Accenture in Talks to Buy Booz & Co.
Accenture in Talks to Buy Booz & Co.
Consulting giant Accenture PLC is in talks to acquire smaller rival Booz & Co., people familiar with the matter said.
It isn't clear whether there are other potential buyers for Booz, or whether the two companies will reach a deal. Representatives for the firms declined to comment on the talks.
Both firms are significant players in management consulting. Accenture, which has a market capitalization of around $48 billion, has roughly 266,000 global employees and generated $27.9 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year.
Closely held Booz employs about 3,000 people, a spokeswoman said. The company had total revenue of about $1.4 billion in 2012, nearly all of which involved strategy and operations consulting, estimates Tom Rodenhauser, a managing director at Kennedy Information, a market-research firm in Keene, N.H. That's up from a total of $1.2 billion in 2011, he said.
For Accenture, a takeover of Booz would expand its strategy and operations consulting business. "Accenture really wants to build that market," said Mr. Rodenhauser.
Germany's Manager Magazin earlier this month reported on Accenture's interest in Booz.
Accenture has made a string of acquisitions this year including Fjord, a London-based design consultancy; Acquity Group Ltd., a digital marketing company; and Mortgage Cadence, a provider of mortgage software. Booz & Co. would be one of Accenture's bigger deals.
Booz & Co. was once part of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., the company that last hired Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information on the nation's surveillance programs. The two companies aren't connected today.
Booz & Co. was born after Booz Allen Hamilton separated its corporate consulting arm from its bigger government business in 2008. The government advisory unit retained the original name after the parent company sold a majority stake in the unit to Carlyle Group CG.
In July 2010, Booz & Co. called off discussions about a possible merger with rival A.T. Kearney Inc. They had flirted with each other multiple times over the years without completing a deal. The combined firm would still have been smaller than then-leaders in the market such as Deloitte LLP, McKinsey & Co. and Accenture.
Accenture, which competes for global enterprise consulting contracts with tech giants like International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. has mostly posted earnings growth for more than two years now and has seen strong revenue growth in its outsourcing business.
Source: WSJ
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