Oliver Wyman, LLC is an American management consulting firm. Founded in New York City in 1984 by former Booz Allen Hamilton partners Alex Oliver and Bill Wyman, the firm has more than 60 offices in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific employing over 5,000 professionals. The firm is part of the Oliver Wyman Group, a business unit of Marsh McLennan.
History
Oliver Wyman's predecessor, Oliver, Wyman & Company, was founded in 1984 when six consultants left Booz Allen Hamilton to start their own consulting firm. Two of the founders, Alexander Oliver and William (Bill) Wyman, both partners at Booz wanted to create a company that would specialize and excel at consulting a certain industry at a time when most other firms were trying to become generalists. Oliver, Wyman & Company initially focused on working with large financial institutions.Ucok, Evren (1 Oct 1998). Re: "Oliver, Wyman & Company" Message to Ted Chinburg. University of Pennsylvania, Department of Mathematics. Wyman would ultimately leave the firm in 1995. He felt that the human side of consulting was taking a backseat to the analytical work which clients increasingly demanded.
The firm is notable for a complex history of mergers & acquisitions. Management Consulted magazine wrote that "[t]he history entails so many reorganizations and changing of org charts that the archives would confuse even the most intelligent consultants themselves." In 2008, Harvard Business School published a case documenting how the acquisitions were restructured and rebranded to create a preeminent firm based on specialization and industry expertise. Although the oldest organization now incorporated into the company can be traced back to 1969, the modern firm was created in 2003 through a merger of Oliver, Wyman & Company with Mercer's financial services strategy & risk units. The acquisition came towards the end of a wave of purchases by Mercer in the United States, including consultancies Temple, Barker & Sloane bought in 1987, Strategic Planning Associates in 1989, and David Nadler's Delta Consulting Group which became "Mercer Delta" in 2000. In Europe, they acquired the Swiss-German firm Unternehmensberatung Munchen in 1993, French firm Marketing Innovation Design pour l'industrie in 1995 and Corporate Decisions, Inc., a firm founded by ex-Bain & Company partners that operated in the US, UK, and France in 1997.
This pattern of growth by acquisition has continued to the present day, with Oliver Wyman or its predecessors acquiring more than 20 firms in the 21st century.
Temple, Barker & Sloane (1969–1987) Founded in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1969 by James R. Barker, Carl Sloane, and Herbert Temple, Temple, Barker & Sloane found quick success in the management consulting industry. In a candid interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Carl Sloane said "In the 1960s, if you had a Harvard MBA, a blue serge suit, and an air travel card, you were a consultant." But as the recession of the 1980s began, he noted that "Now the clients have their own bright MBAs, and you have to offer a range of specialized services.''
Temple, Barker & Sloane found themselves specializing in supply chain management, transportation, and financial services. They conducted studies for the United States Coast Guard to determine if the nation should sign onto international oil protocols in the 70s;Goldberg, Victor P. “Recovery for Economic Loss Following the Exxon ‘Valdez’ Oil Spill.” The Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 1994, pp. 1. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/724301. restructured American Presidential Lines, which became the largest American shipping company in the Pacific in the 80s; and found alternate uses for state-owned railcars when freight trains declined in popularity in the 90s. The firm also employed Burunda Prince, who would go on to become the first female consultant of color at Bain & Company.
In 1971, the chairman of the firm's board gave an expert testimony analyzing the impacts of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act based on Temple, Barker & Sloane's experience in the marine transportation industry. U.S. Congressman Edward Garmatz proclaimed it the best presentation he had "ever seen or heard in [his] many years here in the Congress."
At the time of acquisition, the firm was worth an estimated $45 million in 1987 US dollars, or over $100 million today.
Strategic Planning Associates (1981–1990) Founded by former Boston Consulting Group associate Walker Lewis in 1981, Strategic Planning Associates applied concepts of computing to strategy consulting. Unlike many of his peers, Lewis had never gone to business school, opting instead to start his own firm building computerized models for clients such as Ameritech Corporation (which would later become AT&T), Chase Bank, General Electric, and Royal Dutch Shell.
By 1986, the consultancy was worth $25 million in 1990 US dollars, but just two clients accounted for more than 40% of their revenue. When one of these clients dropped the firm in 1987, Lewis became increasingly convinced that the firm was too small to succeed, admitting to The Washington Post that "a meaningful-sized consulting company has to be 2,000 professionals or larger... it's simple math."
The firm agreed to be acquired by Marsh McLennan in 1989.
Mercer Delta Consulting (1980–2003) Founded by organizational theorist David A. Nadler in 1980, Delta Consulting Group worked to structure effective executive teams. The firm had an influential client list, including corporations such as 3M, Citicorp, Procter & Gamble, The New York Times, and Xerox. It was acquired by Marsh McLennan in 2000 and renamed "Mercer Delta".
