Will Bain & Co be bought out by a bigger consulting firm?
I've been hearing chatter from highly placed people in the Consulting Industry that AT Kearney (first) and Bain & Co (second) do not have scale to survive on their own and might be bought out by a bigger consulting firm (Accenture?).
This follows the acquisitions of Monitor, Booz and Parthenon.
Do you think ATK/Bain will survice on their own? I am going to guess that these 2 firms will be bought out by a bigger rival soon.
On the other hand McKinsey and BCG have have increased the scale and scope of their offerings and moved downmarket to offer services like McK Implementation to survice.
What do you guys think?
I'm fairy certain the whole "Accenture is going to buy Bain" thing was some weird hoax on the part of some angry Deloitte S&O consultants with an inferiority complex. (Looking at you opsdude1)
Don't get too hot and bothered pr4mence, the only people who I've seen mention anything about this anywhere are the oddly common outspoken DS&O fanboys. opsdude1's doesn't do anything but shill DS&O and doesn't even work in consulting yet. John-Doe8 has a clearly ridiculous bait question about choosing between Deloitte and BCG - as if that's even a question. snakeoil doesn't work in consulting. No one who'd have any knowledge or authority on this question has mentioned a word about this.
It's a ridiculous assertion with zero real evidence. If it was happening, these people would be the last to know. Why give it the time of day?
Sorry to Bain folks, but they did indeed shop themselves around to BCG, McK, PwC, and Deloitte a few yrs ago
From the BCG/McK perspective the price was too high considering that there was a great deal of overlap between our areas of expertise
For the audit firms it was that they would lose most of the best partners to McK or BCG in the first few years (Bc what decent partner wants to work at a lame audit firm?)
So, the strategy is to wait for the next recession, that Bain will lack the scale to weather well (they’re too weak outside North America / PE and lack real depth in fast growing areas like digital, where McK and BCG are years ahead and widending the gap)
Could be a while until this happens, but it almost inevitably will, with the most likely outcome being similar to that for Booze — i.e., swallowed up by a big accounting firm, with the best partners going to BCG and McK in short order
Before this happens ATK or Berger will be swallowed.
You do realise that Bain is actually the fastest growing firm in the past 5 years, while ATK and Berger have been stagnating?
But one thing is for sure: A Bain BCG merger sounds awesome. But I don't think it will ever happen due to too much overlap. I would love to see Bainnbuying ATK to get some Operations depth though!