The Strategy Group-México
While the scope of The Strategy Group is truly global, with engagements and business experience in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Australia, and Europe, Latin America is an important area of sub-specialty. Alan Heath has been working in México since the 1980s and throughout Central and South America for more than a decade. Our special interest in having this sub-specialty is based on a number of factors, among which are, the rising importance of the Latin American economy in the world; the potential for economic growth and wealth creation in the region; the close link of many of the countries with the US, including personal connections of their people through joint citizenship, asset ownership and education; the prevalence and importance of family businesses; and the openness to and need for advanced succession and transition planning.
The Strategy Group has a deep understanding of and respect for Latin culture, particularly as it relates to the importance (and complications) of inheritance, both familial and monetary. We are well versed in dealing with language differences and cultural nuances, and have a passion for working with families in this part of the world.
The Strategy Group is well positioned to assist families throughout México, Central and South America. Certain of us have proficiency in the written and spoken Spanish and Portuguese languages and we have several long-standing relationships with partner organizations and outside consultants with additional expertise relevant to this area of the world.
We are uniquely positioned among firms in our field since we have a separate company in México that focuses primarily on Mexican assignments and that also assists with our work throughout South and Central America and, as needed, in other parts of the world. It is owned and managed by individuals with a long history and proven business track records in the Mexican and Latin American market. The principals and founders of our Mexican organization are:
Also part of our organization are the following advisors with deep experience in México and Latin America:
Alan F. Heath
Founder, President and Managing Director
Alan is the Founder, President and Managing Director of The Strategy Group, Inc. He is also a Founder and Principal of The Strategy Group-Mexico (STG Family Transition Group, S.C.), a Mexican firm specializing in family business, family wealth and family office advisory. Alan has been advising families in business, including their CEOs and top management teams, for nearly thirty years as both a consultant and an active executive. He consults internationally to family businesses and family offices on issues of governance, organizational development, succession, exit strategies, internal capital markets and trust practices. For over 10 years he was also a family facilitator and guest lecturer at Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program, “Families in Business: From Generation to Generation”, which examines pivotal issues facing family businesses. Before committing himself to the Strategy Group, he was Practice Leader for the Owner Managed Business Institute in Mexico, Central America and the Southern Cone of South America.
While he now works almost exclusively as an outside advisor to family businesses and family offices, Alan has years of executive suite experience in a number of industries, including as President of a multinational manufacturing company and as Vice President of marketing for an $8B+ international food-packaging corporation. Additionally, he has served as a director of a number of privately held family companies. Alan has frequently acted as an interim officer in companies with which he has consulted, holding positions such as President, COO, Senior Managing Director, and Vice President. Building on a career in global business, he has more than two decades of experience serving as an outside, independent, personal, lead trustee for several large multiple-family trusts. In this fiduciary role, he advises beneficiaries on broad wealth management issues and counsels the next generation regarding wealth responsibility and wealth management. He also served for several years as a member of the technical (Investment) committee for a Mexican family trust and was a member of the investment committee of a European family trust.
Alan received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Economics from Kalamazoo College and his Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado School of Law. He did post-graduate work in finance at Western Michigan University and has completed the Corporate Boards course at Harvard Business School. He is a certificate holder in family business advising from the Family Firm Institute. Alan also is a member of the Collaboration for Family Flourishing; an organization dedicated to collecting, sharing and developing ideas that promote the prospering of families and is a member of the Purposeful Planning Collaboration. He has been a frequent speaker on family business, family wealth, family office and private trust company issues for organizations such as HSM, the Institute for Private Investors, Family Office Exchange, YPO, STEP and at private family business events sponsored by global wealth management organizations, international universities, and others. He is also Chairman & CEO and Chairman of the Investment Committee of the Wind River Trust Company, a regulated private family trust company and the Chairman & CEO of Drumore LLC, a single-family office. He was recently appointed by the chancellor as Global Ambassador at the University of Colorado. He is a member of the Strategic CIO Council of The Family Office Exchange. Alan has a working knowledge of Spanish.
