Practice
We focus on mandates of consequence — where a wrong appointment costs years and the right one carries decades.
Structured succession searches for chief executives and chief financial officers in the Mittelstand and for DAX- and MDAX-listed companies. Clear remit, clear method, clear commitment.
Appointments to supervisory boards, advisory councils, and independent directorships. Focus areas: family businesses, investment partnerships, listed mid-cap companies.
Identification and integration of key executives following acquisitions and mergers. Assessment of incumbent leadership teams, construction of the next leadership generation.
Confidential counsel to chief executives and supervisory-board chairs on governance, executive structure, succession roadmaps, and leadership decisions under pressure.
Selected Engagements
Every client decides whether our work together may be discussed. Four anonymised examples from the last fiscal year.
Fourth-generation transition. Search, selection, supervisory-board alignment, and onboarding across fourteen months. The chosen candidate has held the role for eighteen months.
Search for an incoming supervisory-board chair following the planned departure of the founder figure. Focus: capital-markets experience, international reach, strategic maturity.
Integration after a European investment firm's acquisition of a mid-sized healthcare specialist. Assessment of the existing management board, search for a new CFO.
First appointment of a CFO for a single family office with a complex holding structure. Brief: institutional discipline within entrepreneurial agility.
Partners
Every partner in our firm has sat in the rooms to which we now bring people. That perspective is what we offer.
Former chief executive of a DAX-30 industrial group. Economics at Cologne and Cambridge. Adjunct lecturer at WHU. With the firm since its founding in 1998.
Former Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, leading the People & Organisation practice in Central Europe. INSEAD MBA, doctorate in economics from St. Gallen. With Hartmann · Drews since 2008.
Former chair of an SDAX supervisory board, preceded by ten years as board member for strategy and M&A. Law at Munich and Yale. Specialism: supervisory-board mandates and family businesses.
Former CHRO of a DAX group responsible for 80,000 employees worldwide. Doctorate in work and organisational psychology. Specialism: CFO succession and post-merger leadership.
Perspectives
Observations from our partners on governance, succession, and leadership. Twice monthly. In writing. Without sponsorship.
The first ninety days decide — not over strategy, but over credibility. An observation from twenty-seven accompanied transitions.
What family businesses really expect from external supervisory directors — and what most searches overlook.
Three criteria we apply after acquisitions — and a fourth that is often overlooked.
Track Record
Offices
Confidential conversations in person in Munich or Frankfurt — or via encrypted video.
First conversations are without charge, confidential, and without obligation. We respond within twenty-four hours.
