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Philipp Espel

Senior PartnerHamburg

Leads our M&A work in Europe

Philipp leads McKinsey’s M&A work in Europe. He often works at the intersection of technical and financial issues, including with performance transformations, cost improvements, M&A and postmerger‐integration efforts, turnarounds, due diligence, and other issues in the CFO arena.

Philipp has been advising clients in the automotive, machinery, and basic‐materials industries; financial institutions; sovereign‐wealth funds; and private‐equity companies for more than 15 years in China, Europe, and the United States.

Examples of his recent work include the following:

  • running a clean team to prepare a cross‐border merger of two publicly traded companies
  • leading a financial‐turnaround program for a Chinese OEM
  • restructuring the material cost base of a US OEM
  • conducting a financial‐benchmarking exercise for a DAX‐30 CFO
  • formulating the M&A and postmerger-integration strategies for an international merger in the basic‐materials sector
  • running a profitability program for a steel-automotive supplier in Southern Europe
  • developing an investment strategy and screening assets for an Asian sovereign fund
  • assessing the industrial credit portfolio of a financial intermediary
  • leading the postmerger‐integration team for two European industrials
  • developing a value-generation strategy for an automotive CFO in the United States

Philipp is fluent in German, English, and Spanish.

Published work

Data and analytics in the driver’s seat of the used-car market,” McKinsey & Company, August 2023

How industrial companies can cut their indirect costs—fast,” McKinsey & Company, April 2020

Education

RWTH Aachen University
PhD, finance

WHU–Otto Beisheim School of Management
MBA