Biography
Guido Grobbink is a Visiting Professor of Practice in the finance area at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, where he teaches Private Equity (NBA 5370). The course is a hands-on, practitioner-led treatment of private equity as an active ownership model, integrating strategy, finance, deal execution, and operations, and drawing on live cases and Investment Committee–style debate to mirror how PE decisions are made in practice.
Grobbink brings more than 25 years of private equity and operating experience across services, industrial, and consumer sectors, spanning more than 100 portfolio companies throughout Northern Europe. He is a Partner and Director at Standard Investment, a hands-on Amsterdam-based firm that invests in companies with €10–200 million in sales across the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden, working directly with management to grow, professionalize, and restructure them. Earlier, as a Senior Investment Manager at Waterland Private Equity, he led buy-and-builds and was a principal force behind the creation of Basic-Fit, Europe’s largest health-club chain. He also served as Director of Development and Acquisition for Retail Network, a 1,100-store, nine-format retail group carved out through a CVC Capital Partners buyout, co-founded an early-stage technology incubator, and began his career as a strategy consultant at The Boston Consulting Group.
Grobbink holds an MBA from INSEAD and an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
Education
Advanced Management Programme Business School, Harvard University MBA INSEAD MS Delft University of Technology