Publication Examples and Insights

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While at the McKinsey, I was main contributor and responsible partner/editor for McKinsey's blog and newsletter on valuation topics. They reflect my thinking on more technical valuation topics.

Prime Numbers was the initial version until fall of 2023. At this point, we started The Valuation Practitioner, first on my personal LinkedIn page, then on McKinsey's LinkedIn presence.

Since October 2024, when I retired, this has been curated by McKinsey colleagues

Over almost a decade, I have spent time with clients and in knowledge projects in understanding how investors look at the value of sustainability projects, what matters, what is priced into today's markets etc. My bottom line from my research and experience is that ESG/sustainability efforts alone can't rescue bad strategy - but good companies can create value from growing with the sustainability trend. Good business beats ESG ratings, and sustainability strategy needs to be driven like any other strategy - going where the demand is.

• What investors want to know about sustainability
• The sustainability challenge: Capital-intensive, sustainable businesses offer growth on a scale achieved by technology juggernauts of recent decades. But they face a different set of challenges.
•  The state of internal carbon pricing (2021)
•  How to succeed with carbon-reduction initiatives 

Together with two colleagues, in 2012, I developed what has now become McKinsey's view on value creation in M&A. Here is the first article on the topic. The insights, methodology and analysis have a remarkable robustness - in contrast to many other "consultant knowledge pieces", our insights have held true for more than a decade, whenever the analysis was repeated

• The standard "M&A announcement effect" looks only at large, eye catching acquisitions - yet 90%+ of corporate M&A are small deals that only matter in aggregate. Consequently, you need to measure M&A success over longer periods of time
• Even for large deals, the announcement effect is basically useless - in 50% of the cases, the 2 year post deal outcome is exactly opposite to initial market reaction
• In most sectors, companies that use a series of small acquisitions are more successful than those using large acquisitions - and surprisingly, also those using no acquisitions
• Industry matters, however: In some industries, large consolidation plays or organic strategies have better shareholder returns

Follow-up articles over the years

•  Managing the market’s reaction to M&A deals when there is no correlation between the announcement effects of a deal and its excess total return to shareholders (TRS) two or more years later 
• 2019 follow-up
• 2021 follow-up
• 2023 follow-up

These findings are also used in McKinsey's "Valuation", a standard textbook for MBA students for many decades. Lastly, if you Google "McKinsey programmatic M&A", you will find many derivatives from this work, e.g., how to set up your organization to do many deals.

in 2008, together with 2 colleagues, I developed a view on how to segment investors differently and how to communicate with investors that matter. This has ever since been the McKinsey viewpoint, and again, it has been used in McKinsey's textbook "Valuation"

• Classical investor segmentation like growth vs. value is useless for investor communication as it doesn't say anything about the decision making process of actual investors
• What matters for corporate communication are Intrinsic Investors. They take a relatively large position in companies after they invested time in really understanding their strategy and performance - not based on news cycles. They are focused on longer term value creation, not short term gains
• Consequently, companies need to engage in a dialogue with these investors and not see IR as "marketing". Rather, it's an honest, transparent conversation how the company will create value

This thinking again has been the basis for many follow-up studies, publications, and client work. For example

• The investors that matter still want you to focus on the long term 
• Three ways you can make your earnings call more effective
• Podcast: What your most important investors need to know
• What investors want to know about sustainability
• Communicating in turnarounds
• Creating a clear equity story
• Toward a value-creating board 

I have written about my findings extensively in many topics. As a broad shareholder value and valuation expert, there is a wide variety of topics I am credible in - from accounting topics, capital structure, dividend and buyback strategy to Return on Capital measurements, Cost of Capital, diversification and strategic topics like value from M&A, specific deals, divestiture, being the best owner of assets, etc. Here are a some core articles that give you an idea how I approach some topics.

• 2023: How you finance M&A won’t affect overall value creation 
• 2023:  The times for multiples: Five situations when multiples need more than a second look 
• 2023: The times for multiples: Why value creation always comes first 
• 2023: Share repurchases and dividends: Which create more value? 
• 2023: Don’t use multiples to measure M&A success, please 
• 2023:  Stop obsessing about earnings accretion 
• 2023:  Markets versus textbooks: Calculating today’s cost of equity 2019:  Is a leverage reckoning coming? 
• 2022: Markets will be markets: An analysis of long-term returns from the S&P 500
• 2022:  Estimating the cost of sub-investment-grade debt
• 2021:  Should you start issuing EPS guidance again? 
• 2018:  Are your strategy discussions stuck in an echo chamber?
• 2018:  Seeing your way to better strategy 
• 2018:  A welcome change in lease-accounting rules 
• 2017: Reflections on digital M&A (podcast)
• 2017:  How CFOs can use war gaming to support strategic decisions  (Podcast)
• 2015: Getting a better handle on currency risk
• 2015:  How transportation and logistics businesses can increase their economic profit
• 2011: Changing accounting rules shouldn’t mean changing strategy 
• 2010:  A singular moment for merger value? 
• 2010: M&A teams: When small is beautiful
• 2006: Making Capital Structure support strategy
• 2005:  Comparing performance when invested capital is low 
• 2005:  The value of share buybacks 
• 2005: Time to jettison EPS
• 2004:  All P/Es are not created equal