Max leads McKinsey’s work for the banking sector in Germany and coleads our European fintech service. He has supported clients in building multiple businesses. In his M&A role, Max has supported companies in more than 40 integrations around the world, particularly in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He focuses on deals involving financial institutions from start to finish, from M&A strategy, target identification, and due diligence to integration design, planning, and execution.
Examples of Max’s recent client work include the following:
- defining a future-proof strategy for a leading universal bank in Europe
- building a new retail bank from scratch in less than 12 months
- delivering synergies worth more than €1 billion in a multiyear integration of two European banks
- merging a European bank’s shared-service units—including a carve-out and legal-entity merger—to create one integrated holding
- guiding a complex, three-way merger of universal banks in the United Arab Emirates
- conducting numerous buyer due-diligence reviews, including on a European payment provider, a consumer-finance niche company in Germany, and a Western European retail bank
- developing a regional operating model for a global insurance company across multiple countries
Max writes extensively on M&A, banking, and fintech trends and leads research projects on European banking. He speaks regularly at conferences in the banking and fintech communities.
Published work
“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
“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
“Really uncertain business cycles,” Econometrica, May 2018
“Zum umbau gibt es keine alternative,” Börsen-Zeitung, September 2016
“Government intervention in the housing market: Who wins, who loses?,” Journal of Monetary Economics, June 2016
“The road ahead: Perspectives on German banking,” McKinsey & Company, April 2016
“Getting a head start on joint integration planning using a safe zone,” McKinsey & Company, April 2015
“Firm dynamics, markup variations, and the business cycle,” Journal of Monetary Economics, October 2008
Education
Stanford University
PhD, economics
University of Mannheim
MA, economics