Why Strategy&?

, Advisory Leader of PwC Luxembourg

When you look around the world today, you are looking at a brand new horizon. There is an evolution (if not a revolution) in behaviours and concerns coming from the multitude of stakeholders – businesses, our own business for that matter, institutions, governments, individuals and society as a whole. This has been going on for a number of years with technological disruption, growing awareness of climate change and how we need to address it, and uncertainty around geopolitics ranking high on the global agenda. 

What the COVID-19 pandemic did was accelerate those trends, pushing ESG and digital transformation in particular to the top of the priority list and introducing new ways of working that are here to stay. This is resulting in even more pressure on businesses, often in the face of ever-more complex regulations and challenging expectations from employees, investors and other stakeholders. In this context, an increasing number of our clients in Luxembourg recognise that their strategies and business models need to evolve considerably, and quickly.

We have launched Strategy& to support our Luxembourg clients on this journey. is PwC’s global strategy consulting business, consisting of a global team of 3,000+ strategy professionals. Its relevance to our clients across the world is reflected in the doubling of its revenues in just  five years – from $700 million in 2015 to $1.4 billion in 2020. 

Strategy& works with the world’s leading businesses, governments, and organisations. Through Strategy&, we help our clients lead transformational change, create new organisational models, capture value from their customer and channel strategies, increase the effectiveness of their supply chains and assets, and integrate security into their strategy to ensure the resilience of their business. Through Strategy&, we have the know-how, technology, and scale to help our clients think and deliver big.

Indeed, Strategy& is the only at-scale strategy business that’s part of a global professional services firm. What distinguishes Strategy& from other “pure” strategy houses is that we can combine strategic foresight with the experience of frontline teams across PwC to transform perspective into pragmatism, and ambition into action, leveraging in-depth Industry knowledge.

The result is a strategy process powerful enough to capture possibilities that have yet to be imagined, and practical enough to ensure effective delivery.

Our clients need solutions that work across borders, and that is why our model at Strategy& in Luxembourg will be international, with a high degree of integration with PwC advisory and Strategy& across our European and global networks. 

We Strategy& formally/softly in March, and we are building up our team, which is led by Matt Moran and Andrew McDowell.

What makes Strategy& right for the Luxembourg market?

, Deputy Advisory Lead: Partner Deals M&A: Alliances & Strategy Leader, Head of Insurance Industry

The value proposition of Strategy& and its relevance for the Luxembourg market is clear. 

One of the strengths of Luxembourg is its positioning – on the global stage – as one of Europe’s truly open economies. Key to that success is its agility and capacity to adapt in a changing environment. As François mentioned above, the pace of change is unprecedented and no one expects it to slow down. There is disruption at every corner. There are new market entrants challenging the status quo underpinned by advancements in technology made accessible to all via the cloud. Rapidly changing employee and consumer behaviours are other factors in the equation. All of this in a geopolitical context that many wouldn’t have even dreamt of five, let alone ten years ago.  

Luxembourg boards and executives in the corporate sector, just as the leadership of public bodies and semi-state institutions, are looking to build upon their track record of success. Hence, they are seeking to develop new strategies and new operating models to meet their objectives in this ultra-dynamic and challenging environment. This is where Strategy& fits in. 

Strategy& supports leaders to develop their strategy and operating models to capture the right future opportunities that will underscore their success. We will help clients by providing them with the insights – political and regulatory trends, geopolitical developments, changes in consumer behaviours, changing business models, technology and ecosystems – and the vital inputs to the ongoing development of any winning strategy.

Like Luxembourg, Strategy& is truly global. Developing a locally based team, comprising international and experienced professionals, we provide Luxembourg leaders with direct access to excellent, specialised strategy consulting talent. In turn, this investment allows us to secure the resources and commitment of the global Strategy& network for the benefit of Luxembourg clients. 

The key offerings of Strategy& in Luxembourg will include: business strategy consulting including the areas of product and market development with a strong focus in financial services; technology strategy & transformation and target operating model design; commercial due diligence services to help businesses assess and evaluate the opportunities and risks, either of their existing offerings or in the case of a proposed acquisition. With Andrew’s appointment, we secured deep expertise and experience to support businesses and other institutions meet their need to become sustainable enterprises. Each of these services are complementary to the existing capabilities and offerings of our wider Advisory practice so that now PwC Luxembourg is uniquely positioned to support clients on their full journey – from strategy to execution.

What industries/topics will the Strategy& team focus on?

, Partner at Strategy&, part of the PwC network  

Luxembourg enjoys a unique status as a strong, trusted place to do business and finance. The financial centre’s unique cross-border expertise attracts service providers from around the globe, while Luxembourg’s capital markets infrastructure make it the ideal place for companies of all sizes to finance their European and global activities.

This is, however, no time for complacency. Industries like banking and insurance, and even asset management, are approaching a “do or die” precipice in the face of new technologies, business models and threats to their social license from an ever-widening group of stakeholders. We are in the midst of a global transformation in production and consumption patterns, being driven by rapid technological change, environmental limits to traditional patterns of growth, unprecedented demographic shifts and new geopolitical fault lines.

There will be winners and losers. The competitiveness that Luxembourg has enjoyed, and that of its businesses, will be chipped away if company boards and management teams don’t take a long-term view and realign their operating models to meet these challenges. 

Strategic transformations with excellent execution are now essential for any company’s survival and success. To deliver, we know that senior management teams need access to global expertise and foresight across a range of domains – market and economic developments, technology, regulation, data analytics, artificial intelligence and design, to name a few. 

Prior to joining Strategy& earlier this year, I spent 25 years in financial services and public policy development, using a personable and engaging style to align stakeholders around major strategic and organisational transformations, from Ireland’s post-crisis recovery policies to EIB’s radical repositioning around clean energy and climate. 

Working alongside François and Matt and all our colleagues at PwC, my aim is to ensure that Strategy& will now offer clients in Luxembourg everything they need, all under one roof: deep strategy consulting expertise, a proven track record of execution and delivery, and unrivalled global scale and experience.

To deliver on this ambition, we are building an experienced, globally connected Strategy& team in Luxembourg that will support clients on a critical set of topics, including business strategy, sustainability, creating value in mergers and here acquisitions and technology strategy. Indeed, recently, we added who will serve as PWC Strategy& Director, covering such topics as ESG, Ethics, and Sustainability Risks. 

While the new Luxembourg-based Strategy& team will focus primarily on asset and wealth management, banking and insurance, we will also act as a bridge between Luxembourg and the global Strategy& network, making available 3,000 strategy experts from every industry to clients here across the economy, whether in industry, transportation, healthcare, telecoms, consumer markets and other public and private sectors.

In this way, we will combine an on-the-ground presence and local specialised knowledge of the Luxembourg financial and regulatory environment with global expertise in every field.

For more information about Strategy&, click .