A Phoenix on Wall Street
Firm: MMG Partners, New York
• Founded: April 2001
• Specialty: Global financial services
• No. of consultants: 20
• No. of employees: 30
A firm's reputation is its calling card. This is especially helpful when a well-regarded business unit breaks off from a once-mighty consulting firm and makes a go of it alone.
That's what securities-focused strategy firm MMG Partners has been doing quite successfully for the past year. Once a highly profitable unit within Mitchell Madison Group (the original MMG), the securities practice led by Moses Ma survived the aftermath of Mitchell Madison's ill-fated acquisition by USWeb/CKS as part of now-defunct marchFirst in March of 2001.
Now MMG stands for Moses Ma Group, and its leader is still getting mileage out of the reputation he began building in 1995. "MMG had a good name in the securities area," says Chairman and CEO Ma. "It opens doors and breaks the ice."
MMG partner-develops strategic plans for exchanges and bulge-bracket investment banks, including overall strategy, alliance strategy, exchange membership strategy, new derivative product strategy, trading services strategy, and process and IT strategy. Clients include heavy-hitters like Thompson Financial, Credit Suisse First Boston, JP Morgan Chase, American Express, MetLife, and Reuters.
Before it spun off independently, the 30-person practice earned revenues of $16 million in both 1999 and 2000, though business suffered after the loss of marchFirst. But the firm managed to post profits "in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," and seven-digit revenue in its first seven months of independent operation. "In the first two months of this year, we have already done about 60 percent of the revenue we did in all of last year," Ma adds. They've had no layoffs since April, and consultant utilization has remained at 95 percent.
Ma counts McKinsey & Company as its only competitor with a capital markets practice and Oliver, Wyman & Company in the risk management area, but he tries to differentiate the firm by making sure that all employees, from junior associates to partners, are dedicated to the firm's singular focus and well versed in stock market and financial services lingo.
Looking down the road, Ma has no aggressive plans for dozens of offices and thousands of employees, but prefers to grow at a manageable, steady pace. "We want to maintain a close-knit group and keep the revenue-per-consultant very high," Ma says. "I envision three to four offices in places like New York, London, and Boston. We could grow to maybe 200 people, because I would like to get to $200 million in revenue. But a lot of that is contingent on the economy recovering and finding rainmakers to help me get more business."
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