Team

A Belgian national with an MBA of University of Chicago’s Booth School (1989), Joost started his career at McKinsey. Among the clients served was HAL Investments, the investment subsidiary of HAL Trust (Euronext Amsterdam quoted, ticker symbol HAL NA), which had just started as an investment company (after the divestment in 1989 of its legacy cruise business Holland America Lines).

Joost joined HAL in 1992 as HAL’s 3rd investment professional (after HAL’s current Chairman and current CEO). In the 25 years thereafter , the investment group autonomously grew from 600 million USD to 13 billion Euro (2016), realizing a total return (dividends reinvested) of a factor 90x (CAR of around 20%). Joost built out today´s team of around 20 investment professionals and 10 technical staff at HAL Investments in Rotterdam, most of whom have grown to bigger responsibilities within HAL.

In 2011 Joost became CEO of the HAL-subsidiary Royal Ahrend NV (office interiors and furniture) to develop and implement an operational restructuring plan (turnaround), followed by the acquisition and integration of Dutch competitor Gispen (2014-15). Today Ahrend is a +/- 300 M Euro company with +/- 1500 FTE, active in Europe, CEE, former USSR, Middle-East and China. On a comparable basis, EBITDA improved with more than 10M from 2010 to 2015. Joost still serves as non-exec chairman of Ahrend.

In 2016, Joost evolved towards an advisory role at HAL and non-executive board member at a number of HAL subsidiaries and created SUSTINVEST.

A Belgian national with Master degrees in Law (1985), Business Law (1986) and Tax (1986), Hilde started her career at Arthur Andersen (now Deloitte). She then was a legal officer at GIMV and a director at Gimv-indus, working on M&A, financing and governance of new companies (technology and bio-sciences) and large industries (steel, construction materials, textiles, maintenance&repair).

After almost 20 years she became corporate legal counsel at BAM NV, financing company for the mobility infrastructure projects around the city of Antwerp, where she worked on the set-up of the financial and legal structure for these projects and on all corporate aspects of the company.

Hilde joined SUSTINVEST as legal counsel in 2019.

A Belgian national with Master degrees in Law (1987), Economics (1989) and Tax Management (1990) (KU Leuven) and an MBA of the University of Chicago’s Booth School (1995), Benoit started his career at Procter & Gamble. Benoit then moved into strategy consulting at Arthur D. Little and Accenture, mainly working with international consumer goods and retail companies like Gillette, Unilever, Henkel, SaraLee and AB InBev.

He then took on several general management positions in industrial companies, often in transformation and/or turnaround situations, first at Koramic investment group and later at Sovitec, where he successfully led the financial, organizational and operational turnaround of a virtually bankrupt company towards a successful management buy-out.

Benoit is also the founder and CEO of NeuroPath, a digital health platform for people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases. He divides his time between Belgium and the U.S.

Benoit joined SUSTINVEST as an associate in 2016 (through Creabattical).

A Swedish national with a CEMS master from Stockholm School of Economics (1994) and an MBA from Louvain School of Management (2007), Magnus started his career in ABB in Brussels followed by 13 years in Volvo Construction Equipment, where he held various senior finance positions in Belgium, Singapore, South Korea, China, and France.

He was then recruited to Vestas Wind System, based in Denmark, where he was the financial director for the manufacturing division, in more than 25 factories located around the world.

In 2014 he returned to Belgium to take up the role as Group CFO for Sarens Group, the world leader in Heavy Lifting and Specialized Transport Solutions. In Sarens he ao restructured the balance sheet by securing long term financing through a publicly traded bond.

In 2017 he started his cooperation with SUSTINVEST (through SMB Finance).

André is a Belgian national with 3 Engineering Masters (Mechanical from UCL and Automation and Chemistry from ULB) and an a MBA from IMD (Lausanne).

He worked 29 years at Solvay. Starting in production plants in Belgium and then in Germany as Head of the plant. From 1996, he was involved in an international career. First focused in Europe as Industrial Manager in SolVin , a JV beteen Solvay and BASF. Then, at world level as he was R&D, Technology and Manufacturing Director for the Vinyls business.

From 2008 to 2014, he was Engineering-Construction-Maintenance General Manager for the Group Solvay, having teams in 4 continents.

In 2014, he joined the Group Prayon as Industrial Director (Manufacturing, R&D, Engineering and Construction,…) and as Chairman or Board member of all the Prayon JV’s. He conducted a deep improvement project of the manufacturing performances.

In 2018, he decided to create his own consulting company and started the cooperation with SUSTINVEST (through A&P Syntony).