O’Keefe names Grand Rapids office managing director

John Ruther Courtesy O’Keefe

A financial planning firm hired a managing director for its Grand Rapids office.

Bloomfield Hills-based O’Keefe said last week that it appointed John Ruther to oversee its office at 146 Monroe Center NW, Suite 1226, in Grand Rapids.

“Mr. Ruther’s broad business expertise specializes in the areas of enterprise consulting and strategic advisory services,” the firm said. “His guidance has resulted in clients creating strong finance organizations that give better insight to cost and growth drivers, building customer-focused, target-driven sales organizations, and achieving cost-effectiveness through improvement and automation of business processes.”

With a focus on privately held global companies, Ruther has worked with middle-market companies ranging from $15 million up to $1.6 billion in revenue.

His background includes multinational carve-outs, post-merger integrations, ESOPs, sell-side due diligence and value optimization, corporate real estate, finance transformations, e-commerce, treasury management automation, IT strategy, and traditional financial and executive leadership roles.

Prior to joining O’Keefe, Ruther was owner and principal at a consulting practice in West Michigan called The Ruther Group, which provided C-level management and transformation projects, primarily for manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers.

Ruther is a certified public accountant and a chartered global management accountant.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration with an emphasis in finance and accounting from Central Michigan University, as well as a Master of Business Administration from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.