Howden M&A

Drew Wardrope serves as Managing Director of Howden M&A, overseeing the global M&A insurance broking practice. He reports into the Howden Group Holdings leadership structure under founder and CEO David Howden. Each product line — warranty & indemnity, tax, title, environmental, and transactional diligence — is led by a dedicated subject-matter expert, reflecting the firm's structure of pairing client deal teams with deep specialist benches.

Flow originates primarily from repeat relationships with private equity firms, corporate acquirers, real estate investors, hedge funds, and the law firms that represent them in M&A processes. Because the policies are non-renewable and tied to individual transactions, the business is entirely episodic and dependent on maintaining close advisory relationships across multiple deal ecosystems.

Howden Group Holdings has been majority employee-owned since 2013. Minority institutional stakes are held by General Atlantic, CDPQ, and HG Capital. The group does not disclose ownership percentages, but the employee-ownership model means a large portion of group equity is held by current partners and senior staff, creating alignment between the production teams and the entity's long-term economics.

Howden M&A operates as an insurance broker, not a principal investor. It does not take equity risk on the transactions it insures. Its value is in structuring and placing coverage with third-party (re)insurance markets, negotiating terms, and managing claims on behalf of policyholders.

The firm has publicly positioned itself as a leader in insuring secondary-market transactions — particularly GP-led secondaries and continuation funds — stating it has been at the forefront of this segment since 2019. It publishes periodic insights on secondary-market claims trends and views the increasing use of continuation vehicles by private equity sponsors as a structural growth driver for its tax and contingent-risk practice.