What I learned as CEO

As a gradu­ate mech­an­ic­al engin­eer (Dipl.-Ing., Tech­nic­al Uni­ver­sity), I stand for demand­ing, sus­tain­able con­sult­ing. My aim is to sup­port SMEs with my know-how and exper­i­ence in key decisions, both in trans­form­a­tion pro­cesses and in optim­iz­a­tion pro­cesses.

Rainer Christmann – Geschäftsführer Atura Consulting

From Janu­ary 2009 to Decem­ber 2020, I was CEO of Argo-Hytos s.r.o., a com­pany of the Argo-Hytos Group in the Czech Repub­lic with around 700 employ­ees.

When I star­ted in early 2009, the glob­al fin­an­cial crisis had put the com­pany in a very threat­en­ing fin­an­cial situ­ation, and it was on the verge of insolv­ency.

As the CEO appoin­ted by the own­er, my task was to save the com­pany and with it the entire group. To make mat­ters more dif­fi­cult, I was the only Ger­man employ­ee and had to gradu­ally earn the respect and trust of the Czech work­force.

The fol­low­ing 12 years from 2009 were marked by sta­bil­iz­a­tion, restruc­tur­ing, par­tial stra­tegic realign­ment and sus­tain­able improve­ment of res­ults. Dur­ing these years, rev­en­ue doubled with the same head­count, the equity ratio rose from 20% to 55%, all loans total­ing €20 mil­lion were repaid, an EBIT mar­gin of almost 10% was achieved and a very pos­it­ive cash flow was gen­er­ated.

After my time as CEO, I passed on these restruc­tur­ing and optim­iz­a­tion meas­ures and the exper­i­ence behind them to man­aging dir­ect­ors as a seni­or advisor and spar­ring part­ner, and I would like to con­tin­ue doing so.

If you are facing import­ant busi­ness decisions and would like an extern­al advisor at your side, con­tact me and we can talk it through.

What my cli­ents say about me

“Our seni­or advisor Rain­er Christ­mann gave us excel­lent due dili­gence sup­port dur­ing a com­plex trans­ac­tion in the mech­an­ic­al engin­eer­ing sec­tor. His deep industry expert­ise and his unspar­ing ana­lys­is of the oper­a­tion­al value chain helped us val­id­ate the risks of our invest­ment thes­is pre­cisely. A great added value for our invest­ment decision.”
Invest­ment Dir­ect­orMid-mar­ket private equity fund
“Dur­ing a time-crit­ic­al acquis­i­tion in the indus­tri­al mid-mar­ket, Rain­er Christ­mann sup­por­ted us very strongly with his in-depth mar­ket know­ledge in a highly pre­cise and prag­mat­ic due dili­gence. Des­pite enorm­ous time pres­sure, weak­nesses in the pro­duc­tion and cost struc­ture were clearly iden­ti­fied and trans­lated dir­ectly into action­able post-mer­ger meas­ures. Abso­lute pro­fes­sion­al­ism at PE level.”
Part­nerOper­a­tion­al private equity com­pany, DACH region
“Rain­er Christmann’s due dili­gence sup­port was out­stand­ing. Bey­ond the risk ana­lys­is, his well-foun­ded scen­ari­os for restruc­tur­ing and effi­ciency improve­ment showed us the post-mer­ger roadmap for later value cre­ation while the deal was still in pro­gress. Unre­served recom­mend­a­tion for demand­ing B2B trans­ac­tions.”
Man­aging Dir­ect­orTurn­around & spe­cial situ­ations PE fund