Rens is tall, fit, and has a broad smile. Rens loves sports in a pretty competitive way, always respectful but cultivating a winner state-of-mind. Rens is ambitious, reliable and result-driven. Rens needs intellectual stimulation and always need new challenges and projects. Without this dynamism he would feel restless.

Rens has been in a relationship for thirteen years old now and recently adopted a dog, Loha.

Childhood and education

Rens grew up in a small town in Netherlands, his father owning a green house with vegetables. He grew up quite protected, in a small and loving environment, with two little sisters and a lot of animals. Rens was good at school and studied Business Economics after High School.

Then, he did a Master in Finance and, when he started looking for a job, at 22, some people told him he was too young… so he decided to travel and get new life experiences. He went to Salamanca, Spain and enjoyed his life for one year.

In 2020, Rens added a business valuation Master study to his courses, validating the certain amount of experience he gained during the years spent at MatchPlan.

Rens speaks English, Dutch and Spanish.

Career

After the year spent in Salamanca, Rens went back to the Netherlands and started working for MatchPlan as the first employee, in 2013.

MatchPlan was then a small organisation with offices in Tilburg and The Hague, and Rens has been part of the company development until now. Indeed, MatchPlan has been his first company to work in, he sawed made it grow to 17 employees as of today.

In 2017, he became one of the shareholders and they started taking the company to the next level. The share was extended in 2018 and, in 2021, he became Director of the MatchPlan M&A department.

M&A activities don’t have any secret for Rens who is managing the MatchPlan team with a strong result-oriented state-of-mind and efficiency.

Experience in crossborder M&A

Professionally, Rens has been involved in some crossborder transactions where he could use his international experience and his love for travelling. MatchPlan evolved a lot as a firm and is willing to serve international clients more. Crossborder deals have being closed, always involving a Dutch company, mostly on a sell-side mandate basis.

The process is the same for local or international transactions, with a deeper understanding of cultural differences. Professional skills in M&A and social intelligence are necessary, according to Rens. Indeed, understanding the local cultures and the individuals is key, and strong human intelligence skills are important to partner up, talk and negotiate with local people and various deal stakeholders.

Life drives / passions

Rens is extremely active in sports. He did badminton for years, starting at the lowest level and graded up into competitions.

He loves playing tennis in summer, but also football, running and mountain biking.

As Rens likes challenges and surprises, he went to mountain biking 100 kms in Kenya with no previous mountain biking experience, and that worked !

Beyond this, Rens loves travelling and visited many countries across Africa, Latin-America and Asia. He loves nature and wilderness and is always looking forward to the next trip.