New partners for French strategy & management consulting firms

30 August 2017 Consultancy.uk

The top echelon of strategy and management consulting firms in France has seen major reshuffles in recent months, highlighting the growth plans of many of the consultancies as well as the rivalry between the industry’s top players.

Bain & Company in March appointed Patrick Hoffstetter, former Chief Digital Officer of French automotive company Renault, as a senior advisor. In his role, the Oliver Wyman alumnus supports the firm’s digital transformation practice. Besides his affiliation with Bain, Hoffstetter also serves as a non-executive board member at start-up uptilab and as a business angel. 

In July, Oliver Wyman formalised the appointment of the Frenchman Philippe de Fontaine Vive – he joined the consulting firm’s Financial Services wing as a senior advisor. He had already been working with Oliver Wyman since February this year. Between 2003 and 2015 De Fontaine Vive worked for the European Investment Bank, latterly in the role of Senior Vice President.

Earlier in 2017 Oliver Wyman also added Mohssen Toumi, Henri-Paul Missioux and Philippe Jaspart as partners. Toumi joined from Strategy&. He began his career in 1999 at Capgemini Consulting, after which he joined Booz & Company in 2008, remaining with the firm after it was acquired by PwC and rebranded as Strategy&. Missioux and Jaspart both joined from Hitachi Consulting, as part of Oliver Wyman’s acquisition of the French arm of Hitachi Consulting. The French unit, which formerly operated as Celerant Consulting (Hitachi acquired the firm in 2013), was unsettled within the IT-giant, and with its carve-out to Oliver Wyman Missioux and Jaspart believe the unit can better focus on its core business – operations and supply chain consulting.

Patrick Hoffstetter, Philippe de Fontaine Vive, Mohssen Toumi, Henri-Paul Missioux, Philippe Jaspart, Jean-Michel Cagin, Anne Bioulac, Olivier de Panafieu, Michel Jacob

Oliver Wyman however also lost a partner in the country. David Giblas, who was a partner with the management consultancy since October 2013, when he joined from Capgemini Consulting, which he served since 2006, joined Malakoff Médéric as Chief Digital Officer. At Oliver Wyman, he was a partner in the financial services unit, while at Capgemini Consulting he among others led the firm’s financial services arm for Asia and the Middle East. 

Jean-Michel Cagin, a partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants, in April returned to one of his former employers: Roland Berger. Cagin served the German-origin strategy consultancy between 2000 and 2002, after which he worked for Mercer Management Consulting (the predecessor of Oliver Wyman) for 2,5 years before joining O&CC at the end 2004. Earlier in his career, the new Roland Berger partner worked for French consultancy Bossard, Capgemini Consulting and Mars & Co. 

The departure of Cagin came shortly before OC&C lost a group of French partners to Parthenon-EY, the strategy consulting arm of EY. OC&C has however committed to rebuild its French team, relocating two partners from the UK (Henri-Thierry Toutounji and David de Matteis) and bringing back one of the firm's French founding partners.

Roland Berger meanwhile reshuffled its top structure in France. Charles-Edouard Bouée, the firm’s CEO, a Frenchman, announced that the Paris office will now be led Anne Bioulac and Olivier de Panafieu. Both Co-Managing Partner have been senior partners of the Paris office for several years – Bioulac joined in the summer of 2006 from Oliver Wyman, De Panafieu has been with the firms since 2000 and previously served A.T. Kearney. 

Bouée was forced into making the structure after the firm’s former Managing Partner for France, Michel Jacob, joined Oliver Wyman in June. He worked for Roland Berger since 2001, and before that spent more than ten years at A.T. Kearney. Jacob was one of Roland Berger’s most senior partners in Europe, besides leading the French arm, he headed the firm’s South West Europe region (France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Canada, Morocco) and was part of the firm’s Global Executive Committee.

AlixPartners have meanwhile, according to a report from French website Consultor.fr, lost three partners in Paris. The trio incudes Yahya Daraaoui, who has been with AlixPartners since 2006 and was one of the founding members of the firm’s Paris office. The departure has incited AlixPartners to implement a retention plan for its key senior advisors in France, which reportedly has been put in place over the summer.

David Giblas, Yahya Daraaoui, Francesco Bellino, Marie Humblot-Ferrero, Pierre Roussel, Benjamin Entraygues, Frederic Esteve, Arnaud Viody, Sebastien Mahieux-Bibe

The Boston Consulting Group have added four new partners to its team. Three have been promoted internally: Francesco Bellino (joined in 2007 from Bain & Company), Marie Humblot-Ferrero (joined in 2007 from AEC Partners) and Pierre Roussel (joined in 2007 from university). The fourth new partner of the American consulting outfit is Benjamin Entraygues, who was a senior partner at Roland Berger. He started his career at Roland Berger in 2000 and supports clients with among others vendor and buy-side due diligences, target screening as well as buy-and-build strategies and private equity-backed asset optimiation. 

Vertone, a Paris based consultancy focused on strategy & operations (around 120 consultants), has added three new partners to its leadership ranks. Frédéric Estève has been with the firm since 2005 and is today responsible for firm’s media, tourism and leisure sectors. Arnaud Viody joined Vertone in 2006 and is responsible for the consumer products practice, while Sébastien Mahieux-Bibé, who joined the firm in January, as has been appointed a partner in Vertone's financial services arm. Mahieux-Bibé previously worked for Eurogroup Consulting from 2001 to 2005 and Equancy, another French origin consulting firm (around 150 consultants in Paris), from 2011 onwards.

With a value of around €4.1 billion, France’s management consulting market is Europe’s third largest consulting industry, trailing just the UK and Germany. 

Related: The 20 most prestigious strategy consulting firms in France.