BTS acquires Nexo to strengthen its position in Brazil and Latin America

P R E S S R E L E A S E
Stockholm, May 5, 2025

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN – BTS Group AB (publ), a leading global consultancy specializing in strategy execution, change, and people development, has agreed to acquire Nexo Pesquisa e Consultoria Ltda., Nexo, a boutique consulting firm headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil.

Nexo has been growing continuously since it was founded in 2017. With revenues of approximately 12 million Brazilian Reales (approx. 2.1 million USD) in 2024, and a highly capable team of 21 members, Nexo has built a strong reputation for delivering transformative projects in strategy, innovation, leadership, and culture.

Nexo collaborates with a great portfolio of clients across sectors such as financial services, consumer goods, and technology, assisting both local and global companies in navigating uncertainty, unlocking creativity, and activating strategy through people. Their work encompasses culture transformation, leadership development, employer value proposition, innovation culture, and vision alignment – supported by proprietary methodologies and frameworks.

BTS currently operates in Brazil servicing both local and multinational clients with a team of 13 employees. By acquiring Nexo, BTS not only increases the Group’s footprint in Brazil but also adds significant capabilities in culture and transformation services. Nexo’s client base has limited overlap with BTS, creating strong growth potential and synergy opportunities.

“Nexo is known for helping leaders and organizations tackle some of the most complex, human-centered challenges with creativity, empathy, and strategic clarity and the Nexo team is loved by their clients,” says Philios Andreou, Deputy CEO of BTS Group and President of the Other Markets Unit. “Their products and services complement and elevate our existing offerings, especially in culture transformation, and we are thrilled to welcome the Nexo team to BTS.”

“We’re excited to join BTS. We’ve long admired BTS’s approach and unique portfolio to support large organizations and leaders in connecting strategy with culture across the organization,” says Andreas Auerbach, co founder of Nexo. “Becoming part of BTS, allows us to scale our impact and bring more value to our clients while staying true to our values and culture,” adds Mariana Lage Andrade, co-founder of Nexo.

Upon completion of the transaction, Nexo’s business and organization will merge with BTS Brazil. Nexo’s founders will assume senior management roles in the joint operation.

The acquisition includes a limited initial cash consideration. Additional purchase price considerations will be paid between 2026 and 2028, provided Nexo meets specific performance targets. A limited portion of any such additional purchase price considerations will be paid in newly issued BTS shares. The transaction is effective immediately.

BTS’s acquisition strategy continues to focus on broadening our service portfolio, expanding our geographic reach, and enhancing our capabilities to support future organic growth in a fragmented market.

For more information, please contact:
Philios Andreou
Deputy CEO
BTS Group AB
philios.andreou@bts.com

Michael Wallin
Head of investor relations
BTS Group AB
michael.wallin@bts.com
+46-8-587 070 02
+46-708-78 80 19

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At BTS, we’re constantly challenging ourselves to innovate at speed. And right now, it feels like we’re standing at the edge of something massive. The energy? Electric. The velocity? Unprecedented. For many of us, the current pace feels a lot like the early days of the pandemic: disorienting, high-stakes, and somehow exhilarating. And honestly—it should feel that way. Our teams have been tinkering with AI, specifically LLMs, for the past 2.5 years and it has really been in the last eight months that I can see the profound impact it is going to have for our clients, for our services and our operating model.

The opportunity isn’t about the technology. The world has it and it’s getting better by the minute. The issue is people and people’s readiness to adopt it and be re-tooled and re-skilled. It’s about leadership. AI is deeply personal, it’s surgical. In fact, that’s its genius. So, getting full scale adoption of AI, re-tooling everyone in the company by workflow, so that they can invent new services, unlock new customer value, unlock new levels of productivity, even use it for a better life, is the current race. The central question I’ve been wrestling with, alongside our clients and our own teams, is this:

What does AI actually mean for leadership and culture?

And the answer is clearer by the day: AI isn’t just a new toolset. It’s a new mindset. It demands that we rethink how we lead, how we learn, and how we build thriving organizations that can compete, adapt, and grow.

The productivity paradox revisited

Let’s start with the elephant in the boardroom. There’s been a lot of buzz around AI and its promises. But many leaders have quietly wondered: Will any of this actually move the needle? A year ago, we were asking the same thing. We had licenses. We had curiosity. We had early experiments. But the results were modest, a 1% productivity gain here or there. But by April, we were seeing:

• 30–80% productivity gains in software engineering
• 9–12% gains in consulting teams
• 5%-20% improvements in client success and operations

Just as importantly, the innovation unlock and creativity across our platforms due to vibe coding along with new simulation layers, is leading to new value streams for our clients. This isn’t theoretical. It’s not hype. It’s real. The difference? Adoption, ownership, and a shift in how we lead in order to energize the AI innovation within our teams. The challenge now isn’t whether AI creates value. It’s how to unlock and scale that value across teams, geographies, and business units—and do it fast.

