17 December 2024

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Another quiet week as we wind down to the end of the year! This will be the last for the year - but we’ll be back following the New Year (where we’ll be reporting on a whole load of moves, acquisitions and BD news!)

Ejaaz (Founder & Editor at KnowPro Market Intelligence)

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Last Week’s Activity

Unless otherwise specified, all analysis refer to the period dated 9th to the 13th of December.

We tracked 12 consultancy-related contract awards (across business, tech and change consulting), valued at an aggregate of £4.9M.

Here were the top Government Departments and Large Public Bodies that awarded consulting-related contracts, ranked by award value 👇

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Most of the activity this month was driven by large agencies and public bodies, with only 5 contracts awarded by Government Departments at a total value of £562K. 3 of these contracts were issued and awarded under existing CCS Frameworks, while the remaining 2 were awarded directly to the supplier due to a lack of competition.

BDO was awarded the largest contract last week (and the second largest contract this month) valued at £4M, to undertake financial risk and transformation planning assessments of HE providers for the Office for Students.

Top Consultancy Providers in the past week (none were SMEs)

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The Home Office awarded a £275K contract to Police Digital Services (PDS), for cyber-security assessments of third-party access into police systems. PDS is a developer and manager of UK law enforcement-focused technology, and reported revenues of £67.6M in 2024.

Homes England awarded 2 research contracts last week, valued at an aggregate of £139K. Savills was awarded a £100K contract for analysis of the housing market, while Arcadis was awarded a £39K contract to scope out a research project aimed at understanding the post-occupancy performance of MMC homes.

The Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) awarded a £68K contract to Frazer-Nash to upgrade the Global Calculator to reflect the latest assumptions and goals of Net Zero.

Of the 12 contracts we tracked, here’s how they were broken down (many contracts included a combination of service types) 👇

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Upcoming Public Sector Contracts Tracker

Some interesting consultancy-related contracts that are due to close by the 23rd of December 🚀

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December’s M&A Activity

Here are some notable deals concerning consulting firms HQ’d in the UK, or with a sizeable UK presence. Three of these deals involved PE-backed companies.

• Waterland PE, the majority PE investor behind professional services firm Cooper Parry (CP), has sold its interest in the CP to Lee Equity Partners. CP has built a £180 million turnover company via 11 transactions over the past two years, covering accounting and financial services (e.g. UHY Hacker), to tech consultancies (e.g. MacroFin and Cloud Orca). CP focuses on buying firms that that work with mid-market clients. Lee Equity Partners’ investments follows a trend of PE firms taking stakes in professional service firms - following New Mountain Capital and Cinven investments into Grant Thornton.

• Evelyn Partners, a professional service firm specialising in wealth management, accounting and business advisory, acquired ReSolve, a restructuring and business advisory firm based in London. The deal sees 60 employees, including 12 partners join Evelyn’s 1,000+ employees. While this is not strictly consulting related, Evelyn Partners is an example of a professional services firm that is rolling up tax, accounting and corporate finance boutiques. This deal is the first following Apax’s recent buyout of Evelyn’s accounting practice for £700m and indicates a continuation of the roll-up strategy.

• Allata, a global AI consulting and digital solutions provider backed by PE fund CIVC Partners, acquired Imriel , an Anglo-Indian digital transformation company. According to Mishcon de Reya (the transaction lawyers), this transaction included the acquisition of targets within the UK. The exact nature of these UK-based assets remains uncertain.

• emagine, a Danish business and IT consultancy, acquired Boost IT, a Portuguese IT and digital transformation services provider. emagine’s UK division generated c£25M in 2023. Founded in 2018, Boost IT employs 550 IT specialists and 50 full-time staff, serving global brands in FMCG, tech, retail, and e-commerce. This acquisition (emagine’s 10th in 5 years) expands its nearshore capabilities and highlights the roll-up ambitions of consultancies across the continent.

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December’s Consulting Executive Moves

We regularly update our data sources for consultancy-specific executive moves. We have removed engineering consulting firms AtkinsRealis and Arup from our consultancy tracker.

Since the start of December, we tracked a total of 24 consulting executive moves across UK-based firms. Here’s what we found 👇

Executive Talent Flows (Full Year’s Activity)

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• So far, December has seen 24 moves, accounting for 3% of the year’s activity (so far).
• Of the 24 executive moves and promotions recorded in December, 13 (54%) were promotions. 10 of these promotions occurred at the Managing Director level, while the remaining were at Director and Associate Director levels.
• The 9 remaining moves within December (that were not promotions) were one-way lateral moves.

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The firms that promoted the most (December so far)

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• Of its 10 promotions, Accenture promoted 9 individuals to Managing Directors. 3 of these individuals had backgrounds in complex transformation. Accenture’s SAP teams saw the promotion of one MD, and one AD (Associate Director). 2 MD promotions also took place in the firm’s Security practice.

• EY poached 2 Partners this month - a transformation partner from Korn Ferry and a digital transformation partner from B2B sustainability software company, Piclo.

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And in case you missed it…

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