Speakers

Experience

Elias heads-up Deloitte’s Global Location Strategies, a specialty service offering focusing on corporate site selection, real estate strategies and Foreign Direct Investment Services.

He has twenty-seven years’ experience in business strategy, site selection, corporate real estate, economic development, and Foreign Direct Investment promotion. During this period, he worked with over 550 companies, setting up and restructuring operations in 44 countries worldwide.

He worked with organizations in the consumer goods, chemical, financial services, life sciences, automotive, electronics, health care and not-for-profit sectors. He conducted site selection projects for manufacturing, headquarters and back offices, distribution centres, R&D facilities, customer service, data centres and shared service centres.

Prior to joining Deloitte in 2002, he led Andersen’s Business Location Services European team and before that was a Senior Manager with Price Waterhouse-Plant Location International.

He also gained direct insight into the workings of the economic development organizations as Area Director/Vice Consul of the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency’s US Midwest operations, and as advisor to more than 70 investment promotion agencies, airport operators and port authorities throughout Europe and the Caribbean.

Occupations

2010 - present          Centre of Excellence lead, Deloitte Global Location Strategies

2002 - 2010              EMEA Service Leader, Deloitte Global Location & Facility Services

2000 - 2002              Senior manager, Andersen Business Location Services

1998- 2000               Area Director/Vice Consul, Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency

1990 - 1998              Various positions, Price Waterhouse – Plant Location International

1988 - 1990              Industrial cooperation expert, European Commission

Professional acknowledgments

Elias has spoken and led seminars on topics pertaining to manufacturing, high-tech and customer service locations, global location strategy, outsourcing, off shoring, Central Europe, Russia, Asia, future trends and Foreign Direct Investment Promotion.

He is a member of the Urban Land Institute, the International Asset Management Council, and the Belgian Association of Real Estate Professionals.

For the last 15 years, he has been part of Deloitte’s Shared Services Leadership team. He is a Juror for the Central European shared Services and Outsourcing Awards and for the ABSL Diamond Awards.

Publications

He has written or contributed to around 30 articles in Area Development, Financial Times, NRC Handelsblad, Site Selection, Corporate Location, Expansion Management, Finance Director International, and co-authored a top selling book on Outsourcing for German companies (cf. list of presentations and publications)

Academic acknowledgements

Elias lectures on international business strategy, outsourcing, off-shoring and FDI promotion at the Brussels and Leuven campuses of the University of Leuven (Belgium). He also is a ‘Hogenheuvel College’ fellow at the same university. He delivered a paper on “Foreign Direct Investment – Risks and Opportunities” at the University of Szczecin’s 11th International Financial Management Conference

Education

1998 - Master of Science in Industrial Management, Twente University of Technology, the Netherlands.

Languages

Dutch (native), English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese.