Greater China boss Denis Depoux elected to top of Roland Berger tree

Greater China managing partner Denis Depoux has been elevated to Roland Berger’s Board of Managing Directors following the firm’s first ever virtual partners’ meeting.

In the face of the global coronavirus pandemic and heavy social restrictions instituted across the many parts of the world, global management consultancy Roland Berger has held the first ever purely virtual partners’ meeting in its fifty-year history – with Greater China managing partner Denis Depoux elected to the Board of Managing Directors alongside Marcus Berret and Stefan Schaible, the latter who takes on the role of spokesman and Global Managing Partner.

Previously the deputy CEO, Schaible has been holding down the fort together with a support team since the sudden departure of former CEO Charles-Edouard Bouée, who stepped down in the middle of last year roughly twelve months into his second four-year term – keen to pursue other opportunities. Previously an investor in Vietnam-based online luxury retailer Leflair among other businesses, Bouée has since founded Alpha Intelligence Capital in Shanghai.

Roland Berger meanwhile will forge ahead with its new trio at the helm. Having overseen Roland Berger’s Greater China business for the past two years, Depoux has a long history in the region – first kicking off his career in China with French energy giant EDF more than two and a half decades ago before switching to the consultancy realm. Focused on the energy and environmental sectors, he joined Roland Berger in Paris at the end of 2011.

Along with local managing director duties, Depoux oversees a wide variety of Roland Berger competence centers, including Energy & Chemicals, Public Services & Real Estate, Transportation, Logistics & Tourism, Engineered Products & High Tech, Operations and HR Leadership & Transformation. As to energy & utilities, he has provided expertise to clients in areas such as new products and services, risk management, and M&A among others.

In addition to its new-look Board of Managing Directors, the firm’s 250-odd partners also voted in an expanded Supervisory Board, consisting of Sascha Haghani, (Roland Berger’s CEO for Germany, Austria and Switzerland), Laurent Benarousse (Casablanca Managing Partner and Civil Economics practice leader in Paris), Robert Henske (US Managing Partner), René Seyger (Middle East managing partner), and Yvonne Ruf (a partner in the firm’s Düsseldorf Office).

The firm says the new leadership team represents and capitalises on the diversity of the consultancy across all established fields of expertise and regions. The virtual partners’ meeting also saw the introduction of a comprehensive consulting package to support clients impacted by the current global coronavirus pandemic, with the offering focused primarily on 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,” said Schaible. “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,”, 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.”