Execution Will Decide the Future of Four Strategic Sectors
When Valtus was founded in Paris in 2001, interim management was still a little-known way of working in Europe. Over the 25 years since, the discipline has matured and what organisations expect from leadership has changed just as much. To mark its 25th anniversary, Valtus Alliance has published a whitepaper entitled “Shaping the Next 25 Years of Four Strategic Sectors”, which examines this change through four sectors. Manufacturing, defence, pharma and private equity are assessed through the field observations of Valtus partners operating in more than 30 countries.
The four chapters describe very different sectors and all reach the same conclusion. In most organisations the strategy is ready and, in many areas, so is the capital. What decides the outcome is whether that strategy is brought to life under time pressure and with the right leadership. For that reason the whitepaper looks at leadership capacity, the talent gap and the assignments taken on by interim executives alongside the sector data.
As E&E Group Interim, the Türkiye partner of Valtus Alliance, we follow this work closely. In this article we have brought together the key findings of the whitepaper and what they mean for organisations in Türkiye.
Capacity and Talent Under Test in Manufacturing and Defence
Manufacturing remains one of the cornerstones of the European economy. According to the whitepaper, the sector accounts for roughly 14 to 15 per cent of European GDP and supports more than 30 million jobs. Today it faces several pressures at once. Energy and operating costs are rising, regulation is becoming heavier, skilled labour is harder to find and supply chains are more exposed to geopolitical developments. All of this coincides with a period in which investment in digitalisation and decarbonisation can no longer be postponed.
Markus Nakanishi, Partner at Valtus Germany, notes that German manufacturers have reached a critical point. In his view the agenda has moved beyond optimising the existing model, and organisations now have to reposition themselves with constrained resources and under high uncertainty. Three priorities stand out for the manufacturers that will navigate the next decade successfully. These are a sharper strategic focus, rethinking industrial excellence through automation and artificial intelligence, and having the right leadership in place at the right moment. In Italy, Roberto La Caria, Managing Partner at Valtus Italy, points out that for founder-led small and medium-sized manufacturers succession has become a present-day competitiveness issue.
Policy is moving as well. With the Industrial Accelerator Act published on 4 March 2026, the European Commission aims to simplify permitting in strategic sectors, mobilise investment and secure supply chains. France has placed reindustrialisation at the centre of its national strategy, and its industrial production rose 2.3 per cent year on year in January 2026.
Swedish output grew 3.1 per cent over the same period. Alongside these encouraging indicators, the whitepaper stresses that the underlying difficulty remains. Turning strategic ambition into durable industrial capacity, with the right skills, supply chains and management structures, continues to be a serious test of execution.
In the United Kingdom the picture is more positive than the headlines suggest. Steve Rutherford, Partner at Valtus UK, reports that the outlook is generally good for manufacturers focused on high-value products and on domestic consumption, food in particular. Western European manufacturers with UK plants producing lower-value goods for the domestic market, however, have to manage post-Brexit operational constraints every day.
Research by the Capgemini Research Institute cited in the whitepaper shows that 55 per cent of European organisations invested in nearshoring or reshoring their manufacturing in 2025. More than half of the organisations surveyed report cost savings above 20 per cent through digital technologies.
According to Deloitte, 67 per cent of European industrial executives see artificial intelligence as a key lever of future competitiveness, while 62 per cent of manufacturers name recruiting and retaining skilled people as their greatest operational challenge. The investment decision has been taken and the technology is available. What is missing is the experienced team to manage that investment on the ground. Clara Scherman, Partner at Nordic Interim Sweden, observes that interim management plays a decisive role in the green industrial transition by providing the necessary expertise and leadership.
In defence the scale is larger still. EU defence spending rose 19 per cent year on year in 2024 to reach €343 billion. Defence investment increased from €51 billion in 2021 to a record €106 billion in 2024. The ReArm Europe plan aims to unlock up to €800 billion in additional defence investment. The whitepaper points to two structural issues that slow the translation of this funding into output.
The first is procurement. Europe still buys defence equipment mainly through national systems, which creates many small markets in place of one scalable industrial base. Manufacturers, for their part, are cautious about investing in new facilities, suppliers and workforce without binding multi-year contracts.
