BrazilSimon-Kucher promotes Japan-based Kazuto Yamashiro to partnership ranks
Simon-Kucher & Partners has promoted Tokyo-based senior consultant Kazuto Yamashiro to its partnership ranks among ten new global appointments.
With new offices launched across the globe in 2018, including market entries into North Africa (Egypt) and Latin America (Brazil, Chile and Mexico) along with expansions in the US and its third outlet established in Greater China (in Shanghai, following a 2017 launch in Hong Kong), it’s been a massive year for the global German-origin strategy and marketing specialist Simon-Kucher & Partners.
Not only that, but the firm, which specialises in the growth segment with a focus on sales, marketing and pricing among other offerings, has notched up another year of growth on its own phenomenal trajectory – booking revenues of $175 million in the first half of the year to be up 19 percent on the year prior; the firm’s up to $360 million 2018 revenue projection after surpassing the $200 million mark just a few years ago.
To mark another year of extraordinary growth, the partner-owned firm has now added ten new partners to its 100-plus partnership team, including long-term Tokyo-based Simon-Kucher senior consultant Kazuto Yamashiro – effective from the beginning of next year. Yamashiro has been with the firm for almost eight years, joining from a six and a half year marketing director role with Medtronic in 2011.
A specialist in B2B and B2C strategy and pricing consulting with a focus on price and trade term optimisation and sales efficiency improvement, Yamashiro prior to Medtronic spent over three years as a consultant with NERA Economic Consulting – before which he served as an Associate in the Investment Banking division of Lehman Brothers after graduating with an MBA from the University of Rochester in 1999.
“The new Partners represent the competencies we look for in our leaders: commitment to our clients, people development, and a proven track record,” said Simon-Kucher & Partners CEO Georg Tacke, who has led the firm since 2009. “The election of these new Partners is a testament to the ongoing success of the company and our excellent growth rate of more than 20 percent.”
In addition to Yamashiro, the other newly elected partners (bringing the firm’s total to 114, at a partner to consultant ratio of around 1:10) include Kornelia Reifenberg and Benjamin Wellstein in Bonn, fellow Europeans Hans Munz (Barcelona), Alix Nepveux (Paris), and Andree Radloff (Zurich), Nicolas Bence in Santiago de Chile, and three new additions in the US: Adam Etcher, Peter Harms and Eddie Hartman.
