Keith F. Cooper

Keith Cooper leads the Food, Agriculture & Beverage practice and specializes in providing operational, financial and business process transformation services to global companies. Mr. Cooper has more than 35 years of experience, including industry expertise across a wide range of sectors such as food and agriculture, freight and logistics, manufacturing (automotive, industrials, furniture, textile, consumer products, medical products and steel), oil and gas, healthcare, retail (clothing, specialty and automotive) and information technology distribution.

Mr. Cooper has led numerous performance improvement and turnaround engagements across a number of industries. He has served as an advisor to private equity sponsors and portfolio companies, served in interim management positions, advised secured lenders and unsecured creditors committees. Mr. Cooper advises senior management and boards of directors in the revitalization of companies that are stagnant or underperforming. He frequently serves as an advisor to private equity sponsors in providing a full range of services to their portfolio companies. He is an expert in refining operational strategy and operational effectiveness, while delivering accelerated value creation through the elimination of redundant and non-value added processes. In addition, Mr. Cooper routinely serves in interim management positions for companies, including in the chief executive officer, chief operating officer and chief restructuring officer roles.

Mr. Cooper’s experience in creating and implementing strategy execution programs that deliver sustainable performance improvement includes revenue enhancement; product portfolio optimization; strategic sourcing; strategic realignment of business units; operational process management; inventory optimization; cost realignment; selling, general and administrative optimization and working capital maximization.

Select examples of Mr. Cooper’s experience include advising Transit Group, a $450 million trucking company in connection with the integration of 19 separate divisions into four strategic business units, including the development and implementation of a comprehensive profit improvement program; a $14 billion division of an oilfield services provider in connection with an organization structure analysis, facilitation and performance turnaround; Indalex, Inc., a $450 million aluminum extruder, in connection with operational process improvement; assistance to Burger King in connection with improvement initiatives in their franchisee performance and portfolio; Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation, a $8 billion chicken processor; GTSI Corp., a $1.1 billion IT solutions provider in connection with an overall performance improvement program; Beaulieu of America, a $1.6 billion carpet manufacturer in connection with operational process management and revenue enhancement initiatives; a $1.5 billion turkey processor in connection with an overall operational process improvement review; and Christensen Family Farms, a $450 million revenue pork producer in connection with an operational process management review.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Mr. Cooper was a Partner with the U.S. division of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Business Recovery Services practice.