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Olvier Landgraf, the semesters’ first guest practitioner, started the semester off with a bang. Mr. Landgraf is a managing partner Certina Holdings AG and he took us through a real life case study pertaining to a time when his firm executed a buy and hold strategy. A French plastic packaging company had fallen into financial trouble and Certina saw this as a perfect opportunity. Certina’s plastic bottling arm could credit a majority of their revenue to the German market, and this acquisition would allow them better access two key markets in the industry, the U.S. and France. I could write an entire blog post, maybe even a masters’ thesis (joke), dedicated entirely to this practitioner talk. I could dig deeper into topics covered by Mr. Landgraf ranging from the financial details of this acquisition to general industry insights, but I will stop short in the name of conciseness. In all, Mr. Landgraf caught our attention and held it for the entirety his presentation. He set the bar high, let us see if the rest of the practitioners matched up.
Next we heard from Dr. Moldenhauer of Boston Consulting Group on the importance of digitalization in todays’ consulting industry. Dr. Moldenhauer brought years of restructuring experience with him to the presentation. One of the many insights he bestowed on us was the fact, which a lot of managers and owners fail to recognize, that “business models have a limited life time”. One great example of this today would be the nuclear energy business in Germany, this a business that most would not have predicted to end in year 2022, but that it will, assuming the government’s plan remains intact. The hour or so that Dr. Moldenhauer spoke for was filled with insights like this. Those of us who had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Moldenhauer left more knowledgeable than we had been when we arrived.
The first practitioner to speak in our M&A Accounting class was Dr. Rainer Jäger of PwC and he took us into the world of consulting and accounting involving mergers and acquisitions. Dr. Jäger did a great job of relating his first-hand experience with current deals going on in today’s M&A market. A part of his experience comes in the area of business combination accounting and how it is covered in IFRS 3. As the discussion ranged from the intricacies of fair value measurement, to goodwill accounting, and to real life experiences with clients, I found myself truly enthralled.
The next day we were lucky enough to have a Frankfurt School M.Sc. in Finance alumni in Phillip Meske come in to conduct a talk on Finance Transformation. Mr. Meske is currently a manager at KPMG in the field of CFO Consulting, and he was kind enough to give us a glimpse into his daily tasks. The conversation began with the ever expanding role a CFO plays in today’s business environment. It is important for those of us striving to become upper level managers to realize the interconnectivity of all aspects of a business from IT, to Accounting, to Investors Relations, and the talk we had with Mr. Meske drove this point home. I found the most interesting part of this talk to be the topic of “quantitative evaluation of process optimization measures”. A project example was provided of a bubble chart depicting new optimization projects and where they fell in relation to cost and complexity of implementation vs strategic value contribution, and it was this display that lead to a great conversation between me, my classmates, and Mr. Meske. I left Frankfurt School that day with a wealth of new knowledge and a desire to dig deeper into the financial transformation topic.
Our most recent talk was conducted by a trio from Andersch, Mr. Säuberlich, Member of the board, Mr. Winzer, Director, and Ms. Klose, Senior Consultant and FS alumni, who all covered the topic of “Restructuring Concepts and Implementation”. I really enjoyed the three speaker format as it created a nice mixture of presenting styles and professional experience.  Our discussion started with the topic of procedures involving the analysis of a company in crisis. We learned this analysis must include a description of the economic, political, and technical environments the company is currently facing, as well as insights and possible solutions to internal issues. As the discussion continued we spoke about the restructuring procedure and how to move from the initial “basic/partial concept” stage, designed to overcome the initial crisis, to the “overall concept” stage where the goal is to create sustainable profitability. All in all, I found it to be a very rewarding discussion on restructuring consulting.
In speaking with a majority of my classmates, I have garnered that the vast majority of us truly value the opportunity we have to speak with and learn from active practitioners. It provides us with a healthy break from lectures, a chance to gain invaluable insight into a variety of firm’s procedures and strategies, and, most importantly, a chance to network with active industry professionals.
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