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Asked to highlight his experience in mergers and acquisitions, Andy Watts doesn\u2019t need to weigh and measure the many deals that he has helped to execute over his three-decade-long finance career. Instead, Watts quickly points to the 2000s, when, as CFO of a division of Thomson Reuters, he sold off businesses responsible for nearly half of his division\u2019s $120 million in annual revenues\u2014a respectable feat that is perhaps even more impressive in light of the four new businesses that his division acquired during this same 12-month period.

\u201cI got a really good frontline view of how to do M&As, and while I stubbed my toe on a number of them in the process, in the end we had them running like a Swiss watch and knew exactly how we were going to get the value out of them,\u201d remembers Watts, whose 12-year career at Thomson included something of a surprise chapter that he now credits with having helped to open the door to an operations role. \xa0\xa0

\u201cI was sitting in a business review, and I began \u2018barking on\u2019 about how we were treating our customers\u2014so the division president turned to me and said, \u2018Okay, why don\u2019t you go fix it?,'\u201d recalls Watts, who notes that his initial his response was to try to step on the career break.\xa0\xa0\xa0

Says Watts: \u201cI said, \u2018No, wait!\u2019 But then she responded, \u2018There is no one else who has expressed that level of passion about our customers and the experience that they deserve.\u2019\u201d

Over the coming years, Watts would oversee the company\u2019s customer onboarding processes and the relationship management interactions that governed Thomson\u2019s customer experience. \xa0Looking back at the role that afforded him the title of Global Head of Customer Administration, Thomson Reuters, Watts realizes that this experience allowed him to complete his eventual trek to the CFO office. In 2014, he would leave Thomson and step into the CFO office at Brown & Brown, where a transformative acquisition was in short order added to the menu.\xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney\xa0