Mercer Delta Consulting maintained its speciality in leadership and organizational change, growing through further acquisitions of Canadian Johnston Smith International, French Change Management Consultants, Spanish c.r.m. Concord, and American CDR International. They surveyed directors of the Fortune 1000 annually and monitored developments in business governance. In contrast to the traditional organizational structure, where business units within an organization are clearly defined, Mercer Delta was a proponent of strategically aligned business units that were linked to a larger organization with which they could share capabilities when needed, and operate separately from when they were not.
Mercer Management Consulting (1990–2003) Temple, Barker & Sloane (TBS) was merged with Strategic Planning Associates (SPA) to form "Mercer Management Consulting" in 1990, a business unit specializing in risk and financial services. The two firms had markedly different cultures, with TBS focusing on industry-specific expertise-based consulting, while SPA applied data-based models to a broad range of industries. Their integration was slow and painful, and a number of senior SPA employees departed shortly after the acquisition, including Jim Manzi and Scott Setrakian, who went on to found Applied Predictive Technologies; as well as Richard Fairbank and Nigel Morris who would found Capital One.
Despite these growing pains, the newly formed Mercer Management Consulting continued to expand, developing increasingly specialized industry knowledge and a global reach as the consulting industry boomed in the late 1990s.Baptista, João & Morrison, David. (2002). Mercer Management Consulting. 10.1057/9781403907189_25. The firm took on projects for larger, international organizations such as the World Bank,Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Contraceptive Research and Development; Harrison PF, Rosenfield A, editors. Contraceptive Research and Development: Looking to the Future. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1996. 5, The Market for New Contraceptives: Translating Unmet Need into Market Demand. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232764/ IBM, and International Finance Corporation. They increased their work with governments, restructuring Polish State Railways and helping privatize the Argentinian commuter rail network. But in 2001, the firm was severely affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Their parent company, Marsh McLennan, had nearly 2,000 employees working in both towers of the World Trade Center that day. The first plane crashed into the 93rd through 99th floors of Tower 1, which were owned by Marsh and occupied by 845 employees. A total of 295 employees and 63 consultants died in the attack, including 1 who was aboard the hijacked aircraft. Mercer Management Consulting was restructured in the aftermath of the incident, and their Washington D.C and Geneva offices were shuttered.
Mercer Oliver Wyman (2003–2007) By 2003, Mercer Management Consulting was ranked as the 6th best consulting firm while Oliver, Wyman & Company was the 9th, according to Vault. Mercer's strengths at the time were in transport, insurance, asset management, and retail broking; while Oliver, Wyman & Company's were in capital markets and investment banking. A merger that year consolidated the two industry-leading firms into "Mercer Oliver Wyman" and was widely considered a success.
In the years after, Mercer Oliver Wyman experienced rapid growth up to 25% annually, and was the fastest-growing consultancy in the top 10.
Oliver Wyman (2007–present)
In 2007, Mercer Management Consulting, Mercer Delta Organizational Consulting, and Mercer Oliver Wyman were consolidated into "Oliver Wyman" in an effort to streamline branding and address a broader range of client needs. The renamed firm was ranked 7th best until 2013, when it regained Mercer Management Consulting's previous ranking as 6th. In 2017, it climbed above PricewaterhouseCoopers to reach a new high as the 5th best consulting firm in the world.
Although the highest level of employment at the firm is known as "partner", the firm is not a true partnership, but rather a wholly owned subsidiary of its parent. "Oliver Wyman" is also used as the namesake of a larger business unit within Marsh McLennan, known as "Oliver Wyman Group".
From 2008 to 2012, Oliver Wyman continued to grow and expand its global footprint despite the global financial crisis, opening offices in India and Japan. From 2013 to 2019, Oliver Wyman Group grew at an average rate of 7% per year, outperforming the growth of the global management consulting market, despite experiencing a drop in revenue after Brexit.
Services As a global management consulting firm, Oliver Wyman provides advice and analysis on how companies can improve their performance. The firm undertakes a variety of notable projects in the automotive, defense, education, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, transportation, and travel industries, but is particularly distinguished in the financial services sector. Through its partners, the company regularly contributes to business publications such as the Forbes, Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal. It generates over $500,000 in revenue per consultant, a figure that is more than double the national average and comes in second only to McKinsey & Company.
Notable engagements
2005 Citigroup advice Reportedly, Mercer Oliver Wyman was the unnamed consulting firm that recommended Citigroup expand parts of their fixed income business in 2005, including in collateralised debt obligations, which led to more than $50 billion in losses during the 2008 financial crisis and ultimately necessitated a rescue by the U.S. government. The firm made similar recommendations to UBS, which expanded its CDO portfolio, suffered huge losses and had to be bailed out by the Swiss government. Some claim that the Wyman analysis included warnings and precautions about the structured product market. Mercer Oliver Wyman declined to comment in both cases, citing client confidentiality.
2006 Irish Bank endorsement