Belgian partner Christophe De Vusser to lead Bain & Company globally

Following a six-year tenure marked by significant expansion, Bain & Company’s worldwide managing partner Manny Maceda will hand the baton to former Brussels managing partner Christophe De Vuss.

Now just about synonymous with the management consultancy itself, Bain & Company’s energetic worldwide managing partner Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Maceda is set to hand over to Christophe De Vusser in the middle of the year, following the Belgian’s election as the first European to take on the top role.

Elevated in 2018, Maceda is coming to the end of his second three-year term, having overseen significant growth during his tenure.

“I’m honored to be chosen by my peers to lead this world class firm,” stated De Vusser, a two-and-a-half-decade Bain veteran who currently heads up the management consultancy’s private equity practice for the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). “It’s a privilege to succeed Manny as we build on a remarkable period of sustained success under his leadership.”

Joining the firm’s consumer products division from Procter & Gamble at the turn of the century, De Vusser was in 2012 appointed managing partner of Bain’s office in Brussels, before being added to the firm’s board of directors in 2018 and taking up the regional private equity leadership role. Earlier in his career, he was recognised with Bain’s Bright-Dix, an annual internal award for excellence in supporting professional development.

The incoming worldwide managing partner, who will take over from Maceda from the start of July, is already credited with having played an instrumental part in the firm’s growth and success in his current and previous roles, doubling Bain’s business in Belgium during his six years in charge and since then helping to do the same for its global private equity and financial investors practice.

“Christophe’s service over more than two decades exemplifies our consistent mission to help clients create such high levels of value that together we set new standards of excellence,” Maceda said. “As managing partner, Christophe will maintain our ambition and lead continuing change to further improve our effectiveness, all with a focus on clients and results while further strengthening Bain’s differentiation as one of best places to work.”

While De Vusser is noted as the first European to head up Bain in its fifty-year history, Maceda was applauded as the first professional of an Asia background to lead any of the top-tier global strategy and management consultancies, alongside Kearney’s Alex Liu. Raised in the Philippines before returning to the US, Maceda joined Bain’s San Francisco office in 1988, since holding a number of senior roles during his 36 years at the firm, including Asia Pacific chairman.

But Maceda’s biggest legacy will be in guiding the firm’s accelerated expansion since taking over in 2018, with new country offices added in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Portugal and Greece in just the past eighteen months – lifting its overall tally to more than 60 worldwide. Bain has also made more than two dozen successful acquisitions or minority investments under his leadership, including last year’s purchase of AI consultancy Max Kelsen in Australia.

While Bain doesn’t publicly release its full figures, only stating that Maceda has overseen an extended run of double-digit growth, the Financial Times reports that the firm has close to doubled its global revenues from just over $3 billion in 2018 to around $6 billion last year – which on the scant available data would mean it has outpaced or kept abreast of its larger MBB rivals McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group.