Contact Deep Blue Advisory Group: Manny Portuondo Bio

About

Manny Portuondo is a global Management Consulting executive and entrepreneur with a track record of delivering impressive contributions to business growth and profit. Portuondo’s successful career has encompassed both executive leadership positions in large multi-national corporations, as well as smaller entrepreneurial companies. Since his position as Vice President Franchising & Business Development at Burger King Corp., he has been engaged in strategic management consulting throughout the globe, advising clients on M&A transactions and strategic franchising initiatives. Whether for global brands or entrepreneurial companies, Portuondo’s career has been distinguished by developing and executing innovative strategies, leading business turnarounds, identifying and closing M&A transactions and delivering strong financial returns for stakeholders. Portuondo is comfortable operating in new geographies and cultures and his success has been rewarded with promotions of progressively increasing responsibilities at corporate headquarters, country management, marketing, sales and finance. Many of his appointments were with organizations where executive management/ownership saw the need for rapid change and sought significantly improved performance.

Experience

Since his position as Vice President Franchising & Business Development at Burger King Corp., he founded DeepBlue LLC, a boutique M&A and franchise advisory practice engaged in strategic management consulting throughout the globe. He has advised clients on M&A transactions and strategic franchising and development initiatives. In his position at Burger King, Portuondo created an $80 million brand re-image incentive program, and a $250 million franchisee lending program, the largest and most innovative brand re-image and lending program in the QSR industry. The program resulted in 1,017 restaurant re-image commitments in just one year, a six fold increase versus the prior year. Due to the rapidly changing and competitive QSR landscape, Portuondo led Burger King in focusing on creating consolidation strategies for new and existing franchisees through strategic market planning, growth incentives, portfolio management and divestitures of over 700 company restaurants. During his six-year tenure at Burger King his strategies led to the growth of the average number of restaurants per franchisee to eight from five units, a growth of 60%, as well as, record re-imaging and new restaurant development commitments. Furthermore, Portuondo fostered a customer centric philosophy and key account management system to improve relationships with franchisees and drive results. The foundation of Portuondo’s business success commenced at Anheuser Busch, Inc., where he started as an intern in the company’s executive leadership development program. He was one of only twelve MBA candidates chosen by the company each year, to participate in its highly coveted program. While at Anheuser-Busch, Portuondo led field sales and marketing programs in multiple markets. Further, he was promoted to a key role to manage the Caribbean & Latin America business, which at the time was the company’s largest market outside of the Continental US with over $250 million in revenue and $40 million in EBITDA. Portuondo also has an entrepreneurial pedigree. As prior President of his family’s Cuban beer company, La Tropical, Portuondo developed a worldwide trademark consolidation and licensing strategy to regain control of the La Tropical brand, a beer brand which had been nationalized by communist Cuba in 1960. He successfully raised angel and private equity capital to re-launch La Tropical in key markets in anticipation of the opening of the Cuban market. His success was featured in a “Forbes Magazine” article in 1999, www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0208/6303080a.html.

Education

Portuondo was born in the US, however has lived and traveled throughout the world, principally in Latin America & the Caribbean. He earned his MBA at the Chapman Graduate School of Business at Florida International University (FIU) in 1990 and earlier his BBA in 1988 also from FIU. Portuondo in his free time enjoys boating, free diving and spear fishing, running, reading and traveling with his family.