Pierre Briand

SCD Advisory is an independent Australian corporate advisory boutique specialising in mergers and acquisitions for the business-to-business services sector. Founded in Sydney in 2019 by Pierre Briand, who serves as Founder and Managing Partner, the firm has established itself as a trusted adviser to entrepreneurs and owners planning growth, investment or exit. It has been named M&A Advisory Firm of the Year in Australia at the Corporate INTL Global Awards 2025, recognising a boutique that has built an outsized reputation in a competitive market.

The firm offers end-to-end transaction advice across four connected disciplines. Its strategy advisory helps owners position their businesses and plan for an eventual exit; its capital advisory facilitates partnerships with private equity and structures management buy-outs and buy-ins; and its sell-side and buy-side deal advisory teams design and execute M&A processes for vendors and acquirers respectively. This full-lifecycle model allows SCD to support a business from the earliest planning of a transaction through to completion, rather than parachuting in only at the point of sale. Mergers and acquisitions advisory is a discipline in which preparation, positioning and the quality of a competitive process frequently determine value as much as the underlying business itself, and boutiques that combine sector fluency with senior, hands-on involvement are well suited to the founder-led companies for whom a sale is a once-in-a-lifetime event carrying both financial and personal weight.

SCD concentrates on sectors it knows deeply, including consulting, IT services and software, engineering and design, and media, marketing and communications. That deliberate focus on professional and technology services gives the firm an unusually detailed understanding of how such businesses are valued, what strategic and private-equity buyers look for, and how to position a company to achieve the best outcome. Since its establishment the firm reports having completed a substantial number of transactions, including cross-border deals involving global strategic acquirers and private equity investors.

Pierre Briand brings some twenty-five years of experience in corporate finance, banking and wealth management to the firm he founded. Before launching SCD Advisory he advised entrepreneurs and worked on transactions in both Australia and France, including senior private banking roles and work alongside prominent international investors. That background informs the firm's positioning as an adviser attuned to the personal as well as the financial dimensions of a sale, an important consideration for the founder-led businesses that make up much of its client base.

The firm's success has been acknowledged through a series of international M&A awards in recent years, and it has strengthened its governance with the establishment of an advisory board. For business owners contemplating one of the most significant decisions of their commercial lives, SCD offers the combination of sector expertise, transactional discipline and senior personal attention that a boutique is well placed to provide. Its recognition as M&A Advisory Firm of the Year in Australia at the Corporate INTL Global Awards 2025 affirms the standing that Pierre Briand and his team have built as advisers on the sale, purchase and financing of Australian and cross-border businesses.