EFESO Consulting beefs up US presence with Argo Consulting
Paris-headquartered global consultancy EFESO Consulting has significantly expanded its presence in the world’s largest consulting market through the merger with Argo Consulting.
The merger is the firm’s first since the bolt-on of Austria-based Czipin around a year ago, and provides a major boost to EFESO Consulting’s footprint in North America and internationally.
Chicago-based Argo Consulting brings a team of 90 professionals to EFESO Consulting, lifting its headcount to around 800 worldwide in 25+ countries – making it one of the globe’s largest consultancies dedicated to operations and performance improvement in industrialised sectors.
“The move is part of EFESO Consulting’s global growth strategy to strengthen its position as a top global player in the operations consulting world,” according to a statement released by EFESO Consulting.
Founded in 1998, Argo Consulting is an operations improvement consulting firm that has grown into an award-winning player in the US landscape. The firm helps clients in sectors such as transportation, industrial manufacturing, chemicals, energy & natural resources with services including operations strategy, lean, and operational excellence.
Argo Consulting also delivers operations due diligence work for private equity clients.
The announcement sees Argo Consulting’s teams in Chicago (and small teams in Canada and Europe) become part of EFESO Consulting Group. The firm will serve its clients under the ARGO-EFESO, in a similar strategy to that is used in Germany (where EFESO Consulting operates as ROI-EFESO since its 2019 integration of ROI Management Consulting).
“Argo Consulting creates outstanding value to organisations with excellent capabilities in designing and implementing operations solutions for and with clients,” said Lecchi.
“They bring along their extensive hands-on experience and expertise across Operations Strategy and Performance Improvement, Supply Chain Optimisation, Lean Product Development, Value Engineering, and Operations Due Diligence. Together with our capabilities, Argo-EFESO will continue to help clients progress faster and become future-ready.”
Bruno Machiels, the other co-CEO of EFESO Consulting, added: “We select the consulting firms that join our ranks very carefully. With Argo Consulting we share and live the common values of being results-oriented, hands-on, working in tandem with clients, with a strong entrepreneurial mindset and focusing on delivering sustainable results to our clients. And we clearly have a mutual passion for industries and operations.”
Meanwhile, for Argo Consulting, the deal sees the firm join forces with “one of the top global players in operations consulting” said CEO Fernando Assens. “We have been impressed by their expertise and quality of their work.”
“Argo Consulting was founded on the philosophy of breaking through the traditional barriers of the consultant-client relationship. This merger will help us provide an even broader set of expertise and value to our clients.”
Last year, EFESO Consulting booked its best financial year in history with 30% growth in revenues.