OVERVIEW

William W. B Veale | Director

William W. B. Veale is an American citizen who resides in Brazil. With extensive operating exposure in Brazil and other Latin American countries, Mr. Veale has wide-ranging experience negotiating buy and sell-side transactions, and first-hand knowledge of Latin American countries’ politico-economic swings. Mr. Veale is fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Prior to joining the Versailles Group, Mr. Veale was an independent advisor to small and medium-sized companies and Director of M&A for Partners Consultoria, a management consulting firm in São Paulo. Previously, Mr. Veale headed the Brazilian subsidiary of The Lincoln Electric Company, having sold his own company, Brasoldas S. A.—acquired from The BOC Group in a leveraged buyout financed by the investors who own 3G Capital—to Lincoln. Mr. Veale was President of BOC’s Brazilian company and then President of its Latin American Division. His career began with Air Products and Chemicals; his success in the Silicon Valley market led to his transfer to Brazil to conduct Air Products’ successful market entry there.

Mr. Veale earned a B.A. in economics from Yale University and an M.B.A. from San Jose State University while working in California’s Silicon Valley. While at Yale, he was active in singing and was a member of The Whiffenpoofs. His interest in music continues, and he is a member of the Advisory Council of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra.

ADNILSON OLIVEIRA | DIRECTOR

Mr. Adnilson P. Oliveira is an experienced accountant with extensive senior financial and administrative management experience in multinationals and Brazilian companies.  Both as a member of companies’ management teams and as an advisor to clients’ senior executives, Mr. Oliveira has participated in many acquisitions, on both buy and sell sides, ranging from a straightforward sale or acquisition to complex mergers and IPO’s.  In several cases his activities included a financial/administrative overhaul and an upgrade to prepare his clients’ businesses for their respective transactions.

In the decade prior to joining Versailles Group, Mr. Oliveira has been a consultant advising major players in the health care sector, several with multi-year contracts in which he assumed a direct executive role in their operations.  His projects, all concluded successfully, have included, among others:

• Restructuring of a large multi-divisional hospital group’s finances and operations in Greater São Paulo.
  
  
• Implantation of systems and controls for certification, and oversight of a three-year retroactive outside audit, for an important hospital group in the north of Brazil.
  
  
• Improving the efficacy of financial systems and processes in preparation for a due diligence investigation and his São Paulo client’s merger with Brazil’s largest private hospital group, based in Rio de Janeiro.
  
  
• Responsible for a health care group’s treasury, overseeing its qualification for a very successful IPO, after which he was directly involved in its acquisition of ten individual businesses, all integrated into its operations, based in São Paulo.

Mr. Oliveira previously worked with Brazilian subsidiaries of multinational manufacturing companies.  He was CFO of Anixter Inc., the American wire and cable distributor, and Financial Manager of the Canadian beverage manufacturer, Seagram’s.  Prior to that he was Financial Director of the Brazilian subsidiary of The Lincoln Electric Company, a manufacturer of consumables for electric welding.  Mr. Oliveira had joined that company 20 years earlier, shortly after its founding, and accompanied its growth and changes through three subsequent acquisitions.

Mr. Oliveira has a diploma in accounting from the Santo André Foundation and an MBA from Ibmec São Paulo.

RODRIGO AJATES | Business Development

Mr. Rodrigo Ajates is the Vice President of International Business Development for Versailles Group.

Mr. Ajates brings over 20 years of experience in international business, foreign direct investment and strategic partnership advisory in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the United States.

Mr. Ajates has held several C-suite roles in the private sector, including a Japanese multinational auto parts company, and he was an international trade advisor for the Spanish Embassy in Sweden and Bulgaria.

Mr. Ajates is also the founder of 360 Zolo Solutions Consulting and a professor of International Business and Commerce at the Universidad de Palermo.

Mr. Ajates has a Masters in Global Leadership and was part of the prestigious Global Leadership Fellows Programme of the World Economic Forum, partnering with Ivy league schools in the U.S. as well as top business management schools in Europe and China. Mr. Ajates also has a Masters in International Business from ICADE University where he graduated summa cum laude.

In his free time, Mr. Ajates enjoys photography, and he graduated as a professional photographer from the prestigious New York Institute of Photography.

Brigitte Grava | ASSOCIATE

Ms. Brigitte Grava earned a Master of Science degree in Entrepreneurship from the Sykes College of Business at the University of Tampa. She also graduated, with honors (GPA=3.9), from the University of Tampa with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a minor in Business Analytics. 

At the University of Tampa, she was heavily involved in the Economics Department, was a member of the Adam Smith Society, and participated in numerous economic think tanks and conferences.  Brigitte also took advantage of opportunities offered by the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center at the University of Tampa.  She won a business pitch competition in her sophomore year, which awarded her a spot in the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center's Accelerator Program.

The summer before junior year, Brigitte interned with Versailles Group, took an interest in M&A, and started learning about the inner workings of cross-border M&A transactions.  After finishing her junior year of college, she obtained an internship at Raymond James, where she worked for the competitive intelligence team.  In this position, she performed economic analyses of similar financial firms to compare to internal analyses of Raymond James’ customers, services, and revenue streams.  She transitioned at Raymond James from an intern to a part-time employee as she started her senior year at the University of Tampa.

Xueying (Gil) He | Associate

Ms. Xueying (Gil) He earned a Master of Engineering Management from Dartmouth College and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with a Minor in Mathematics from the University of Colorado Denver. Throughout her college and graduate school experiences, she developed strong analytical and research skills.

While at Dartmouth, Ms. He interned at Plug Power, a NASDAQ company with almost $1 billion in annual revenues. At Plug Power, she integrated data from diverse systems with data cleansing and validation. She also developed Power BI dashboards for cross-functional team presentations to add data-powered insights.  

Ms. He is not new to mergers & acquisitions: In 2020, she did an internship with Versailles Group where she learned and mastered the basics of M&A.

Ms. He is originally from Beijing. She is fluent in Mandarin and English, which enhances Versailles Group’s communication with its worldwide client base. In her spare time, she enjoys painting and tennis; she is also a foodie at heart and loves to explore diverse cuisines from around the world.