Accenture and Booz: Stealing thunder

When Deloitte bought Monitor back in January, we posited publicly that an acquisitions arms race might ensue. Deloitte's move, we suggested, breached the walls of fortress strategy and opened up the possibility that the Big Four would pour through the hole.

Privately, we entertained a number of possible scenarios. The next move, we reckoned, was the critical one. If another Big Four firm bought the next strategy firm up the ladder (which, by common consensus, would probably mean Roland Berger) then the starting pistol would be fired: someone else would then have to go one better. On the other hand, recognising that a move like buying Roland Berger would fire the starting pistol, and that they would soon be trumped by something even bigger, the canny player would go straight for biggest prize available and end the race just as soon as it got started.

The biggest prize available, we reasoned, was almost certainly Booz & Co.

"Available" is an important word here. Booz isn't the biggest strategy prize - not by a long chalk - but it's almost certainly the biggest that anyone's going to try to buy, which makes it the one that people would end up talking about most. And that's what matters most here. The truth is that the addition of Booz's entire global business would do very little in the short-term to boost the incomes of whichever giant bought it. What it absolutely would do, on the other hand, is earn someone a place at management consulting's top table, and with it the keys to the CEO's office. Like the "marquee signing" in football, the value in this type of deal is determined by what it says about the acquirer rather than what it says about the acquisition.

What we hadn't reckoned on was the acquirer being anyone other than the Big Four.

It may still not happen, of course, but were Accenture to buy Booz (as is now being widely talked about) it would be a thunder-stealing act of thrilling proportions. Accenture already lays claim to much of the technology consulting space - battling it out for supremacy with the mighty, but in consulting terms often rather unconvincing, IBM - but more significantly it appears to be moving beyond the IT function in a way that few of its immediate competitors have managed to do. We know that because we've heard from about 800 clients in the course of our research over the last eight or nine months, and they've told us so. It's also got a whacking great brand that - in survey after survey that we've conducted with clients - looms large over most other firms in terms of recognition. Except, of course, in strategy consulting.

Imagine adding to that a firm, in the shape of Booz, that has indisputably strong strategy credentials, that punches way above its weight in terms of the quality of its thought leadership (we know this because we created the methodology for assessing quality in thought leadership that is now used by most of the world's leading consulting firms to measure their output, and because we write the rankings) and which has a leading presence in the fast-growing and strategically valuable markets of the Middle East. In consulting terms, that's about as close as you can get to a match made in heaven right now.

Will it happen? To trot out a tired old metaphor, but one that serves us well, it's not over 'til the fat lady sings. One thing's for sure, though: there will be conversations going on within every one of the Big Four right now about what on earth they do next if she does.