JL
jiesen Li
Managing Partner
Valuation · M&A · IRS controversy
Twenty years across Big Four audit, corporate development, and independent practice. Leads complex valuation, tax controversy, and deal advisory.
Est. — Independent Advisory
Senior-led valuation, tax controversy, restructuring, and estate work for founders, families, and operators who need a partner in the room — not a ticket queue.
Practice
Three partners. One standard of work. Engagements priced as flat fees or blended retainers — never billable-hour theater.
§01 — Partners
Managing Partner
Valuation · M&A · IRS controversy
Twenty years across Big Four audit, corporate development, and independent practice. Leads complex valuation, tax controversy, and deal advisory.
Partner, Restructuring
Turnarounds · Workouts · Liquidity
Operator-turned-advisor with two decades guiding distressed companies through restructurings, refinancings, and Chapter 11.
Partner, Private Client
Estates · Trusts · Family enterprise
Trusted counsel to high-net-worth families on contested estates, trust litigation, and multi-generational succession.
§01.1 — Managing Partner
A quarter century spent doing one thing: taking finance and accounting organizations apart and rebuilding them — through carve-outs, cross-border launches, public-company readiness, and now AI-native operations on the general ledger itself.
Trained on the audit floor of a Big Five firm and seasoned inside a NASDAQ-100 semiconductor company as Group Controller and Director of Tax & Internal Audit — rebuilding the close, the tax provision, and the internal control environment, and serving as the in-house valuations lead on every M&A transaction in the company's history, from fifty million to one and a half billion dollars. Defended a multi-billion-dollar intangibles base to two of the Big Four, every year, without a write-down.
Recruited as Director of Finance for a Fortune-50 entertainment division during one of the largest carve-outs of the decade — leading a finance organization of more than one hundred through the stand-up of a brand-new accounting close, and rebuilding the payments and treasury architecture of a multi-billion-dollar consumer platform from the merchant-acquiring layer up.
Vice President, Finance & Business Development for a family-office platform in Hangzhou — designing the captive finance, accounting, and operating function from a blank page across CNY, USD, and HKD on an IFRS basis, supporting a multi-hundred-million-dollar integrated-resort development and a national hospitality license launch.
A decade as sole Chief Financial Officer of a venture-backed AI and media company — engineering the accounting, valuation, and capital-markets foundation from inception through patent issuance and multiple financing rounds. Today, deploys production AI workflows directly on transaction-level general-ledger data: a working blueprint for what finance transformation actually looks like — source-grounded, auditable, and partner-supervised end to end.
Finance & Accounting Transformation
— Controllership & close redesign
— Carve-out & stand-up accounting
— Public-company readiness
— Technical accounting (ASC 606 · 805 · 350 · 740 · 815 · 842)
— Valuation & fairness opinions
— M&A integration & PMI
— Payments & treasury architecture
— Audit defense & remediation
— AI-native finance operations
25+
Years in practice
$1.4B
Largest M&A engagement
4
Continents of operating experience
1
Partner on every engagement
Founder-led intake · response within one business day
§01.3 — Writing
Essay · 01
Finance & Accounting Transformation
System integrators build software. Accountants close books. The gap between them is where ERP migrations fail. Five failure patterns from NetSuite, Dynamics, SAP, and Oracle implementations — and what a finance lead does about them.
Read the essay
§01.2 — In their words
jiesen rebuilt our close, defended our valuation to the Big Four, and made our audit a non-event. He is the rare partner who actually does the work.
Group CFO
NASDAQ-100 semiconductor manufacturer
01 / 05
§02 — Services
01
409A, gift & estate, fairness opinions, purchase-price allocations, and disputes — defensible work product, partner signatures.
02
IRS exam, appeals, and litigation support. We sit at the table with your counsel, not behind a portal.
03
Sell-side and buy-side support for owner-operators: quality of earnings, structuring, and post-close integration.
04
Liquidity assessments, lender negotiations, and 13-week cash forecasts when the runway gets short.
05
Contested estates, fiduciary accountings, and expert testimony for family disputes that need a steady hand.
06
Investigations, damages, and litigation support — clear narratives built on rigorous reconstruction.
§03 — About
Jiesen Li Advisory is independent, senior-led, and small on purpose. Every engagement is staffed by a partner from the first call through the final deliverable. We say no to work we can't do well, and we say it quickly.
Our clients are founders selling companies they built, families navigating contested estates, and operators staring down an IRS notice or a covenant breach. They don't need a deck — they need judgment.
20+
Years per partner
100%
Partner-staffed
0
Billable-hour minimums
§04 — Contact
Direct
By introduction or email request
Practice
United States — engagements nationwide
The fastest path is our structured intake — a few minutes to describe the matter, attach any relevant documents, and put it in front of a partner.
Begin intake