Roman Edelmann
Along with Alan Heath, Roman is a co-founder and principal of STG Family Transition Group, S.C. (“STG”) a Mexican firm specializing in family business, family wealth and family office advisory. The firm was founded as a subsidiary of The Strategy Group, Inc (“TSG”). Since the establishment of STG in 2012 Roman has been involved in numerous projects advising families in México and Central America in matters of family and corporate governance, wealth advisory, family offices and transition/succession planning. Through Roman’s participation in these projects he has developed a deep understanding of family business systems. He particularly enjoys working with the younger and rising generations and has developed a methodology for helping them overcome the numerous challenges of working as a family member in a family business. In addition, facilitating the generational integration in families has been a particular focus of his work utilizing various tools to improve communication and express clear expectations of the family members regarding the family, the family business and its ownership. Roman frequently participates in roundtables and public events sharing his experience with family members, non-family executives and other service providers. Today, the majority of STG’s clients are based in different parts of the Mexican Republic.
Prior to his present responsibilities Roman acquired more than 30 years of experience in international finance, having worked for the two most important Swiss banking groups. In this capacity he has advised multinational companies and family businesses, as well as their owners, on financial and strategic matters. After a successful career in Switzerland Roman was called to participate in the international expansion of UBS as part of its organization in Paris. Following completion, he relocated to New York where he was given responsibility for the Mercosur region as well as transferring operations from Switzerland to the US. His main task consisted of developing business and relationships with the bank’s clients, including multinational companies, the most important family business clients, financial institutions and governments. Later, he headed the team in charge of managing and streamlining the bank’s USD$ 10 billion+ Latin American loan portfolio. Despite multiple emerging market crises Roman and his team reduced the bank’s exposure, without any major losses. He then transitioned to coordinate the bank’s high-yield efforts in Latin America.
Subsequently, Roman was a Co-Founder and Managing Director in a Madrid corporate finance boutique which provided advice to the owners of small and middle-sized companies, thus providing Roman in-depth exposure to the complexity of family businesses. At the same time, he advised one of Switzerland’s most important Fortune 500 family offices in the restructuring and sale of its banking operations in Central America.
Roman’s close family links with México ultimately took him to México City in 2005. There he worked for both Credit Suisse and UBS, heading the latter’s Representative Office focusing on Wealth-Management services for ultra-high-net-worth clients. During this period, he gained further knowledge about the pivotal issues facing family businesses in México and around the world.
Roman holds a Federal Advanced Banking Diploma and a Degree from the Swiss Finance Institute and an Executive MBA from the “Instituto de Empresa” (IE), Madrid. He is fluent in Spanish, English, French and German. He lives in México City.
René Sonneveld
René Sonneveld is an acknowledged business leader and turn-around manager in the Southern Cone of South America. As a chairman, board member, and CEO of family and privately-owned companies in Europe and South-America, René has word-class expertise in coaching stakeholders and family executives on next-generation transitions and board members on adapting corporate governance changes. René coaches professional sports stars and loves bringing out the best in young people.
He founded MVD Capital Partners, located in Montevideo, Uruguay, involved in M&A and VC activities in South America. He is co-founder of Parks Farming Investments, an agricultural asset manager that has developed 120,000 acres of sustainable cattle land in Paraguay.
René started his career as an international tax lawyer working in The Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Curacao. He has extensive experience in international business development leading the expansion of Germany’s largest brewery Warsteiner in Latin America, and the global commodities trading expansion of the Argentine Moreno family by establishing, amongst others, storage facilities in the Middle-East. René worked as a Managing Director with UBS Private Banking in Zurich and as Head Global Wealth Management with Deutsche Bank in Geneva, managing global teams of experts in offices worldwide. He finished his banking career as Vice-President with Citibank New York as the “family governance” champion for Latin America in 2010.
The Queen of the Netherlands appointed René as Honorary Consul General in Uruguay in 2012, which the current King renewed in 2017. The consular activities have given him valuable insights into international government agencies’ internal working and foreign affairs.
Besides coaching, René is passionate about the circular economy and sustainable energy projects. His ambition is to develop a green hydrogen supply chain from South America to Europe, thereby supporting the development of local South American communities and the decarbonization objectives of the Netherlands and the European Union.