The second issue is human capital. Filling senior technical and operational positions in the sector takes six to nine months. The gap is widest among chief technology officers with dual-use expertise, directors of large-scale programmes, directors of industrial operations and supply chain, and cybersecurity and digital transformation leaders. Didier Cohen, Partner at Valtus France, reports that defence organisations are diversifying their recruitment sources, hiring executives from adjacent industries such as automotive, energy, software and telecoms, and turning to interim managers to close leadership gaps quickly.
The geographic weight of European security is also shifting north. Anne Sabroe, Partner at Nordic Interim Denmark, notes that the Baltic region has become strategically critical and that what makes Denmark relevant is specialisation and agility more than scale. In her view, defence today also covers securing supply chains and protecting data and infrastructure. Interim leaders who can scale operations quickly under pressure are taking on a growing number of assignments in this area.
Italy shows that scale can also be reached through ecosystem collaboration. A structure in which prime contractors work with specialised small and medium-sized manufacturers enables rapid prototyping and technology transfer between civilian and military applications. In Northern Europe, Denmark has allocated more than DKK 143 billion through its defence agreement covering 2024 to 2033. Finland has committed to raising defence expenditure to 3.2 per cent of GDP by 2030.
Niklas Björkman, Managing Partner at Nordic Interim Finland, notes that the pressing questions are how industrial capability can be built before a purchase order arrives and how programme management and supply chain experts can be engaged early enough. Bohuslav Lipovsky of CE Interim emphasises that the real challenge in Eastern Europe is speed. The whitepaper sets out five priorities for the defence sector on the road to 2030. Procurement transformation, industrial integration, human capital, technology sovereignty and broader resilience form the headings of these priorities.
A New Measure of Value Creation in Pharma and Private Equity
Pharma is one of the sectors with the highest growth expectations. The global pharmaceutical market is projected to grow from around USD 1.8 trillion in 2025 to USD 3.2 trillion by 2035. It is equally clear that this growth will not be shared evenly. In Roland Berger’s analysis of 163 pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, the top performers grew by an average of 12 per cent a year between 2021 and 2024, while the weakest group contracted by 3 per cent. R&D spending has risen to 17 per cent of revenue, and the sector’s agenda has shifted from the size of the investment to its productivity. US pricing reforms, rising Asian innovation hubs and targeted acquisitions are reshaping the balance of the industry.
In the pharma chapter too, execution emerges as the decisive factor. The chapter, which includes the perspective of Emmanuel Fretti, Senior Partner at Valtus France, shows that the organisations that combine internal capabilities with external expertise and adapt quickly to change will move ahead. We covered this subject in detail in our earlier article, The Next 25 Years of Pharma. As we noted there, post-acquisition integration, the renewal of the commercial model and the diversification of the supply chain are assignments that concentrate in a specific period and call for experienced leadership.
In private equity, activity is picking up again after two subdued years. More than 75 per cent of the professionals surveyed for Roland Berger’s European Private Equity Outlook 2026 expect an increase in M&A transactions involving private equity in 2026. European deal volume rose 13 per cent from 2024 to 2025. Globally, deal value increased 19 per cent to USD 2.6 trillion while the number of deals fell 5 per cent. The market is becoming more selective, with fewer and larger transactions.
The sector mix is also being redrawn. Technology, software and digital solutions led activity in 2025 with around 803 transactions. Deals in healthcare and pharma grew 41 per cent from 2024 to 2025. In Germany, a EUR 500 billion public investment programme is expected to unlock EUR 200 to 250 billion of infrastructure-related spending over the next decade.
Pietro Butté, Partner at Valtus Italy, explains that family-owned manufacturers leading their niches need capital and managerial experience to scale globally and digitalise, and that the succession agenda makes these businesses a natural field of investment for private equity.
According to the whitepaper, the period in which returns came mainly from financial engineering is over. With interest rates normalising and nearly half of professionals considering current valuation multiples too high, the focus has shifted to operational value creation after the acquisition. Priorities for 2026 include add-on acquisitions, AI integration and digital transformation. Eighty per cent of respondents cite cash flow predictability as the most significant constraint on debt financing, and nearly half expect artificial intelligence to deliver its greatest benefit in due diligence.
