René Seyger elected to expanded Roland Berger supervisory board

Global consultancy Roland Berger has held its first ever virtual partners meeting, voting on a new board of managing directors and supervisory board.

When CEO Charles-Edouard Bouée surprisingly stepped down last year shortly after being re-elected to a second term, global German-origin consultancy Roland Berger filled the leadership void with an expanded management team, with former deputy CEO Stefan Schaible taking over Bouée’s duties on an interim basis. Despite the global coronavirus pandemic and widespread social restrictions, the firm has held its latest partners’ meeting and election as scheduled.

In a first its more than 50-year history, Roland Berger has held a purely virtual Partner Meeting, with its approximately 250 partners worldwide convening on line to elect a new management and supervisory board. As a result, Schaible will now assume the role of Global Managing Partner and Spokesman of the Board of Managing Directors, joined by global automotive and industrial & operations head Marcus Berret and Greater China managing partner Denis Depoux.

Meanwhile, Sascha Haghani, Roland Berger’s CEO for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, will continue on as part of the firm’s newly elected Supervisory Board, with Laurent Benarousse (Casablanca Managing Partner and Civil Economics practice leader in Paris), Robert Henske (US Managing Partner), and Yvonne Ruf (a partner in the firm’s Düsseldorf Office) now coming aboard – together with Middle East regional managing partner René Seyger.

The new leadership team, the firm says, represents and capitalises on the diversity of the consultancy across all established fields of expertise and regions. In addition, the firm’s partnership team also agreed on a comprehensive consulting package to support clients dealing the ongoing global pandemic, with the package to be predominantly focused on the question of how to reactivate economic performance in a controlled manner following the crisis.

“The spread of the coronavirus is putting our societies and the global economy through an unprecedented test. The protection of the population is the first priority. That is why the worldwide ban on contact and the rescue measures for companies are absolutely the right move,” said Schaible, stating fast and proactive support as top of the firm’s agenda. “However, the question of how we can boost economic output in a controlled manner is already an important one.”

Schaible continued: “In concrete terms, this means protecting the workforce in such a way that production and services can be broadly resumed… German companies with their excellent production know-how are called upon here to first supply the health care system in full and then gradually enable other companies to ramp up their operations. We are contributing to this with our ‘protected ramp-up approach, which focuses on human and economic factors.”