Arun Mani

Arun is the US Power and Utilities strategy and transformation leader in KPMG’s Strategy practice. Arun operates at the intersection of regulation, risk and return in the power and utilities sector to advise industry leaders worldwide on a variety of topics.

Professional and industry experience

Across two decades of distinguished consulting work for electric, gas, and water utilities, Arun has a broad understanding of sector dynamics and relevant issues. Arun has helped clients drive growth, make strategic decisions, navigate major transitions, improve operational performance and build competitive advantage, working side by side with company leaders. Arun’s experience includes the following:

• Growth Strategy: Arun has been retained by Boards to assist with EBITDA increase by identifying new markets and products and shape strategy by developing new business models, designing innovative pricing structures, and assessing capabilities. Arun has helped utilities address diverse strategic issues, including smart meter strategies, regulatory and rate mitigation strategies, energy efficiency offerings, and the exploration of alliances and joint ventures. During the last several years, he has assisted utilities to develop strategies and plans to invest in distributed energy resources, smart meter, and electric vehicle infrastructure and to develop approaches for operating a “Utility of the Future” electric network.
• Commercial Due Diligence: Arun has led due diligence engagements in connection with potential investments and investment structuring for a variety of clients interested in understanding profit pools and value creation levers. Arun has worked with Private Equity firms to evaluate businesses for growth and expansion through market scans, due diligence and opportunity assessments. His due diligence experience includes generation, transmission and distribution, and energy services.
• Resiliency: Arun has helped utilities and cities become more resilient by helping them better understand their top asset and non-asset based risks and mitigation effectiveness by analyzing incident rates, risk and exposure parameters, and quantifying safety, financial and operational consequences for each risk event. Most recently, Arun has been actively involved with the California utilities prepare for a new regulation that requires a more data driven, analytical method for analyzing “tail risks” (extreme event risk and consequences).
• Regulatory Innovation: Arun has advised utilities and regulatory commissions around the world on regulatory and industry restructuring issues including: review of wholesale energy and capacity market design; electricity network pricing; energy tariff reforms; marginal and avoided cost studies; cost-effective analysis of demand-response programs; and design of regulatory mechanisms to support investment in renewable resources.
• Targeted performance and cost improvement: For a number of utilities, Arun has led in-depth reviews to achieve significant performance improvements and cost reductions in targeted areas, including gas and electric distribution, work management, electric reliability, gas and electric distribution, customer service, supply chain management, generation, finance and corporate functions. Many of these assignments focused on improving utility cost positioning and operational performance.