Paul Branstad, a Senior Partner with Booz & Company, is based in Chicago, where he focuses on the automotive OEMs, suppliers, engineered capital goods, and industrial services sectors.

He supports clients with deep experience in:

• Corporate strategy and corporate finance
• Product and technology strategy
• Market, channel, and distribution strategy
• Pricing strategy
• Supply chain management and control

One example of a Booz & Company project that benefited from Mr. Branstad’s expertise involved a globally successful, partially diversified Tier 1 automotive supplier which had completed its largest acquisition in history to strengthen the non-automotive segment of its corporate portfolio. Post-merger integration was successful and near-term savings exceed projections, but growth synergies were more difficult than expected and required a complete rethink of the business strategy.

Mr. Branstad and his team:

• Developed and executed a primary source research and analysis program to re-segment the market according to the economics of the winning business model in each segment; and assessed the client’s position and economics against the winning model(s)
• Established the client’s competitive cost/performance position in each segment
• Developed segment-specific short- and long-term growth strategies for the business as a whole
• Piloted the short-term growth strategy in five representative markets in the U.S. and Europe
• Scaled up the pilot after four months to a complete region-by-region roll-out across both continents
• Launched new product development strategies to drive long-term growth

As a result, the acquired company’s marginal European businesses gained profitability and began to grow; the better-established U.S. businesses grew stronger and began to grow; a channel-based synergy between the businesses was exploited to attack one previously uncovered market segment; financial expectations were met; and the client sustained its historic record of better than 75th percentile returns to shareholders.

Mr. Branstad has co-authored several strategy+business articles, including “Zealots Rising: The Case for Practical Visionaries.” His career history prior to Booz & Company includes Arvin Industries, Litton Ship Systems, and Boston Consulting Group. He attended Stanford University, where he received an MBA, and has a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.