Max coleads McKinsey’s retail banking work globally and our banking sector in Germany and Austria. He also coordinates fintech activities across Europe. Max works with both incumbent financial institutions and attackers globally on strategy, M&A, and business building, often helping clients take an investor and value-creation perspective.
He has been involved in a number of McKinsey research projects and writes extensively on M&A, banking, and fintech trends. He speaks regularly at conferences in the banking and fintech communities.
Examples of his client work include the following:
- planning the distribution strategy for retail, affluent and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) segments for leading European banks
- designing and launching new offerings for incumbents and attackers
- creating the strategy and equity story definition for leading scale-ups
- designing the end-to-end M&A strategy and post-merger integration for financial institutions over more than 60 integration projects
Published work
“Deposits: The top profitability lever for retail banks’ CEOs,” McKinsey & Company, February 2025
“European deep tech: What investors and corporations need to know,” McKinsey & Company, December 2024
“Redefining success: A new playbook for African fintech leaders,” McKinsey & Company, December 2024
“How a European growth company kept on trucking through market setbacks,” McKinsey & Company, November 2024
“Overcoming the European tech IPO challenge,” McKinsey & Company, October 2024
“The state of retail banking: Profitability and growth in the era of digital and AI,” McKinsey & Company, October 2024
“Reinventing our economy from within,” McKinsey & Company, November 2023
“Fintechs: A new paradigm of growth,” McKinsey & Company, October 2023
“Reinventing our economy from within - How Europe’s start-up ecosystems can learn from each other to ignite and scale up entrepreneurship,” McKinsey & Company, September 2023
“From owner to user: Why consumers want more flexible car access models,” McKinsey & Company, June 2023
“Fintech in MENAP: A solid foundation for growth,” McKinsey & Company, May 2023
“A new breed of car financing: Feature bundles and embedded services,” McKinsey & Company, May 2023
“Integrated channels: The next frontier beyond omnichannel distribution,” McKinsey & Company, May 2023
“Europe’s fintech opportunity,” McKinsey & Company, October 2022
“Fintech in Africa: The end of the beginning,” McKinsey & Company, August 2022
“Pathway to distinctive performance: M&A options for European insurers,” McKinsey & Company, March 2022
“Entrepreneurship zeitgeist 2030,” McKinsey & Company, October 2021
“Seeds of outperformance: How M&A can help banks thrive in the next normal,” McKinsey & Company, July 2021
“Europe’s innovation wunderkinds: The rising B2B start-up ecosystem,” McKinsey & Company, April 2021
“Can’t buy love: Corporate-start-up partnerships in the DACH region,” McKinsey & Company, September 2020
“Detour: An altered path to profit for European fintechs,” McKinsey & Company, September 2020
“When start-ups scale up: Lessons on building up culture and talent,” McKinsey & Company, July 2020
“How EMEA start-ups are dealing with COVID-19,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020
“Realizing M & A value creation in US banking and fintech Nine steps for success,” McKinsey & Company, November 2019
“Eight basic beliefs about capturing value in a merger,” McKinsey & Company, April 2019
“Integrationsmanagement,” in Handbuch Unternehmenskauf, ninth edition, Verlag Dr. Otto Schmidt, 2019
“The road to success: Perspectives on German banking,” McKinsey & Company, 2019
Education
Stanford University
PhD and MA, economics
University of California, Berkeley
Visiting researcher, economics
University of Mannheim
MA, economics