Two Superpowers of the Agentic AI Era

In working with leaders across industries, I’ve come to believe in two superpowers (there are more as well) that will unlock the potential of this AI era: Jazz Leadership and a Simulation Culture.

1. Jazz Leadership

Forget the orchestra (although personally I am a big fan.) The successful team cultures that are innovating with AI feel more like jazz. In jazz, there’s no conductor. There’s no fixed sheet music. There are core bars and then musicians make up music on the spot based on each other’s creativity, building off of each other’s trials, riffs and mistakes, build something extraordinary together. This is how experimenting with AI today, in the flow of work, feels like.

For each activity across a workflow, how can new AI prompts, agents, and GPTs make it better, codify high performance, drive speed and quality simultaneously? How can we try something totally different and still get the job done? How might we re-invent how we work? That’s how high-performing teams operate in the AI era. The world is moving too fast for command-and-control leadership, a perfect sheet of music with one leader who is interpreting the sheet music and directing. What we need instead is improvisation, trust, shared authorship, courage and a playful spirit because there are just as many fails as breakthroughs.Jazz leadership is about creating the conditions where:

• Ideas can come from anywhere
• People see tinkering and testing as key to survival and AI failures mean your team is at the edge of what’s possible for your services and ways of working
• Leaders say, “I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll go first, with you”
• People feel “I’m behind relative to my peers in the company” and the company sees this as a good sign because the pace of learning with AI means higher chance of success in the new era

At BTS, we recently promoted five new partners who embody this mindset. They weren’t the most traditional leaders. But they were the most generative. They coached others. They experimented and are constantly re-tooling themselves and others. They inspired movement. They are keeping us ahead, keeping our clients ahead and driving our re-invention. Jazz leaders make teams better, not by directing every note—but by setting the stage for breakthroughs. It is similar to the agile movement, similar to how it felt in Covid as companies had to reinvent themselves. It’s entrepreneurial, chaotic and fun.

2. Simulation Culture

The ability to simulate is a super-power in this next agentic, AI era. Simulation has always been part of creating organizational agility, high performance and leadership excellence. But AI and high-performance computing have transformed it into something bigger, faster, and infinitely more powerful. It means that building a simulation culture is within all of our grasp, if we tap its power.Today, companies simulate:

• Strategic alternatives - from market impact all they way to detailed frontline execution
• New business, new markets and operating models
• Major capital deployment e.g. build a digital twin of a factory before breaking ground
• Initiative implementation
• Workflows current and future
• Jobs to assess for talent and critical role readiness
• Customer conversations and sales enablement motions

With a simulation culture, where you regularly engage in scenario planning and expect preparation and practice as a way of working, billions in capital is saved, cross-functional teams are strengthened, high performance gets institutionalized, win rates increase, earnings and cash flow improves.

Where to get started

Below are a few examples of what leading organizations are doing. Consider testing these in your own organization:

• Conversational AI bot platforms used to scale performance expectations and the company’s unique culture.
• Agentic simulations built into tools so people can prepare and practice with 100% perfect context and not a wasted moment.
• Digital twins of the job created so that certifications and hiring decisions are valid.
• Micro-simulations spun up in hours to align 50,000 people to a shift in the market or a new operational practice.

Final Thoughts

• Lead like a jazz musician. Embrace improvisation, courage and shared creativity.
• Build a simulation culture. Because in a world that’s moving this fast, practice isn’t optional—it’s how we win.

This is a brave new world. Not five years from now. Right now.Let’s shape it—together.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, June 2023 – BTS has signed the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD’s “Count Us In” Pledge, which affirms leading businesses and employers’ support for LGBTQIA+ inclusion and equality in the workplace and beyond.

BTS is committed to creating a professional environment that is inclusive, safe, and supportive of people of all gender identities and sexual orientations.

“We stand with the LGBTQIA+ community in the fight for equality,”

says Kathryn Clubb, CEO of BTS North America.

“We loudly celebrate LGBTQIA+ diversity and resilience. As an organization and brand, we are committed to demonstrating this support in publicly visible ways. PRIDE month has given us the opportunity to celebrate, learn, appreciate, and understand the LGBTQIA+ community. We are emboldened to take action, speak up, and be better allies.”

