Swiss-German consulting group AWK and Ginkgo adds Quint

Swiss-German consulting group AWK Group and Ginkgo Management Consulting have expanded their footprint with the addition of Quint to their network, lifting the group’s headcount to over 800 consultants. 

In February this year Switserland-based AWK Group, which has around 400 consultants based in Zürich, Bern, Basel, Lausanne and Luxemburg, acquired Ginkgo Management Consulting, a 150-strong consultancy with offices in Hamburg, Zürich, Singapore en Shanghai. Both firms specialise in IT advisory, digital transformation consulting and technology delivery. 

With the backing of Deutsche Private Equity (a Munich-based investor), AWK Group and Ginkgo set out on the ambition to build a leading European consulting group, and have now found their first major merger partner: Netherlands-headquartered Quint.

Founded in 1992, Quint is a consultancy that specialises in digital strategy, IT sourcing (the firm was previously named one of the world’s top outsourcing advisors), agile, devops, IT service management, big data, cloud and technology implementation. The consultancy has around 250 consultants operating from hubs in the Netherlands, Spain and Asia. 

“With this merger, we are taking the next step in our Strategy 2025, in which we are initially internationalising in the direction of Western Europe and at the same time establishing a presence in Asia,” explained Oliver Vaterlaus, the CEO of the AWK Group. 

Now with a turnover of over €175 million, the trio of consultancies have the breadth and depth in services to offer “all the relevant competencies to make complex digitisation projects a success,” Vaterlaus added. 

Meanwhile, for Quint, the joining of forces provides the firm with access to Europe’s largest consulting region (the €30 billion DACH market), and deepens its service portfolio. “We can tap into a larger pool of consultants and specialists and gain new competencies in areas such as smart government, automotive, pharma, cyber security and privacy,” said Quint’s CEO Maurice Boon.

The move comes shortly after another Dutch consultancy, First Consulting, teamed up with private equity and two consultancies (Valcon and Viqtor Davis) to form a similar sized Western European consulting group. 

Meanwhile, in Germany, one of the country’s largest home-grown consultancies umlaut joined Accenture last week.