Global strategy consultancy CVA launches first Middle East office in Dubai

The boutique global strategy consultancy Corporate Value Associates has launched an office in Dubai – to be led by 20-year consulting veteran Olivier Staub.

Global strategy consulting firm Corporate Value Associates (CVA) has launched its first Middle East office in Dubai, adding to its existing network of 17 offices across Europe, the US and Asia Pacific. The new office will be led by Olivier Staub, a strategy consulting veteran with over 20 years of international consulting and business development experience – the last 14 of those based out of Dubai.

Established in 1987, CVA has grown to a team of more than 250 advisors worldwide, serving clients with strategy needs across multiple sectors, including energy & utilities, financial services, mining & materials, TMT, transportation and defence. Recently, the consultancy was named by Decideurs Magazine as among the top strategy consulting firms to the industrials segment in France.

The launch of its first Middle East office is a significant step for CVA, which places a particular emphasis on its global network. “We ensure that learnings from work in one country are quickly disseminated to others – best practices are transferred not just between industry practices, but also across geographies. Global staffing and training guarantee there is one global standard: the CVA standard,” the firm states.

Joined by CVA founder Paul-Andre Rabate and Paris-based partner Carole Ott for its inauguration, Staub will head up the Dubai office after a brief stint at fellow boutique consultancy Emerton, before which he served for four years as a partner with local strategy firm Novo Management Partners. Earlier in his career, Staub spent seven years with Oliver Wyman, and initially started out as a consultant with Deloitte in Paris.

Over the course of his career, Staub has amassed experience in over 20 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, with functional expertise in corporate and growth strategy, M&A and due diligence, turnaround programmes and programme management, organisational design, and corporate governance among other areas. He also co-founded e-commerce company Neodirect in Paris, serving as its business development director for three years.

Staub joins Sami Grouz in the broader MENA region, who has led the firm’s Casablanca office since the middle of last year, and will be supported in the new UAE venture by Thomas Fabbes, an Oxford graduate in Materials Science who has been with CVA’s London office since September. According to the firm, its junior consultants are ‘hand-picked’ from the only the top universities and schools around the world – with the firm currently in the middle of a recruitment drive.

CVA founder and Managing Partner Paul-Andre Rabate himself received a doctoral degree in Business Economics from Harvard University, joining BCG in 1978 before co-founding strategy consultancy Mars & Company in France the following year prior to establishing CVA. “CVA has always been a global boutique and this new office opens the door to exciting challenges in the Middle-East,” the firm stated on LinkedIn. “Olivier, we wish you the best of luck in this central region.”