hungarian privatization agency at the time when the program was ramping up; an investment banker with Scotia McLeod in Toronto, and a lawyer with McMillan Binch, also in Toronto. He has degrees in Economics, Law, MBA and an MA in International Relations. In addition to English he speaks French, Hungarian, Spanish, and has knowledge of German, Russian and Italian.

His extensive experience gives him a treasure chest of relevant "war stories", which make his book both insightful and entertaining. He writes a bi-monthly blog which appears in over a dozen publications, and has been quoted as an expert in TV, radio and the press, CNN, The Economist and The Financial Times.