In signing this pledge, BTS commits to taking a stand for its LGBTQIA+ employees and clients. Through advocacy, in partnership with lawmakers on the front lines, BTS is committed to supporting broader social change that will shape the world for the better. In tandem with this pledge, BTS has formed an internal taskforce to lead its ongoing discussion and commitment by identifying opportunities for additional advocacy efforts.

“I’m so proud of BTS and the ways in which we are taking a stand to create a better world for our clients, our communities, and our employees,”

said Kathryn Clubb.

“In the words of P. T. Barnum, ‘Comfort is the enemy of progress.’ May we never get too comfortable.”

BTS stands alongside more than 75 other leading businesses, including many clients, in taking this pledge. To learn more about the Pledge and what it stands for, click here.

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You can't predict the future. You can be disciplined about how you face it.

That's where Future Storming comes in. Future Storming is a process for looking at the trends and signals already visible in the market, understanding how those forces connect, and thinking more clearly about where they may lead.

Recently, we've been applying that lens to talent strategy, running Future Storming sessions with talent leaders across industries to understand which forces are already reshaping how organizations find, develop, and retain the people they need. When you look across those conversations, one thing is hard to miss: AI runs through almost all of the most significant trends, and not as a future scenario. It's already reworking the talent systems most organizations have leaned on for years, often quietly, and often faster than leadership teams have had time to respond.

From these sessions, five high-likelihood, high-impact shifts have emerged as the ones every talent leader needs to be watching right now. What follows is what each of them may mean for your organization.

1. The frameworks most organizations use to define great leadership were built for a different era

Skills and competency models describe work that no longer exists in many roles or that AI now performs alongside, or instead of, humans. The gap between what organizations say they're selecting and developing for, and what the work actually requires, is widening quietly.

This creates a real problem. Organizations that don't redefine what great looks like now will be developing the wrong people for the wrong future optimizing for capabilities that are becoming less predictive while under-investing in the ones that matter most.

• Rebuild leadership profiles from a future-back perspective, starting with where the business is heading, not where it has been.
• Focus on the distinctly human capabilities AI cannot replicate judgment in ambiguous conditions, relational intelligence, ethical reasoning, the ability to set direction when there is no precedent.
• Increase the use of behavioral observation in selection and development. It's the only methodology that shows how someone actually thinks and decides under real pressure.

The signal worth chasing isn't on a resume, it's in the room in how someone handles a real situation, under genuine pressure. It's the only place where someone can't prepare their way out of being themselves.

2. Human differentiators are the last mile AI cannot close

Judgment. Empathy. Creativity. The ability to navigate genuine ambiguity. These are increasingly what separates human contribution from AI output and they're precisely the things most talent systems have always found hardest to measure.

For a long time, organizations could afford to treat these as qualities that would emerge naturally with experience. That's no longer an option. The human differentiators are becoming the job. And most organizations still aren't measuring them well.

The methods exist behavioral assessment, simulation, structured observation. And AI is now making them accessible at scale in ways that simply weren't possible before. The question isn't whether to use them. It's how to deploy them thoughtfully, with the governance and transparency that -stakes talent decisions require.

• AI-powered behavioral observation that surfaces how people actually perform in the flow of work, (i.e. judgement, decision-making, adaptability) not self-report
• Assessment that evaluated how people work with AI, not just without it because that's increasingly what the role looks like
• Simulation-based approaches that reveal thinking in action - the kind of evidence no credential or output can provide

3. The talent pipeline is broken

AI is displacing the early-career work that has traditionally served as the on-ramp into organizational life. Those tasks once gave emerging employees something more valuable than work product. They gave them foundational experiences, relationships, and judgment. The kind of judgment that eventually grows into leadership.

The impact won't show up immediately. That's exactly what makes it worth paying attention to now. Within three to six years, benches will thin and succession pipelines will require far more intentional investment. Organizations will find themselves asking why their internal talent isn't developing the way it used to.

The organizations that get ahead of this have a real opportunity to build something more deliberate, more equitable, and better suited to the capabilities the future actually requires.

• Invest in real, simulation-based experiences, putting emerging leaders into the decisions and pressures that build genuine organizational judgment, not just task exposure.
• Redefine what early-career development is, building toward the capabilities the future requires, not the ones the old job description described.
• Build feedback into the flow of work. AI behavioral observation and practice AI role plays make continuous development possible at scale. The experience that used to happen informally has to be designed now.

