Market conditions

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

As we travel around the world talking to consultants about their local consulting markets, our primary aim is to give people the facts; to tell them what our research tells us about what's going on, without couching any of it in language designed to please them.

The UK consulting market, still the biggest in Europe, grew by just over two per cent between 2011 and 2012.

Recovery (if you can call it that) came in the form of a surprisingly resurgent financial services sector and a public sector which, though greatly reduced from its size a few years ago, was nevertheless fairly bouyant and...yadda yadda yadda. Up a bit, down a bit. A few per cent here, a few per cent there.