Strategic advisory. Hands-on execution. Measurable value.

Our Capabilities

Six capabilities, applied to the situation rather than sold as a package. Most engagements combine two or three: a market entry that requires operational readiness, a turnaround that requires governance, a portfolio company that needs both growth and a stronger management team.

Each capability is contracted under one of the five engagement formats set out below.

A seventh mandate sits apart from these—a board seat, which is a governance role, not an advisory service.

Africa Market Entry & Execution

Growth & Business Scaling

Operational Transformation & Turnaround

• Entry-model design.

• Local partner and stakeholder mapping.

• Commercial and operational setup.

• Execution-risk identification.

• Launch and implementation support.

• Independent review and challenge of entry plans, market studies and financial models.

• Performance and operational diagnostic.

• Turnaround priorities.

• Cost, cash and profitability improvement.

• Organisational restructuring.

• Governance and accountability.

• Execution management.

Independent Board Mandate

Serving on the board of a company or a portfolio holding, as an independent director or on behalf of an investor, with the judgement of someone who has run a business.

• Equity readiness.

• Debt readiness.

• Business and financial structuring.

• Governance strengthening.

• Investor materials and management preparation.

• Support during investor engagement.

Leading the entry: particular on-the-ground depth in Cameroon and Central Africa. Reviewing and challenging an entry plan: across African markets.

• Growth diagnostics.

• Commercial strategy.

• Sales and distribution structuring.

• Route-to-market optimisation.

• Organisational scaling.

• Management and performance systems.

Available across African markets.

Available across African markets.

Available across African markets.

Available across African markets.

Available across African markets.

LD Transform supports preparation and readiness. It does not act as a regulated investment intermediary, does not place securities and does not guarantee that funding will be secured.

Available across African markets.

How We Engage

Engagements are scoped to the decision at hand, not to a standard package

Executive Strategy Session

Focused senior-level session to clarify a critical issue and define immediate priorities.

Executive Diagnostic

Structured assessment of the business, opportunity or performance challenge, followed by a prioritised action plan.

Transformation or Value Creation Sprint

Time-bound engagement combining diagnosis, action planning and execution support.

Executive Advisory Partnership

Interim or Fractional Executive Mandate

Ongoing advisory support to a CEO, board, investor or entrepreneur.

Hands-on leadership during a transition, transformation or high-risk execution phase.

The Board Mandate

An independent director is not a signature at the bottom of a page.

It is the person who asks the question nobody around the table wants to ask.

In this region a board seat is usually given to a name. What a family business, a portfolio company or a regulated operator actually needs is someone who has already sat where the CEO sits, and who reads accounts he has produced himself elsewhere.

Loïc Descamps takes a small number of board seats each year, in two forms. As an independent director, appointed and paid by the company. And as a board member or observer on behalf of an investor, appointed by a fund, a family office or a development finance institution, and paid by that investor.

What a director actually does

• Read the numbers. A number nobody can explain is never just a reporting problem.

• Test the plan. A plan is tested where it will be executed, not in the boardroom.

• Prepare the difficult decision. Turnarounds, leadership changes and shareholder transitions are decided before they are announced.

• Hold the mandate. What was approved, by when, and what happens when the date slips.

Three things a director does not do

• I will not run the company from the board.

• I will not sell advisory work to a company whose board I sit on.

• I will not approve a number I have not understood, because a board that signs off on what it cannot explain is no longer a control, it is a formality.

This is why a board mandate and a paid LD Transform engagement never run in the same company at the same time. What a company buys here is independence. It cannot be invoiced twice.

Format. Two to three years, four to six meetings a year, one committee. Three seats at most at any time.

What a board can change depends on the mandate it is given, the information it receives, and on whether the shareholders want it to decide or to approve.

A board does not run a company. It stops it from drifting.