Knowledge Centers

Anu Sharma is the head of West Coast financial sponsors coverage for William Blair & Co. and leads the firm's coverage efforts in India. Currently based in San Francisco, he joined the firm in 2004, focusing on cross-border transactions in the firm's London office. Since joining William Blair, he has completed more than 50 transactions across the firm's M&A advisory and financing services. Before joining the firm, Sharma was a medical doctor with the National Health Service at various university teaching hospitals. He gained his M.B. and B.Chir. degrees from the University of Cambridge, having graduated with distinction, and was a visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School. Sharma also holds an M.A. (honors) degree from Clare College at the University of Cambridge.

Vikram Gandhi
Founder and CEO
VSG Capital Advisors

Vikram Gandhi is founder and CEO of VSG Capital Advisors. The firm focuses on strategic, financial and investment advisory services both in the private and social sectors. He and VSG Capital Advisors have been retained by the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board as senior advisers to provide strategic advice and develop and facilitate investment opportunities in the Indian subcontinent. Gandhi is also a senior adviser to Greenhill & Co. Prior to forming VSG Capital Advisors, he was vice chairman of investment banking and global head of financial institutions business for Credit Suisse Group in New York and Hong Kong. He was a member of Credit Suisse's global investment banking management committee and the fixed-income operating committee.

Prior to his tenure at Credit Suisse, Gandhi worked at Morgan Stanley, where he was co-head of global FIG in New York. His prior work at Morgan Stanley included heading the firm's institutional strategy area, its global e-commerce committee and as country head and president of Morgan Stanley India.

Gandhi is a member of the board of the Grameen Foundation, which focuses on alleviating poverty across the world through microfinance and technology. He is a founding member of Harvard University's South Asia Initiative, a collaborative effort between the university and Harvard's graduate schools targeting important issues in South Asia. He is also co-founder of the Giving Back Foundation, which supports charities around the world focusing on women's and children's causes. As part of the focus areas of VSG Capital Advisors, Gandhi is assisting, on a voluntary basis, in the launch of the recently announced $1 billion India Inclusive Innovation Fund that will fund enterprises that are sustainable and create innovative products and services for the 500 million people at the bottom of the pyramid. Gandhi holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was designated a Baker scholar, and a B.Com with high distinction from the University of Mumbai. He is also a qualified chartered accountant.

Matt Miller
Editor-at-large
The Deal LLC

As editor-at-large at The Deal, Matt Miller has written feature stories investigating the successes and struggles of major metropolitan areas like Cleveland, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, San Diego and Boston, and covered the bankruptcies of Catholic dioceses around the country resulting from incidents of sexual abuse by priests.

Miller has spent more than 25 years in business journalism, with much of that time based in Asia for The Wall Street Journal Asia. He opened The Wall Street Journal Asia's New Delhi bureau, was bureau chief in Manila and an investigative reporter based in Hong Kong, where he broke stories on a number of major financial scandals. He also was the Pacific Rim correspondent for The San Diego Union-Tribune and has contributed to the BBC, NPR, Institutional Investor, the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Los Angeles Times.