Carlo Montenovesi

Carlo Montenovesi is the founder, president and CEO of Cross Border, an independent corporate finance and M&A advisory boutique he established in Milan in 1990. Over a career of more than 30 years in the M&A industry, he has executed over 250 M&A transactions with industrial companies, private equity funds and family businesses, both in Italy and internationally, and the firm reports on the order of 400 completed deals. Cross Border focuses on the middle market, advising buyers and sellers on transactions of varying nature and complexity.

Before founding Cross Border, Montenovesi built an operating and advisory track record concentrated in healthcare and industry. He was Head of New Business Development in the healthcare division of Ciba-Geigy Italy and later General Manager of Ciba Vision (the optical/contact-lens business), ran the M&A and IPO department at the listed Italian investment bank Sopaf, and worked as a consultant at Gea Consulenti Associati. He was also co-founder and past chairman of Global M&A, an international network of M&A advisory firms.

He is educated at Bocconi University in Milan, where he earned a Laurea cum laude in Business Administration, and holds an MBA from INSEAD (Fontainebleau). He remains closely tied to INSEAD, serving as Vice President of the INSEAD Italian Council and as a past president of the school's Italian alumni association.

Beyond the advisory business, Montenovesi has extended Cross Border into adjacent structures — founding Cross Border Capital Finance in London and Cross Border Biosalus, an advisory boutique focused on the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector — and has taken direct early-stage roles, most notably as a co-founder and backer of the diagnostics startup Hyris. Note: aggregator listings that label him simply as an "Angel Investor / Seed" investor overstate a formal angel practice; his verifiable early-stage activity is as a co-founder/backer alongside a primarily M&A-advisory career.

• Core business is sell-side and buy-side M&A advisory for the middle market, not a fund writing standardized checks — engagements are transaction-by-transaction rather than a published ticket size.
• Deep, repeated focus on healthcare, pharmaceuticals, life sciences and diagnostics (rooted in his Ciba-Geigy/Ciba Vision background and the Cross Border Biosalus and Hyris ventures).
• Broad sector coverage across roughly ten industrial verticals, serving family businesses, entrepreneurs, managers, institutional investors and private equity funds.
• Strong cross-border / international orientation — the firm's identity and network are built around connecting Italian companies with foreign buyers, partners and capital.
• Direct early-stage involvement appears thesis-led and hands-on (co-founding a company, not passive angel spraying), concentrated in areas where he has domain depth such as AI-enabled diagnostics.