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.