Market conditions

By Alison Huntington

“Our challenge is to get as much oil out of the ground as possible while spending as little as possible on anything else.” That’s the oil industry in a nutshell, as summed up by the HR director of a major oil company.

It sounds so simple that you’d be forgiven for wondering why oil and gas companies buy any consulting support at all.  But, as our new report on consulting in the energy and resources sector makes clear, they do – to the tune of about $6.6bn - a figure we expect to grow by about 5% in 2015.

Is South East Asia the Snow White of the global consulting market? Clocking up 7% growth in 2013 and set to grow even more over the coming year, it certainly looks to be one of the ‘fairest’ markets around, and the consultants we spoke to are positively overflowing with enthusiasm for the region.

By B.J. Richards

There’s been an idea floating around for a while now that Chinese businesses have been unusually slow to adopt new technologies.  It seems to have started with a McKinsey study (as these things so often do), was quickly picked up by the business press, and then, perhaps even more quickly, became one of those things people were saying to sound smart over drinks at tedious work functions. And so a new truism was been born:  Chinese businesses are slow to adopt new technologies.