4. People need to re-skill faster than any development model was built to support

People need to reskill faster than any development model was built to support.  Most organizational development infrastructure was built around a longer, more stable arc of skill acquisition. AI is compressing that arc significantly.

The implication isn't just that training needs to be faster. It's that the whole architecture of how organizations identify, develop, and deploy talent needs to be built for continuous recalibration not periodic refresh.

• Prioritize adaptability and learning agility over static expertise. The ability to acquire new capabilities quickly matters more than the specific capabilities someone holds today.
• Treat reskilling as a continuous organizational process, not an episodic program.

5. AI is absorbing leadership work and culture is losing it's anchor

This is the shift that's easiest to underestimate, and hardest to recover from once it arrives.

Culture is what people see leaders do. The behaviors leaders model how they make decisions, how they show up in hard moments, what they choose to reward and what they let go are how organizational culture gets transmitted. It doesn't travel through stated values. It travels through visible human behavior.

AI is absorbing the work that used to make leaders visible as humans making choices. Performance reviews written by AI. Communications drafted by AI. Coaching conversations mediated by AI. When the distinctly human work disappears, so does the signal. People don't know what to watch anymore. And culture which depends on that watching starts to fray.

The organizations that navigate this well won't be the ones that use less AI, they'll be the ones most intentional about which leadership behaviors remain visibly human, and why.

The behaviors that held culture together need to be rebuilt around what humans uniquely contribute now and that starts with getting the success profile right. That's exactly what the Future Ready Profile is built for.

Strengthen empathy-centered leadership capabilities. The human dimensions of leadership matter more, not less, as AI takes on more of the technical work.

• Strengthen empathy-centered leadership capabilities. The human dimensions of leadership matter more, not less, as AI takes on more of the technical work.
• Reinforce organizational purpose and human-centered culture as anchors.
• Treat culture as something you design, not something you inherit.

What this means

The organizations that navigate this well won't be the ones that adopted AI fastest, they'll be the ones that invested just as deliberately in the human systems around it.

These five shifts aren't warnings. They're design problems, and design problems have answers. The talent systems that come out of this moment can be more intentional, more equitable, and more fit for purpose than anything we've built before.

At BTS, this is the work we're doing every day. If you'd like to think through what any of it means for your organization, we’d love to talk.

The thinking in this article was shapped by Future Storming sessions, including a SIOP 2026 workshop, and by ongoing conversations with talent leaders navigating these shifts in real time.

Hace unos meses terminé una sesión con un equipo de ejecutivos comerciales de una institución financiera mediana. Dos días intensos: cómo prospectar, cómo estructurar conversaciones centradas en el cliente, cómo crear valor en cada interacción. El grupo salió inspirado del taller.

Tres semanas después le pregunté a uno de los mejores participantes sobre cómo le había ido aplicando las nuevas herramientas. Me miró un segundo y me dijo, con total honestidad:

“La verdad... la semana siguiente fue igual que siempre, volví al viejo sistema”

El entrenamiento de capacidades es  necesario. Pero sin una cultura comercial que lo sostenga, es un esfuerzo poco  rentable para las empresas.

1.   Las capacidades sin contexto no sobreviven al día a día

Un ejecutivo de ventas puede salir de un taller sabiendo exactamente qué preguntar, cómo estructurar una conversación de valor, cómo posicionarse como asesor estratégico en lugar de vendedor de productos. La semana siguiente, el peso de las métricas de corto plazo, la presión por resultados y las urgencias del día a día terminan arrastrándolos de vuelta a la rutina de siempre.

McKinsey (2024) encontró que más del 70% de las iniciativas de transformación comercial no logran sus objetivos — y la principal causa no es el diseño del programa, sino la falta de condiciones organizacionales para sostener los nuevos comportamientos.

El problema no es el taller. Es lo que existe o no existe en la realidad de la estructura comercial.

2.   El cambio requiere alinear seis pilares

Lo que diferencia a las empresas que realmente transforman su modelo comercial de las que solo capacitan, está relacionado con seis pilares que operan simultáneamente.

1.    Patrocinio de la alta dirección que empodera en lugar de solo exigir

2.    Disciplina en gestión de cuentas/clientes estratégicos, con metodología y seguimiento

3.    Conversaciones centradas en el cliente, no en el portafolio de productos

4.    Cada interacción con relevancia estratégica, preparadapara crear valor medible

5.    Nuevos comportamientos integrados al ritmo operativodiario y la cadencia del negocio

6.    Líderes comerciales presentes que sostienen la cultura, no solo la expresan

Cuando falta uno, los demás no escalan y terminan provocando un círculo vicioso.