The Nordic model offers a distinct example of value creation after the acquisition. Thérèse Liljedahl von Segebaden, Partner at Nordic Interim Sweden, observes that the collaborative and flat organisational culture of the region enables operational changes to be implemented faster. The whitepaper also expects environmental, social and governance criteria to move beyond compliance in the coming years and become a strategic lever for value creation and risk management.
Björn Henriksson, Group CEO of Valtus, notes that as deals become larger and more complex, value creation depends increasingly on executing the strategy quickly and under pressure. In his view, in post-merger integrations, carve-outs and cross-border deals, value is lost in the gaps between plans and execution, between synergy targets and real profitability, and between systems and reliable data. Permanent management teams are often working at full stretch in these periods. Interim executives bring immediate execution capacity, clear accountability and methods tested in similar situations. Manoj George, Partner at Valtus Germany, adds that interim CEOs, COOs and CFOs are particularly effective in accelerating decision-making and closing governance gaps.
The Shared Role of Interim Management Across the Four Sectors
Read side by side, the four chapters form a common picture. Capital, technology and policy support are in place in many areas. What sets organisations apart is having the leadership that will turn these resources into results in post at the right time. In periods when a permanent senior appointment takes months and the transformation timetable is measured in weeks, interim management responds directly to this need. Drawing on the whitepaper, the situations in which interim executives most often take on assignments in the four sectors can be summarised as follows.
• In manufacturing, managing operations during nearshoring, the roll-out of automation and AI investments, and succession periods
• In defence, capacity ramp-up, post-merger integration and the management of large-scale programmes
• In pharma, post-acquisition integration, the renewal of the commercial model and the restructuring of the supply chain
• In private equity portfolio companies, bringing the value creation plan to life in the first months and strengthening finance and operations leadership
What these assignments have in common is that they concentrate in a specific period. Commissioning a new plant, integrating an acquisition or keeping a programme on schedule comes on top of the day-to-day responsibilities of the permanent team. An interim executive who steps in during such a period takes on responsibility quickly, drawing on the experience of having managed similar processes before. Once the objectives are met, the executive completes the assignment by transferring that knowledge to the in-house team.
The organisation keeps to its timetable and gains the time it needs for a permanent appointment.
The whitepaper also illustrates these assignments with case studies. Examples from defence in Germany, pharma in Brazil and private equity in Finland show how an experienced executive stepping in for a defined period affects the pace of transformation. We discussed which assignments organisations can hand over to an interim executive in our article Which Assignments Are Delegated to an Interim Executive?.
These findings apply directly to organisations in Türkiye. Manufacturing, defence and pharma are among the priority sectors of the Turkish economy, and the mid-sized and family-controlled businesses that attract private equity interest are widely represented in Türkiye as well. The nearshoring trend in Europe means new opportunities for collaboration for manufacturers in Türkiye. Making the most of these opportunities requires experienced leadership in areas such as building new capacity, meeting international standards and managing succession. The Valtus Alliance network, spanning more than 30 countries, gives organisations in Türkiye rapid access to that experience. The scope of our work in interim executive and consultant placement is set out on our services page.
The Valtus Alliance study draws a clear framework for the next 25 years. The quality and timing of the leadership that turns investment into results will matter as much as the size of that investment. From manufacturing to defence and from pharma to private equity, the organisations that stand out in all four sectors will be those that bring their strategy to life without losing pace.
This article was prepared using the Valtus Alliance whitepaper “Shaping the Next 25 Years of Four Strategic Sectors”, published in 2026, as its source. The full whitepaper is available via the landing page on the Valtus Group website.
As E&E Group Interim, the Valtus partner in Türkiye, we meet the interim management needs of organisations in Türkiye to global standards and with local expertise, bringing the right leadership to life at the right time. With the experience we have built since 1992, we stand alongside organisations in periods of transformation, growth and restructuring. For your interim executive needs, you are welcome to get in touch with us.
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