| | By Stephen Humphreys,
Recruitment Manager,
Huntswood
Happy New Year and
welcome to 2012 – the
year of the Olympics,
the Queen’s Diamond
Jubilee and the European
Football Championships,
for sure – but what
about the world of
consultancy?
I agree with Mick
James,
Top-Consultant.com’s
weekly columnist, that
2011 has been a year
“full of sound and fury,
but signifying very
little”. The year
started with a large
amount of optimism; the
industry held together
successfully, but it
wasn’t a “big one” for
everybody. Looking
through the four
editions of this
publication from 2011,
the stories that stand
out are:
1. Acquisitions – we
said farewell to PRTM,
Xantus and the vast | |
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| | majority of Tribal.
Capco became a US
company and KPMG and
Hitachi Consulting built
their outsourcing
capability with
EquaTerra and Sierra
Atlantic respectively.
2. Raj Gupta and Raj
Rajaratnam – the insider
trading trial in the US
has seriously called
into question the
integrity of the
consulting profession.
3. Audit and
consulting – we will
have to watch and wait,
but will the Big Four
ever be the same again?
In the last quarter
we have seen a lot of
positive financial news,
along with a couple of
acquisitions. KPMG’s
move for Xantus seems
well thought out; Xantus
is a well-recognised IT
strategy and business
advisory firm that will
diversify the KPMG IT
advisory practice across
sectors. It will also
move KPMG into “supplier | |
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| | of choice” status,
competing with the much
more developed IT
strategy practices of
Deloitte, Capgemini and
Accenture. Baringa
Partners has also
decided to broaden its
proposition into
analytical, policy and
wider energy market
services with the
announcement that it is
to merge with long-term
partner Red-Point
Energy. Finally, 2011
ended with Arthur D.
Little, the world’s
oldest management
consultancy firm,
completing a management
buyout (MBO) on the last
day of the calendar
year. This move
demonstrates significant
confidence among the ADL
partners and is a great
way to start the New
Year.
In financial news, it
has generally been a
season of strong
results: Accenture’s
global consulting | |
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| | record breaking year
with a 19% increase in
revenues.
At the executive
level there have been a
number of changes;
Capgemini, Logica and
Capco all have new UK
heads of consulting,
while Roland Berger,
Oliver Wyman and Simon
Kutcher & Partners have
announced 25, 30 and
eight new partners
respectively. However,
in the US “the mighty
have fallen”: Raj Gupta,
the former McKinsey &
Co. head, has been
formally charged with
insider trading by the
Securities and Exchange
Commission. I have been
watching this story
since it first began,
and we have yet to see
what ramifications this
will have for the likes
of McKinsey.
continued on page
16 | |
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| | revenues are up 11%,
PwC’s rose by 20% while
KPMG saw an increase of
29%. This means that in
six years KPMG,
galvanised by
acquisition, has grown a
$2bn business from
scratch. The new Atos
business suffered a 9%
drop, but the outlook is
positive for the firm,
which recently acquired
Siemens’ advisory
function. The news for
some other firms hasn’t
been so good: Mouchel’s
asset fire-sale has seen
a significant reduction
in its consultancy
capability and Logica
has issued three profit
warnings this year and
announced that it is
beginning its
restructuring early,
with the loss of 1,000
jobs. Among the
boutiques, Simon Kutcher
& Partners, the pricing
strategist, has had a | |
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