We strive to maintain and grow the trust and confidence that you have put in us during the past year – some examples:

Board Leadership: Several finance institutions entrusted us with board performance projects. We conducted a third-party Microfinance board evaluation in Asia, facilitated a self-evaluation in central Europe, and acted as an honest broker in unifying a large board in Africa. In the position of trusted advisor, Carpe Diem facilitates a robust and constructive debate among board members and management. In these transformational situations, interests of shareholders and management need to be realigned, so that, with a professionalized board, follow-up actions are accelerated.

“It was a great pleasure to benefit from your pitch-perfect moderating of our board retreat. I think that we have definitively turned the corner to more productive relations.”

Director Training: Providing international perspective, we trained supervisory board members of German banks and companies in collaboration with a leading German business school. We continued our customized flagship programme for institutional investors, and have now trained close to 450 aspiring or experienced board directors.

“Sehr praxisnah, sehr gute Diskussionen, sehr guter Vortrag.”

Corporate Governance: We helped diverse institutional investors in upgrading their investment process. Asking vital questions earlier in the screening of targets helps them to improve deal-flow quality and in selecting promising investee companies. We provided tools to put a sharp focus on Corporate Governance issues pre due-diligence expenditures.

“Thank you for your support in structuring our process.”

Strategy Development: We worked with one of the leading research institutions in Germany in order to develop, write, communicate and anchor mission, vision, strategic objectives and goals. Following on, a planning process was implemented to make sure that strategy and research projects are in line, budgets are agreed, and project-milestones are monitored.

“The evaluation committee regards work done as exceptional and as an example to be followed by all the other departments.”

Assessing Management: Using our proprietary toolset we gave several Private Equity companies the means to assess management capability early in their investment process. Our focus is training investment professionals on how to rate company managers against their future task of achieving the investment strategy.

“Refreshing to be introduced to an approach so fundamentally different to the skillset naturally developed over many years.”

SME Growth: A growing IT-Internet company sought outside advice for the first time to enable them to start incorporating more structure, whilst remaining agile, as their customer and employee base expanded. Using an interactive vision & mission alignment exercise with the owners and key staff, Carpe Diem made values, future strategy and culture transparent to a wide group.

“I am amazed and delighted how this work has shown us how we and the next level are completely aligned on our future path.”

Operationalizing M&A: Together with a strategic partner we lead a business integration team to develop the methods, skills and measurements to blend-in the operations of a recently acquired competitor. Using our Advanced Business Process Improvement course, a customised road-map was developed for a leading Middle Eastern petrochemical company that will drive the merger effort and ensures the leadership team is properly equipped.

“More than we expected from the course in 5 days.”

Thank you, and don´t hesitate to get back to us – Carpe Diem!

Alan, Armin, Gudrun and Tony