The moment that stayed with him began at a marketplace where sales dashboards showed 40% gross margin—yet finance closed the books at 20%, Boon tells us. The gap, he discovered, lived in the shadows: rebates, discounts, and “free” services that never touched operational metrics. He manually traced economics to the client level and found margins many considered healthy were thin—or nonexistent. One customer representing roughly 30% of revenue delivered 0% gross margin, Boon tells us.
That scene explains his broader path. He started in London investment banking “working on deals 24/7,” then spent five years at McKinsey across Europe on corporate finance and strategy. At Zalando he founded Strategic Finance to ready the company for IPO—tightening the P&L and working capital. Hypergrowth taught him that unchecked hiring breeds overlap and data drift, so ownership and reporting must evolve with scale, Boon tells us.
Read MoreHe gravitates to complexity. At his current company—public since 2021 and combined with a U.S. competitor bought for “about a billion USD”—systems sprawl and legacy platforms made accuracy difficult while two-thirds of revenue came from the U.S., across 130 countries with people in 14, Boon tells us. He cut legal entities from 28 to 14, moved to one ERP, and shortened the monthly close from “15 days” to “five or six days,” Boon tells us. Two efficiency programs, a 120 million refinancing, and a rights issue 60% oversubscribed rebuilt credibility.
Back at the marketplace, he installed a pricing director reporting to finance, killed blanket rebates, and tied commissions to net revenue. Within 12 months, margin rose from 20% to 40%, Boon tells us—proof that disciplined economics, not dashboards, drive durable turnarounds.
Made Possible By
CFOTL: Actually, Niels, we might have a few more career related questions for you a little later. Right now, we’d like to find out about sin, tell us about this company and the opportunity, and let’s see you joined. And forgive me, I’m gonna look back 2024 so you’ve been there a year and a half roughly, I suppose. But tell us about this opportunity that came your way once again, and why. You know what excites you about it? What are its offerings? Tell us about it.
Boon: I joined about a year and a half ago. I like “special situations”—there has to be an edge where something needs to change, is changing, or must change faster. The company IPO’d in 2021, then acquired its American competitor for about $1B, but the businesses were never truly integrated.
Read MoreSince then, the share price fell more than 90%. Today we’re roughly a bit north of 2B Swedish kronor (about $250M), with two-thirds of revenue from the U.S., customers in 130 countries, and people in 14. A Swedish company with an American revenue footprint and global teams—that setting fit me. The opportunity was integration: two main companies (plus smaller deals) still operating separately. It was a construction site… and I was the fifth CFO in four years. I like that challenge. Let’s do it.
CFOTL: Now, we’re intrigued. You’re there 18 months—what road map did you follow? Why was your mindset appropriate to take on integrating this large U.S. company?
Boon: People kept asking me “why?”—internally, externally, and among friends. I like tough problems and want to see change through to the end. If a company is stable, growing at inflation, with no new products, no M&A, no action, I’d get bored. Here, we had to integrate companies while managing two business units—one declining, one growing—plus industry shifts, including AI potentially taking over parts of the business (or creating opportunity). I knew the first 12 months would be tough, but we pushed through. Eighteen months later, it’s already a very different company.
CFOTL: How did you achieve visibility into the business—what was the real integration challenge beyond the HBR playbooks?
Boon: Cultural differences were real, but largely addressed by the time I arrived. We ended up with roughly a third from company one, a third from company two, and a third new hires (like me) who focus on today’s company. The biggest challenge was data. We had numerous product systems and revenue streams—including legacy platforms 20 years old—plus deep API integrations with customers. Merging to one product system brings hiccups: turn one thing off, break another, and retrain both customers and suppliers (we’re a marketplace). As a listed company, we still had to report perfectly—hard when old and new systems overlap or double-count. Multiple ERPs and CRMs held billing data; invoicing was messy; A/R backlogs piled up. The only fix was to tackle the system problems first—otherwise you just keep adding to the pile.
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