http://www.nasdaq.com/article/accenture-interested-in-tie-up-with-booz--company---report-20130717-00644Big fuss here at Booz. Nobody (apart from partners) would be happy....

New name - Boozey Venture

Relax - you know technology is where the money is....

How does that help if money is not transferred to employees? Just compare salaries, travel and expense policies etc.

Do you Booz boys still get to travel business? Good luck with that once you're borged!

You're not seeing the positives, think of all the lovely ABAP code you're going to learn whilst flying economy class.On a serious note, the days of Oxbridge boys turning up with a deck and an invoice to tell me exactly what I already know, but tagged with your "brand" are dwindling. The rules of the game have changed - you should be happy you're playing with the big boys now...

This won't happen. I am out before I get Accenture on my CV. There will always be a market for oxbridge boys preparing nice decks. It is just getting way smaller than it used to be in the glory days of consulting. There are 2.5 players in that field which have global scale - obviously MB(B). Problem for the 2nd tier firms such as Booz, ATK, RB, OW is that they are lacking exactly that. I just see two solutions: (a) gain scale through a merger with a global giant and here we are then indeed talking about Accenture, Deloitte, PwC and the likes who want to extend their value chain or (b) specialise in a niche and focus on premiumization.My preferred route would be (b). If (a) happens I am back at my first sentence.

I wonder how the two very distinct cultures would mix... in terms of working hours, calibre/education of staff, IT vs non-IT focus, and so on.The booz partners might make a lot of money from selling some of their equity or by getting a bigger pyramid under them (or perhaps better stability by being part of a larger company which has longer-term projects), but what would happen with all the non-partner staff at Booz? I can't imagine that all those Ivy league MBAs and oxbridge folk would be particularly happy about becoming part of a large IT company? I'd have thought they see their career path as being more along the lines of going to MBB, senior P&L ownership position in industry, a bank or something like that rather than into a technology company? I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other... just that they have differences which are likely to matter to the staff involved.Also, didn't Booz recently separate from a technology company (the WTB bit of BAH)?

We did separate in 2008 after the effort to re-unite ("one firm") failed. There were two different mind sets and a huge cultural discrepancy between the WTB and the WTC business which led to the split.

Out of interest, how is booz doing financially? would they become more profitable or stable (avoiding "feast and famine" that affects the consultancy industry generally) through a merger or acquisition?

Well the raw truth is that organizations are now looking for actions rather than ideas and actually into the blood and guts of the implementation). I've been on a surprisingly large number of projects where the implementation has followed the recommendations of a Top Tier strat-house, only to find that the "doing" is quite different from the "saying" (which, in turn, is quite different from the "believing"). This is in no way to suggest that the initial recommendations were wrong, but we both know that when you are end to end partners, with responsibilities all the way down the stream, you're at least more accountable for the end result of those recommendations.Niche and premiumization are all well and nice (or niche;) but you're never going to be at the heart (or considered an end to end partner) of true change on an industrial capacity.Overall I believe if the rumours are true, it could be a game changer for both firms - with benefits across the board. I say this without the slightest idea of how the implementation will work - perhaps I should have worked in strategy? Of course, if we have many Mr Cholmondley Warners who believe their reputation as a titan of industry and select confidante of the Fortune 500 C-suite will be sullied by the Accenture brand, then integration could be difficult....

If true, it sounds like the ACN folk are keen about the prospect of merging with Booz and moving into what headhunters call the "strategy space" :)i think booz would benefit from it too, although some of the staff might not want to work in ITAre there any case studies in this area - maybe insights from when EDS bought AT Kearney

Hey, maybe I get this wrong - but Accenture has one of the largest "Management Consulting" arms in the entire industry. This can be translated into "We are not talking about an IT company buying Booz, but Accenture Management Consulting buying Booz". So an here is the point: ACN MC does not do IT work. Sure, there are blended projects, as this is what has scale and pulls the big bugs in - but the role of MC is clearly defined and has (based on my 1.5years experience at ACN MC) nothing to do with IT work. Having said this, we can still argue how the culture thing works (and I am not convinced that it can...) - but from a pure "project" and "functional" point of view the two companies would match A LOT more than it is suggested in previous posts.

I love the poetic beauty in atrie the Booz consultant's statement: "I say this without the slightest idea of how the implementation will work."