Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect of strategic management, M&A can allow enterprises to grow or downsize, and change the nature of their business or competitive position.
BearingPoint is an independent multinational management and technology consulting firm with 41 offices across 23 countries and around 4,300 employees. In 2021, the firm delivered 1,298 projects in 50 countries.
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants for a number of reasons, including gaining external advice and accessing consultants' specialized expertise regarding concerns that call for additional oversight.
Arthur D. Little is an international management consulting firm originally headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1886 and formally incorporated in 1909 by Arthur Dehon Little, an MIT chemist who had discovered acetate. Arthur D. Little pioneered the concept of contracted professional services. The company played key roles in the development of business strategy, operations research, the word processor, the first synthetic penicillin, LexisNexis, SABRE, and NASDAQ. Today the company is a multinational management consulting firm operating as a partnership.
Kearney is an American global management consulting firm with offices in more than 40 countries worldwide. Kearney's predecessor firm was founded in Chicago by James O. McKinsey in 1926; he hired Andrew Thomas "Tom" Kearney as his first partner in 1929. After James McKinsey died in 1937, the Chicago office split into its own company, led by Tom Kearney and called McKinsey, A.T. Kearney, and Company. In 1947, it was renamed A.T. Kearney and Company.
The Economist Group is a media company headquartered in London, England. It is best known as publisher of The Economist newspaper and its sister lifestyle magazine, 1843. The Economist Group specialises in international business and world affairs information. Its principal activities are in print and digital media as well as in conferences and market intelligence.
International business refers to the trade of goods, services, technology, capital and/or knowledge across national borders and at a global or transnational scale.
Mercer is an American consulting firm founded in 1945. It is one of the four operating subsidiaries of global professional services firm Marsh McLennan. Mercer is headquartered in New York City with offices in 43 countries and operations in 130 countries. The company primarily provides human resources and financial services consulting services to its clients.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, providing forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis, such as monthly country reports, five-year country economic forecasts, country risk service reports, and industry reports. The EIU provides country, industry, and management analysis worldwide and incorporates the former Business International Corporation, a UK company acquired by its parent company in 1986. The EIU has its main offices in four cities—London, New York, Hong Kong and Dubai.
L.E.K. Consulting is a global strategy consulting firm based in London and Boston. Founded in 1983 by three partners from Bain & Company, L.E.K. focuses on corporate strategy, marketing and sales, mergers and acquisitions, and operations. It provides expertise to life sciences and pharma, healthcare services, consumer products, financial services, energy and environment, media and entertainment, technology, travel and transport, industrials, and retail. The firm also has a strong private equity practice.
Strategy& is the strategy consulting business unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the Big Four professional service firms.
Creating shared value (CSV) is a business concept first introduced in a 2006 Harvard Business Review article, Strategy & Society: The Link between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. The concept was further expanded in the January 2011 follow-up piece entitled Creating Shared Value: Redefining Capitalism and the Role of the Corporation in Society. Written by Michael E. Porter, a leading authority on competitive strategy and head of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, and Mark R. Kramer, of the Kennedy School at Harvard University and co-founder of FSG, the article provides insights and relevant examples of companies that have developed deep links between their business strategies and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Porter and Kramer define shared value as "the policies and practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing social and economic conditions in the communities in which it operates", while a review published in 2021 defines the concept as "a strategic process through which corporations can turn social problems into business opportunities".
Kroll, LLC, formerly Duff & Phelps LLC, is an American multinational financial consultancy firm based in New York City. It was founded as Duff & Phelps in 1932 by William Duff and George Phelps. Since then, the firm has added more than 30 complementary companies to its portfolio, including the acquisition of Kroll Inc. in 2018. Duff & Phelps decided to start rebranding itself using the Kroll name in 2021, and it completed the renaming process in February 2022.
Kurt Salmon was a global management and strategy consulting firm formed by the merger of Ineum Consulting and Kurt Salmon Associates (KSA) in January 2011:
International business development evolves through the normal processes of trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the advancement of technology in undeveloped nations. In order to achieve sustainable global business development, business professionals often must find ways of adapting to the cultures and societies within which they operate and conduct business. With huge growth opportunities created by the emerging middle class of nations such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, many companies in the developed world are stepping in to provide goods and services to those countries' consumers, and business development professionals provide the necessary legal, financial, and cultural bridges between supplier and consumer.
Market Explorer is an online tool whose main purpose is to allow strategy and planning executives to see which countries offer the greatest opportunities for their products and services. The tool was launched in November 2015 by EIU Canback, a management consulting firm that leverages predictive analytics for strategic purposes. Data is available from 2005 to 2030, with the aim of helping businesses to form a view on markets over time.
Refinitiv is an American-British global provider of financial market data and infrastructure. The company was founded in 2018. It is a subsidiary of London Stock Exchange Group after a US$27 billion sale from previous owners Blackstone Group LP which held a 55% stake and Thomson Reuters which owned 45%. The company has an annual turnover of $6 billion with more than 40,000 client companies in 190 countries.
Kreller Companies is an American corporate investigations and risk management firm based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Since its founding in the late 1980s, it has advised clients on their use of third-party business information vendors. Today the firm offers a range of business intelligence services, including custom due diligence and investigations.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to consulting:
