Five months after the shock of the announcement of the suspension of Olivier de Panafieu from his position as managing partner of Roland Berger, following the revelation of a dinner organized last November at his home in the presence of Eric Zemmour, candidate for the presidential election, the European strategy consulting firm has pushed its collegial management style a little further. And it is France, the group’s second geography, which acts as a pioneer.
Pioneering role
While Roland Berger’s general management is already provided by three people within a board of directors supervised by a supervisory board of 5 members, “the organization in Paris is unprecedented with a management team made up of 6 people, 33 to 48 years old, respecting gender parity, and integrating personalities with diverse profiles and at different hierarchical levels”, explains Laurent Benarousse, sole managing partner of the Paris office and elected to the supervisory board since 2020.
Roland Berger’s extended management team in France: from left to right, Sébastien Manceau, Marie Lê de Narp, Stéphane Tubiana, Magali Testard, Laurent Benarousse and Claire PernetDR
This pioneering role is not new for this weapons engineer. After a stint at Mars & Co, he opened Roland Berger’s office in Casablanca in 2008, when there was then only one strategy consulting firm in Morocco’s economic capital, namely McKinsey. He remained there for eight years. Set up last February, this joint body includes, in addition to Laurent Benarousse, two “senior partners”, Magali Testard and Sébastien Manceau, two “principals”, Marie Lê de Narp and Claire Pernet, and one “partner”, Stéphane Tubiana.
Room for maneuver
A reorganization that has not affected the trajectory of the firm which, in Paris, ” outperform the market with double-digit growth,” says Laurent Benarousse. Roland Berger, whose turnover is close to 900 million euros with “300 Partners” and 2,700 employees in total, “is showing growth in all its geographies, with a presence in around forty countries”, adds -he.
As with other strategy consulting firms, assignments around technological and sustainable transformations are increasing sharply and represent nearly 30% of activity. In Paris, where the public sector has doubled in size over the last ten years to represent 10% of the total, the slowdown following what is commonly called “The McKinsey Case” should not call into question the dynamics of the nine other sectoral “verticals”. Especially since the group with no debt has financial leeway to acquire new skills.
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