Simon Andreas Hofmann
Managing Partner – Consulting Practice
An established management consultant and business leader with more than 15 years’ of experience in transforming companies of all sizes to accelerate growth and create value through strategy, commercial excellence, and pricing.
- Strong top-tier consulting experience at leading firms, but also extensive experience in operating businesses to make things happen.
- Focus on commercial and revenue growth workstreams in private equity owned mid-market business, with pragmatic impact delivery.
- Extensive expertise along the entire investment life cycle: from pre-deal assessments to value creation leadership, to exit planning.
Prior to setting up Fortius Partners, Simon held senior positions at top-tier consulting firms including Strategy& and SparkOptimus, a McKinsey Digital spin-off, where he advised leading brands such as Unilever, AkzoNobel, and eBay on strategy, digital transformation, and commercial effectiveness. He then founded his own consulting boutique, focused on Private Equity clients in the mid-market to accelerate and achieve sustainable revenue growth. Simon now focuses on growth strategy and impact delivery within corporates through a combination of top management consulting and operational leadership experience.
Earlier in his career, Simon spent many years in the TMT industry where he initially spent 5 years in Liberty Global’s London based Strategy & Corporate Development team. Simon was actively involved in all aspects of the assessment and execution of deals to drive Liberty’s inorganic growth ambitions, covering both sell and buy side activities. Strong focus on quantitative analysis of selected target companies including detailed business planning and company valuations (incl. LBO, DCF etc.). Deals include 100% acquisition of Virgin Media (largest UK cable and Pay-TV asset for $23.3bn), and multiple other deals across Liberty’s international footprint. Part of Simon’s responsibilities included conducting commercial analyses across markets, to improve understanding of emerging trends, identify opportunities and feed insights into the broader strategic direction for the group. Projects included the assessment of organic development of new products and services (such as the development of in-house OTT platforms) vs. inorganic growth. Other projects identified new revenue pools, such as setting up advanced advertising opportunities or the identification and analysis of Liberty’s customer segments across its main markets, allowing the assessment of its commercial base-pricing-portfolio (including evaluation of defence ponds and growth of profit pools considering Liberty’s changing product portfolio). In addition to strategic evaluations Simon’s responsibilities included the development and maintenance of the group’s financial long-range plan, and the active management of Liberty Global’s portfolio businesses.
Simon later moved to Liberty’s Central Commercial Excellence unit in Amsterdam, where he actively supported local operations across Liberty’s footprint in implementing value-enhancing programmes and activities. This includes new product development, pricing, base management and a wide variety of strategic analyses and business cases (e.g. management of third party research, fair market share evaluation, revenue pool assessment, addressable market analysis, competitive intelligence, customer segmentation, customer economics, portfolio development).
After leaving the TMT industry, Simon focused on Professional Services and joined a McKinsey Digital spin-off consultancy (SparkOptimus) focussed on transformation management & digital business building. Simon helped industry-leading companies navigate through transformation projects, supporting e.g. the design and delivery of great customer experiences across digital and non-digital touchpoints, or the development and implementation of the right digital strategy. Focus areas included digital strategy, organization, technology, and digital operational & commercial excellence. Clients include AkzoNobel, Heineken, Unilever, Nestle, Ikea, Shell, Intersport, eBay and many more. He then moved on to PwC/Strategy& to lift their digital business building capabilities.
After Strategy&, Simon co-founded a management consultancy focused on Commercial Excellence & Digital Business Building in London, where he oversaw all value-creation projects for clients and managed all operational & commercial aspects of the business.
Simon holds an MSc. in Finance from VU University Amsterdam (summa cum laude), and he has studied in several countries across the globe, including Australia (RMIT University), South Korea (Ajou University), Germany (Nuertingen University), and Belgium (European Commission).