Oliver Wyman's Health and Life Sciences practice may only be a year old, but it's already made a key acquisition. In August, Oliver Wyman acquired ChapterHouse, a Chicago-area healthcare strategy consultancy. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Michael Weissel, leader of the Oliver Wyman Health and Life Sciences practice, explains that he looked at about 50 different possibilities when deciding which firm would be a good acquisition. "And we felt that ChapterHouse really had the best mix of what we were looking for: strong and well-respected consultants in the marketplace. We knew that their intellectual capital was also well respected and had been well received. And we knew that they had strong client relationships."
Weissel says he knew those client relationships were very strong because oftentimes Oliver Wyman, even before the practice had formalized, had competed with ChapterHouse for client work. "We had some overlap in terms of our skills and capabilities, but not tons," he says.
The Oliver Wyman practice, he says, had been about a third bigger than ChapterHouse, a consultancy of 50. Though Weissel says there were plenty of "ups and downs in the course of negotiations," all of those consultants, he says, have stayed on and are now under the Oliver Wyman umbrella.
Weissel says he also felt ChapterHouse's culture was a good fit, which he attributes to Tom Main's leadership of the firm. ChapterHouse, he says, has "a desire to make a difference in the healthcare space, as opposed to just grow the business." Weissel is optimistic about future plans. "We want to become a larger player in the health and life sciences space. We will continue to look for appropriate acquisitions." —Jacqueline Durett
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