BrazilRoland Berger expands partner team in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Roland Berger has expanded its partner team in the Netherlands. While company veteran René Seyger recently relocated from the firm’s Amsterdam office to Dubai to lead its Middle East operation, Casper Veenman and Erwin Douma have been admitted into the Dutch leadership team, taking Roland Berger’s Amsterdam-based partnership tally to nine.
Having co-founded Roland Berger’s Dutch office in 2002 together with among others Tijo Collot d'Escury – Managing Partner of the office and a member of Roland Berger’s Global Executive Committee – René Seyger has been with the global management consultancy for more than 16 years. In November, Seyger was formally unveiled by the recently re-elected Roland Berger CEO Charles-Edouard Bouée as the firm’s new Managing Partner for Middle East, handing him a clear vote of confidence in the process. “René is my and our person of choice to take Roland Berger to the next level in the Middle East. He has our full trust.”
Seyger’s gap in Amsterdam will to an extent be filled in by protégé Casper Veenman, who has worked closely with the senior partner on engagements in the automotive, transportation and mobility segments. Veenman has been with Roland Berger since 2008, when he joined the strategy consultancy from Accenture, where he started his career as a consultant six years previous. Having joined as a Consultant, Veenman has since ascended the ranks to Senior Consultant, Project Manager, Principal and as per 1 January 2019, Partner.
At Roland Berger, Veenman supports companies with strategy (market analysis and sector development), operational improvement, innovative management and sustainability services. Veenman also works for decision-makers in the public domain – a recent study which he co-authored for instance found that the growing uptake of electrical vehicles is a costly development for the Dutch government. According to calculations by Veenman and his colleagues, the government may see its coffers miss out on up to €600 million per year by 2021, for a large part due to the fact that drivers of electrical cars and vans are exempted from paying fuel taxes.
Summarising his main competencies, Roland Berger describes Veenman as a consultant that “tackles his client's issues head on, working with them to find practical, innovative solutions that can be put into practice immediately.” Veenman studied Business Information Systems at the University of Amsterdam, and followed the leadership development programme at Harvard Business School.
Joining Veenman as a newly appointed Partner is Erwin Douma, who started his career at Roland Berger in 2003, after obtaining a Masters in Chemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology. He has since worked twelve years for the consulting firm, with a 3-year stint at Philips as Director of Innovation Excellence the only period he spent externally. Douma supports companies with business model innovation and performance improvement and operations, with a focus on clients in the chemical and manufacturing industries. He also advises clients on matters such as strategy development, product management, organisation redesign, programme management, strategic sourcing and change management.
“Thanks to his experience in the consumer division at Philips, Erwin is a strategy consultant with a pragmatic eye, while enjoying being intensively involved in strategy execution,” states Roland Berger on its website.
Nine partners in the Netherlands
The appointment of Veenman and Douma takes Roland Berger’s partner team in the Netherlands to nine, including other leaders Tijo Collot d'Escury, Mark de Jonge, Arnoud van der Slot, Benno van Dongen, Alexander Belderok, David Frans, and David van der Does. They lead a team of around 110 consultants and staff, who combined generate over €30 million in revenues, up from €20 million six years ago.
A long time serving partner of Roland Berger in Amsterdam, René Seyger, last quarter relocated from the Netherlands to Dubai to lead Roland Berger’s Middle East operation. In discussion with Consultancy-me.com, Seyger recently unveiled his plans for the region.
Related: Roland Berger managing partner René Seyger reflects on new role in Middle East (on our Middle East platform).
