Mitchel Nakken

Mitchel Nakken leads the Palm Tree Transitions and Transformations service lines, which focuses on improving client processes to yield actionable insights and fast-paced plans to minimize business disruption during strategic events.

Mr. Nakken helped establish the Palm Tree Transitions and Transformations service lines and has developed a sophisticated team with deep experience across a wide range of financial disciplines including FP&A, M&A, treasury, accounting, performance improvement, and personnel development for companies ranging from $50 million to over $2 billion. He has extensive post-close integration experience and has helped ease business transitions to new ownership by establishing continuity, improving information flow, and augmenting key implementation work streams within the Office of the CFO for both private equity and corporate clients.

Mr. Nakken built his career in the financial markets supporting all aspects of sell- and buy-side processes for private equity, large corporate, and middle market companies. His expertise includes cash flow forecasting, working capital management, Order to Cash and Procure to Pay process improvement, financial and operational modeling and reporting, sale preparation, budget development, M&A advisory, and capital planning.

He began his career at Plante & Moran Corporate Finance, a boutique middle-market investment bank, where he advised on sell- and buy-side transactions. He then joined FINNEA Group, a middle-market investment banking and consulting firm, where he established and expanded the firm’s Performance Improvement practice that worked exclusively with the firm’s largest private equity clients and portfolio companies.

Mr. Nakken received his BA in Finance, with distinction, from the Honors College and Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University, where he was also a member of the Financial Markets Institute. He lives with his family in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he volunteers as a Finance Committee member of the Detroit chapter of Boys Hope Girls Hope, an organization that nurtures and guides motivated young people to become well-educated and career ready.