René holds a law degree from the University of Amsterdam and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He can coach in Dutch, English, German, and Spanish.
He is an instructor at Rutgers University of the Leadership Coaching for Organizational Performance course and Distinguished Executive In-House Resident at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Alexandre Méry-Sanson Desvignes
Alexandre (Alik) has a strong background in consultancy and entrepreneurship. He worked for Arthur Anderson in the Real Estate and M&A division in México City providing consultancy to small and medium sized family owned companies in very diverse industries (Entertainment, Master Planned Communities, Spirits and Press distribution).
His entrepreneurial attitude and passion comes from starting a new venture within his family owned company. With the family’s backing, Alik and a sibling acquired a Dry-Cleaning Master Franchise for México. It initially owned 14 stores and ultimately, they expanded the operation to more than a hundred stores in 25 cities. Through this endeavor he gained first-hand knowledge of the intricacies among the different members of a business family system.His main role within the master franchise organization was the development of new points of sale through a network of local franchisees. His clients were local prominent families that wished to diversify their current operations. He had the opportunity to build strong bonds with these families due to the trust that their long-term relationship shaped. Realizing the importance of the family structure within his organization and within his franchisees’ network he decided to take a deeper interest in matters related to family businesses and began to study the field through reading and courses in the subject. This provided him with the basic tools to better understand the complexities of living, working and communicating in two different but intertwined systems.
For the last five years, Alik has also been managing income producing properties in México as well as providing consultancy work to different clients in the real estate field. He develops strategies for the acquisitions of different types of assets, deal structures and procurement of equity and debt for specific projects with different associates. These groups are mainly family owned firms.
Alik also provides consultancy work for a major entertainment and resort project in the Yucatan Peninsula. This last effort has encompassed the inception of the project, contact and engagement of the operators for the different business units, and is currently in the final stages of securing capital for the first phase of the project.
Alik is a strong believer in continuous education. He holds a BA degree in Business Administration from ITAM (México) and a joint Executive MBA degree from UCLA (USA) and Adolfo Ibañez (Chile). He has completed extension courses in top management, family business and real estate at ITAM. He is an outdoors enthusiast and enjoys reading. He is multicultural, lives in México City and is fluent in English, French and Spanish.
Patrik Hayoz
Patrik has been providing investments and wealth management solutions to high net worth individuals for 30 years, 25 thereof dedicated to Latin America. He initiated his career with UBS in Frankfort and Stuttgart assisting German clients. He then integrated into the team of UBS in Zurich in charge of Mexican customers. His dedication and passion to develop constantly new business opportunities led him to the role of Representative in the UBS Representative Office in Lima to cover both Peru and Bolivia. Thanks to his instrumental participation to the success of the operations in Lima, he took over as Head of that Representative Office and as Executive Director. In fact, the Representative Office in Lima became a model for UBS within Latin America for its business development methodology and ongoing growth. Later on, Patrik became Head of the Representative Office in Caracas, Venezuela, as Executive Director, to replicate the same business model. He was then invited to join UBS in México to contribute to the creation of the UBS Bank México, an entity focused on the local market (onshore). Subsequently he went back to Switzerland and after a few years, he returned to Lima to lead a Wealth Management team at Banco de Crédito del Peru, the Peruvian main banking institution.
Building on his years of experience dealing with families with great wealth, Patrik has developed a profound understanding about the role of family patterns in the relationship among family members which is of significative importance in a variety of aspects related to family governance, succession, decisions-making processes, and conflicts.
Patrik is the founder of LIOMSA Advisers SAC, a company based in Lima Peru, which offers wealth advisory services, but above all and in close cooperation with “The Strategy Group, Inc.”, provides advice to business families.
Patrik is a native French speaker and Swiss citizen based in Lima. He is fluent in Spanish, German, and English. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Zurich University for Applied Sciences and a Master´s degree in Organizational and Business Psychology from the University of Liverpool. He attended the executive program at the Darden Business School at the University of Virginia, and holds a UBS investment diploma and an investment advisory certification issued by the Mexican Stock Exchange. A member of STEP and the Family Firm Institute, he is a STEP certificate holder in family business advising and family governance.