Thomas Balgheim is the Senior Advisor for the IT sector at the European investment banking firm Ermgassen & Co.  He began his career at Germany’s Dresdner Bank in the mid-1980s, then joined the IT consulting division of the auditing firm Treuarbeit which ultimately became PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Thomas served as PWC’s Managing Director for Financial Services, a division eventually acquired by IBM. He then led IBM’s EMEA business unit for the financial until 2003.  He spent five years subsequently in a similar role at SAP, and after 2008 moved to Japan’s NTT Data to spearhead its expansion into Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Before joining Ermgassen, he also served as Chief Executive Officer of Cirquent (formerly the BMW affiliate Softlab) and of NTT Data EMEA Ltd.