About me

My professional career

I studied business administration at the Universities of Mannheim and Nancy. My doctoral research focussed on the intersection of systems theory, business valuation and simulation of generic business strategies. A minor subject was the development of neural networks.

The key finding of my research is that a company can only be a market leader in the long term if it can claim to be both an innovation and cost leader. All other competitive advantages are not sustainable. Sounds easier than it is in practice.

In my professional practice, I focussed on challenges in accounting and controlling. I gained my first practical experience in accounting at the end of the 1990s during my doctorate at a local tax firm: in addition to providing accounting support for long-term clients, I was also entrusted with the IT administration of the firm. The special thing about this was that our firm was a beta tester for new DATEV applications. An outstanding topic: we were one of the DATEV pilot firms for the changeover to the „paperless office“.

After completing my doctorate, I moved into the world of Big 4 auditing firms. In the following ten years, I gained extensive experience in numerous annual financial statement and due diligence audits. Main focus: financial and non-financial (process) analyses of companies in various industries and company sizes.

As part of my self-employment, which I started in 2012, I focussed on providing audit-related consulting services for medium-sized companies. The focus was and is on topics such as planning, reporting, business analytics, digitalisation of the financial sector and AI governance issues.