Marcus Alexander

Marcus Alexander is Adjunct Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School.

He received his MA from Oxford University; and his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Harkness Fellow, Baker scholar, Loeb Rhodes Fellow, the Ford scholar and winner of the Wolfe Award

Marcus is an expert on the relationship between individual business units and the 'corporate parent'; and on the management of multi-business groups, especially in international contexts.

His research focuses on: group-level strategy and the role of the corporate centre; managing globally; strategy process, innovation and execution; and mergers, acquisitions and alliances.

Marcus Alexander is a Fellow of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre and a Visiting Professor at Vlerick Business School in Belgium. He was previously an Associate Fellow at Oxford University.

He consults to multinational companies in Energy, Financial Services, Media, Retail and FMCG and has worked with more than 50 Group CEO’s over 3 decades. He has been a non-executive director of six companies in four countries and is on the advisory board of a private equity firm.

Prior to joining London Business School, Marcus worked in investment banking; in strategy consulting at the Boston Consulting Group; and co-founded a business that he subsequently sold to an advertising group.

He has published many articles in leading practitioner journals. Among them: “The Real Job of Boards,” Business Strategy Review (2010); “When You Shouldn't Go Global,” Harvard Business Review (2008); “What’s Wrong with Strategy?” Harvard Business Review (1997); “The Value of the Parent Company,” California Management Review (1995); and “Corporate Strategy: the Quest for Parenting Advantage,” Harvard Business Review (1995).

Marcus has also co-authored a number of books, including: Strategy for the Corporate Level (with A Campbell, J Whitehead and M Goold, Wiley, 2014); and Corporate-Level Strategy: Creating Value in the Multibusiness Company (with M Goold and A Campbell, Wiley, 1994).

He has contributed to leading news outlets including the BBC, CNN, CNBC, The Times, and the Financial Times.

Over the last 25 years, Marcus has taught on a wide range of open and tailored programmes at London Business School and other academic institutions including the Danish Technical University, Stockholm School of Economics and the Gordon Institute in Pretoria. He was also a tutor at Eliot House, Harvard University.