3.   El liderazgo que sostiene vale más que el que exige

El patrocinio de la alta dirección y la presencia de los líderes comerciales sonlos pilares que más frecuentemente fallan. No porque los líderes no crean en el cambio, sino porque el día a día los jala de vuelta a revisar resultados, no a construir comportamientos.

Gartner (2024) señala que los equipos comerciales cuyos líderes hacen coaching activo y visible tienen hasta un 28% mayor probabilidad de adoptar nuevos comportamientos de manera sostenida.

El entrenamiento define el rumbo y entrega el mapa; el liderazgo es lo que realmente ayuda a navegar y sostener el cambio.

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Conclusión

Si tu empresa está invirtiendo en transformar la forma en que sus equipos comerciales se relacionan con los clientes, la pregunta ya no es si el entrenamiento funciona. La verdadera pregunta es: ¿qué tan preparada está la organización para sostener el cambio?

Porque el talento existe. Las habilidades se desarrollan. Pero la cultura no se improvisa; se construye todos los días, con liderazgo, alineación y consistencia.

¿Cuál de estos seis pilares es hoy el más débil en tu organización?

É possível mudar a cultura de uma organização?

Hoje em dia, poucas organizações não estão envolvidas em um (ou vários) processos de transformação cultural. Novas formas de trabalhar em organizações mais horizontais e adaptativas, melhorias na cultura de segurança, orientação ao cliente, transformações nas áreas comerciais e excelência operacional, entre outros.

E é aqui que surge uma das grandes perguntas:

É possível mudar a cultura de uma organização? E, se sim, como fazer isso?

Para ajudar a responder a essas perguntas—frequentes entre nossos clientes e amplamente discutidas—gostaria de compartilhar o que aprendemos na BTS ao longo dos últimos 38 anos sobre o que funciona e o que não funciona (até agora, pois em transformação cultural estamos sempre aprendendo).

A boa notícia é que a resposta é sim.

A dificuldade está na segunda pergunta: como fazer isso?

Um projeto? Uma iniciativa?

Um ponto importante é que a transformação cultural não é um projeto com início e fim, mas sim um processo contínuo e em evolução. Isso muitas vezes gera tensão em organizações acostumadas a uma lógica de projetos.

O que é crítico e frequentemente ignorado?

Existem elementos que, quando considerados e aplicados corretamente, tornam a transformação muito mais eficaz. No entanto, muitas vezes são ignorados.

Esses elementos são:

• Envolver as pessoas. Quanto maior o envolvimento em todos os níveis, maior a probabilidade de implementação das mudanças.
• Tornar a mudança tangível e vivida no dia a dia, conectando teoria e prática. Transparência é fundamental.
• Toda mudança tem impactos positivos e negativos — ambos devem ser comunicados com clareza.
• Mudança cultural exige tempo e transformação de mindsets e estruturas organizacionais.
• A cultura deve estar conectada à estratégia.

Como estruturamos a transformação cultural?

Nosso modelo se baseia em quatro etapas: definir resultados, criar líderes de mudança, incorporar mudanças e sustentar novas formas de trabalho.

1. Definir resultados

O primeiro passo é estabelecer resultados claros e alinhamento executivo. É necessário conectar propósito, visão e objetivos organizacionais.

Ações:

• Coleta de dados (entrevistas, focus groups, visitas)
• Diagnósticos culturais
• Definição de expectativas (Leadership Profiles

2. Criar líderes de mudança

Todos os líderes devem atuar como agentes de mudança. É fundamental engajá-los emocional e racionalmente.

Ações:

• Programas de liderança
• Playbooks
• Feedback contínuo

3. Incorporar mudanças

É essencial transformar mentalidades e sistemas organizacionais.

Ações:

• Coaching
• Sprints culturais
• Cascata organizacional
• Avaliações comportamentais

4. Sustentar o novo modelo

Garantir continuidade através de redes, dados e suporte contínuo.

Ações:

• Integração com processos de talento
• Uso de IA no dia a dia
• Monitoramento da transformação
• Comunidades de prática

A importância de ser paciente e impaciente ao mesmo tempo

Transformações culturais são complexas e não têm fórmula única.

Ser estrategicamente paciente e taticamente ágil é essencial para ajustar e evoluir continuamente.

Esse equilíbrio permite transformar a jornada em algo positivo e sustentável.

Este é apenas um resumo.

Se quiser aprofundar com exemplos e práticas:

Baixe o PDF completo e acesse todo o conteúdo.

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