Experience & About
Tobias Cloppenburg-Baumann
For more than 20 years, I have worked with businesses — from start-ups and scale-ups to established organisations. My professional background is in finance and operations.
My work includes financial leadership, financing, restructuring and the integration of finance processes. These anonymised examples describe specific contributions across different roles and engagements.
Post-merger finance integration and financing
Situation: An add-on acquisition doubled overall revenue. The business was also bringing in new investors and arranging its first debt financing.
My contribution: I coordinated the closing with investors, banks, M&A advisers and debt advisers. I integrated data from multiple accounting systems into reporting for private-equity and financing stakeholders, including covenants.
Restructuring a D2C business
Situation: Following a marketing-led expansion, a D2C business needed to restructure its P&L and balance sheet.
My contribution: I developed the restructuring plan, reduced costs and organised accounts-receivable data in preparation for the company's first factoring facility.
Finance support during an ERP implementation
Situation: A PE-backed business was in a late phase of its ERP implementation.
My contribution: I supported the finance workstream and worked through specific issues at that stage of the project.
Interim team leadership in SaaS
Situation: A finance team needed temporary leadership.
My contribution: I stabilised the team, helped existing team members develop their capabilities and supported documentation and handover to the permanent team lead.
How I work
Clear responsibilities and the ability of teams to act independently matter to me. I combine work on financial issues with the development of the people responsible for them.
Alongside my finance engagements, I offer Finance Leader Sparring and personal coaching. The Coaching page explains my approach, the format and my training.
Why keel.works?
The name refers to a ship's keel. For my work, it represents stability and direction — especially when a business is navigating several changes at once.
