Peter Walsh had no interest in the aviation industry until 1991, when, as a specialist in restructuring troubled companies, he was given the job of restructuring America West Airlines. He quickly discovered how intellectually stimulating the aviation industry actually was. "It is like trying to solve all of the world's most complex industrial problems. There are maintenance and scheduling issues and global networks and just a fascinating series of problems," he says. Walsh was hooked. Engagements quickly followed for US Air, Continental Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and more. Today, Mercer's aviation and aerospace practice boasts 30 partners and has engagements on every continent. Walsh himself has collected "millions and millions" of frequent-flier miles while racing from customer to customer.
Born in Scotland, Walsh gravitated to consulting in general and the aviation industry in particular because he was driven by a love for international travel, the intellectual challenge of trying to solve complex consulting problems, and the realization that the airline industry was desperately in need of local, regional, national, and international restructuring. "I wanted to be part of finding a solution to the problem of making this industry profitable," he says.
In addition to heading up Mercer's aviation practice, Walsh is Supervisory Principal of Mercer Securities. In short, he's an investment banker, too. "To get involved in aviation industry transactions, we needed to be an investment banker to comply with all of the various security regulations," he says. Although investment banking in general is more lucrative than straight aviation consulting, Mercer Securities is very selective about its deals. "We only do deals that we are personally interested in. We're not interested in shopping around 50 or 100 deals a year," says Walsh. "What we really want to do is consulting."
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