Valuation & Modelling — Partner & Team Search

Valuation and modelling is the most counter-cyclical hiring market in corporate finance, which makes it the ballast of a well-built advisory bench. Its demand drivers — financial-reporting valuations (PPA, impairment testing, share-based payments), dispute and litigation support, tax and regulatory valuations, and the mark-to-market needs of private capital — keep running even when M&A volume softens. The global business-valuation services market is estimated in the high-single-digit billions of US dollars and is growing at roughly 7-8% a year, with Asia-Pacific among the fastest-growing regions [1].

Private capital is the structural tailwind. APAC private-equity sponsors hold large pools of dry powder (regional uninvested capital sat around US$240 billion at end-2025), and every fund-held asset requires recurring fair-value marks, while every completed deal generates purchase-price-allocation and impairment work downstream [2]. The deployment pressure on GPs — a quarter of global buyout dry powder has been waiting four years or more — guarantees a steady pipeline of both entry valuations and portfolio mark-to-market mandates regardless of the M&A cycle's phase [2].

The talent itself is genuinely scarce because the skill set is rare. Senior valuation specialists combine deep technical command (DCF, market multiples, option pricing, intangible-asset and IP valuation, complex-security and PPA methodology) with the credibility to defend a number in front of auditors, regulators, tax authorities or a tribunal. That defensibility — the ability to sign and stand behind an expert opinion — is what separates a director from a partner, and it cannot be hired quickly or trained overnight.

Financial modelling has emerged as a distinct, premium-priced specialism within the discipline. Project-finance, infrastructure, M&A and LBO modelling leaders — people who can build, review and audit the models that underpin billion-dollar decisions — are in short supply across APAC's infrastructure and energy-transition build-out. Increasingly these candidates pair classic accounting credentials with serious analytics or data-engineering capability, a combination that commands a clear premium.