Corporate strategy
Where to compete, what to stop funding, and what the board will actually approve. We build the case with your finance team so it survives the first challenge.
- Portfolio review
- Growth planning
- Pricing
- Market entry
Strategy consultancy — est. 2009
Strategy that survives contact with the business.
We work alongside operating teams in industrials, financial services and health systems — through the decision, through the rollout, and through the first bad quarter after it.
What we do
Four practices. One team in the room.
Most of our work starts as one question and turns into two. We staff for that: a partner who stays, and specialists who join when the problem needs them — not when the proposal says so.
Operations
Cost, throughput and supply. We spend the first fortnight on the floor, not in the data room — because the variance is rarely where the report says it is.
- Cost programmes
- Supply chain
- Manufacturing
- Procurement
Digital & data
Modernisation that pays for itself inside eighteen months. We size the benefit before the platform, and we write the business case you'd defend under audit.
- Core systems
- Data foundations
- AI adoption
- Tech due diligence
M&A and integration
Commercial diligence in three weeks, integration planning before signing, and a synergy tracker your CFO can reconcile line by line on day one.
- Commercial DD
- Synergy planning
- Day-one readiness
- Carve-outs
Selected work
Results the client's own finance team signed off.
Every number below was verified against the client's reported figures twelve months after we left. Where a programme underdelivered, we say so.
Kessler was losing money on its highest-volume line and couldn't say why. We rebuilt product-level costing from the shop floor up, killed two SKUs that consumed 40% of changeover time, and renegotiated three supply contracts the procurement team had assumed were fixed.
"They found the loss in week two. It took us three years not to."
£41mAnnualised EBITDA improvement
31%Reduction in changeover downtime
2×Inventory turns on the core line
0Site closures — the board's condition
A £180m modernisation had stalled at 60% spend and 20% delivery. We rescoped to the eleven capabilities that actually moved cost-to-serve, retired the rest, and rebuilt the benefits case so the audit committee could track it monthly rather than annually.
"The first honest number anyone had given the committee."
£64mProgramme scope removed, not deferred
19moCut from the delivery runway
−22%Cost-to-serve per policy, year one
11Capabilities kept, from 47 proposed
Two systems merged on paper and nowhere else. We consolidated procurement across nine sites, standardised four clinical pathways with the physician leads rather than around them, and stood up a synergy tracker the CFO reconciled to the ledger every month.
"The clinicians ran the pathway work. That's why it stuck."
$57mSynergies realised against $48m target
−14%Supply spend across nine sites
96%Clinician adoption of new pathways
1Missed milestone, disclosed in month 7
Our thesis
Most strategy fails in the handover — not in the analysis. So we don't hand over.
Elena Marchetti · Senior Partner, Head of Operations Northgate Partners, London
Clients
Who we work for.
A small book, deliberately. We take on roughly eighteen engagements a year and turn down more than we accept.
Kessler IndustrialManufacturing
Arden MutualInsurance
Meridian HealthHealthcare
Vance & RothPrivate equity
Calder FreightLogistics
Broadmoor BankBanking
Tessik ChemicalsChemicals
Halloran EnergyUtilities
People
The partner who pitches is the partner who stays.
Nineteen partners, no pyramid. Every engagement carries a named partner on site at least one day a week — written into the contract, not the proposal.
Elena Marchetti
Senior Partner — Operations
Twenty years in industrial turnarounds. Ran manufacturing for a €3bn components group before joining Northgate.
Devraj Sundaram
Partner — Digital & Data
Led core-banking replacements at two tier-one lenders. Sceptical of platforms; interested in what they cost to run in year five.
Claire Whitlock
Partner — M&A
Sixty-plus commercial diligences across health and industrials. Writes the integration plan before the offer goes out.
Imani Osei
Partner — Corporate Strategy
Former group strategy director at a listed logistics operator. Specialises in portfolios that have grown by accident.
Insights
We publish what we learn on the job.
Four pieces a quarter, written by the partners who did the work. No trend reports, no ghostwriters.
Field note · March 2026
The cost programme you already ran is why the next one won't work
Second-wave cost programmes fail at roughly twice the rate of first waves. We looked at eleven of our own engagements to work out why — and the answer had almost nothing to do with the size of the target.
Where we are
Four offices. One P&L. No franchise model.
Partners move between offices for the work, not for the org chart. If the best person for your problem sits in Munich, they get on a plane.
London+44 20 7946 0812Headquarters · 74 partners & staff
Chicago+1 312 555 0164Americas · 41 partners & staff
Munich+49 89 5555 2210DACH & industrials · 38 staff
Singapore+65 6555 0119APAC · 22 partners & staff
Travel policyOn site, weeklyEvery engagement, every partner
LanguagesEN · DE · FR · ZHWorked in 21 countries since 2009
Start a conversation
Tell us the question you can't get a straight answer to.
A partner reads every enquiry and replies within two working days — usually with a view, sometimes with a referral elsewhere if we're not the right firm for it.