Is EY-Parthenon losing its prestige and brand?

I talked to an associate and Parthenon is not doing so hot rn, they're not even hiring for FT or smth. It doesn't seem like the best place to join.

Completely anecdotal but yes, kind of. They're merging their EY M&A practice with Parthenon to really emphasize the EY in EY-Parthenon. The Parthenon folks are not so happy about it.

Not exactly sure where this puts Strategy& though.

Be mindful that it also depends on the geography; e.g. in the Middle east or London, S&>>Parthenon

The decision of integrating M&A and Restructuring teams under the brand is quite in line with the general trend (e.g. S& Deals which is also a collaboration between S& and PwC). Whether this will lead to a prestige dilution and potentially significant internal culture clashes is hard to tell at the moment as it happened only recently.

Regarding London and ME - S&'s London office is arguably even weaker, as Booz has never been very strong there and the office has been completely absorbed by PwC almost immediately. In the ME - Parthenon is actually just being built now almost from scratch, while S& is struggling with its size since COVID (promotions frozen, people counselled out at a high rate)

True, and in my office around 50% of S& deals project are strategy rather than actual deals

In Europe S& benchmarks higher with exit opportunities than EY-P and (less so) S&O. Not because of the Booz background, though. Seen as Strategy arm of PwC.

Commercial DD work is done by PwC Deal Strategy - in London (in practice, marketed different) this sits separately from S&, although you still do strategy work on top of deal work. However, in continental Europe this split does not exist (only a London thing).

Beyond this PwC is further integrating value creation and post-deal work into the S&/Strategy umbrella, which makes for slightly more diverse/interesting deal work. That said, this is less relevant for pure S& placements. Bear in mind that outbound placements will NOT know the difference generally between PwC Deal Strategy, S&, or other variations of this. However, S& is placed more with LEK/OC&C/Roland Berger, than the other big4 Strategy arms in many instances, I found from experience.

As investors we've never gone to EY-P, requested pitches from Deloitte (good healthcare strat partner in this particular local office), but have used KPMG S&O and PwC S&. in UK transactions/strategy, PwC S& Deals has a good league table position vs. others, but can vary by sector (e.g. quite impressed with EY Finance team, especially on fintech).

Not sure how this compares vs. US though.

I'd go to EY P for theiri software group thenexit to growth equtiy

I'm not in consulting, but one of my best friends left his firm to join Parthenon a little over a year ago and is not too happy with his decision. I'd have to ask him to find out exactly what he is displeased with but overall he is not nearly as optimistic about his job/work than he used to be, and I imagine this is a factor of some of the stuff said above.

Heard Parthenon integration with EY isn’t going well - understandably given pay and culture differences - it just wont work. Anyone know how AT Kearney and LEK boys are faring during covid?

Didn't this integration take place last year? Saw a thread last summer that the OTS group at EY was being pushed into EY-P. Did more groups make the move?

The new reorg is slightly strange so maybe I can help shed some light on it (at a boutique interviewing with legacy OTS)

Previously EY-P, OTS and Restructuring were three sub services lines held under transaction advisory services. With the reorg they are all still separate however they are held under the name "EY-Parthenon" OTS is now called "EY-Parthenon transaction strategy and execution" Whilst legacy P / Restructuring are called " EY-Parthenon xxx". The strategy team of the old advisory division (about 50 odd people) are moving into the legacy P part of EY parthenon

I would say this is likely false. As with any depth, there will be a bit of friction at the start from both internal members and outside uncertainty, but the EY-P reorg has already been tested and tried at peer firms such as Deloitte, that broke apart its S&O and integrated into the Deloitte brand. For them, it has clearly had little impact on prestige, so I doubt it will on EY-P either. EY-P has a very strong brand name and it is unlikely to lose its prestige.

OP You can only lose something you once had.

And on that note, did EY-Parthenon ever truly have any prestige? If they ever did, it really wasn't apparent

Yeah, both EY-P and Deloitte suck now

Can we revive this thread? I have an offer from Strategy& Deals in London and have been approached by many recruiters for a position at EY-P. I'm actually not keen to go through another interview process for EY-P as I believe the differences between S& and EY-P are going to be fairly marginal in the UK. I read in some threads that the EY-P brand has a considerably better reputation in the UK than S& and therefore offers better exit opportunities - would anyone agree with that?

S& and EY-P are going to be seen as peers in most geographies

I'm late to this party, but mentioning it here since this thread pops up every time someone checks on EY-P. I have several very close friends (including my flatmate) who worked there and yes - the brand has been diluted enormously. There have been multiple attempts are restructuring and reorganizing the firm (TAS, S&O, a bunch of other acronyms) but none of this has actually borne fruit. The old EY-Parthenon was a solid boutique consulting practice, with some level of prestige. Think of the new EY-Parthenon as being built out of the regular consulting practices of your KPMGs, Deloittes and PwCs, and definitely a far throw from the MBBs, and even the tier 2s (where it once had a shout as being part of the gang)