Consulting in Transition – Consulting That Makes an Impact: HPP Consulting Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

30 years of HPP Consulting: what began as a spin-off from the Daimler Group has grown into an established, owner-managed consultancy for strategy, sales and marketing. Today HPP is a multi-award-winning boutique consultancy and a well-versed partner for companies in industries facing particularly demanding structural change.

Frankfurt am Main, September 2026. Thirty years ago, HPP Consulting emerged from what was then the Daimler Group through a management buy-out, and has successfully delivered 2,700 client projects since. Throughout those years, the owner-managed consultancy has built on continuity and independence. It is led today by its managing partners André Köhler, Dr. Thorsten Liebehenschel and Roland Pietsch. In 2025 they were joined by Max Köppl and Christian Karwehl, two partners promoted from within.

Its clients include well-known DAX and MDAX corporations as well as successful mid-sized companies and hidden champions. Starting out in the automotive industry, HPP has deliberately broadened its focus sectors over time. Today they centre on automotive, telecommunications and fibre optics, the Mittelstand, and mobility and logistics.

“We win clients over with sound technical and sector expertise. But impact comes above all from working closely with them – as equals and across every level of the hierarchy. What matters is understanding the client’s specific situation and developing solutions together that genuinely fit. That is what our people stand for, with real competence and great commitment,” says André Köhler, Managing Partner at HPP.

It is not only HPP that has changed over the past three decades, but its clients too – along with the consulting industry, its technologies and its ways of working. Projects that ended after several months with nothing more than a strategy presentation are as much a thing of the past as worldwide implementation programmes and the consultant air miles that came with them. What makes a good consultant today is practical understanding, not academic laurels. What is called for are not elaborate concepts but solutions that can actually be implemented inside the company and deliver lasting impact.

One thing has remained constant: consulting is a people business. Impact does not come from methods and tools alone, but from people who take on responsibility together with their clients and develop solutions that hold up in day-to-day business.

Managing Partner Dr. Thorsten Liebehenschel looks ahead: “Thirty years of HPP stand for continuity. In the future, too, it will be about deep sector understanding, a rigorous focus on implementation – and, more than ever, about agility and speed. Our clear strategy lets us look ahead with confidence, even though there is no formula for resilience. That is why we keep questioning our own course and decide deliberately which changes we can or want to follow, and where it matters more to stay true to our own strengths.”

That change is far from over. The rapid technological development driven by artificial intelligence in particular will continue to reshape the consulting industry and its clients. HPP intends to meet it head-on – and to go on creating impact for its clients.