Financial services consultancy Catalyst Development triples headcount

08 May 2018 Consultancy.uk

Fast-growing financial services consultancy Catalyst Development enjoyed a record year over the past twelve months. The firm’s headcount in its London office tripled to 100 employees, and the firm is now setting its sights on international expansion with a new office in Lithuania.

Established in 1994, Catalyst Development is currently preparing for a period of sustained growth. Between April 2017 and March 2018, Catalyst substantially grew its investment base, services, markets, clients, staff and profitability. By the end of last month, the firm had tripled the headcount of its London office to 100 staff members in order to meet this booming demand. Catalyst also began to supplement its growth with an ambitious M&A strategy. In Autumn 2017, this saw the financial services consultancy secure a growth investment, in the form of a management buy-out backed by Private Equity investor Livingbridge.

The firm first put its new war chest to use with the acquisition of management consultancy Knadel, marking the start of a series of planned strategic acquisitions. Illustrating the potential growth ahead, the combined group is expected to almost double business revenues in the coming financial year. Turning its focus to international developments in order to sustain this meteoric rise, Catalyst has now announced the opening of a new near-shore consultancy hub in Vilnius, in partnership with Invest Lithuania, to allow it to further scale its services to clients across all European financial centres – adding to its other bases in Jersey and a longstanding presence in Japan.

Financial services consultancy Catalyst Development triples headcount

The Eastern European region is increasingly offering up opportunities for consulting firms, and is worth more than €1.1 billion. Invest Lithuania is a non-profit organisation founded in 2010 and owned by the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Lithuania. The group’s goal is to attract and facilitate foreign investment in the country. By collaborating Invest Lithuania, Catalyst has enabled itself to tap into the local talent pool, with confidence boosted by the local knowledge of its partner. Globally this means Catalyst’s talent pool is approaching 150 professionals.

Catalyst CEO Andrew Middleton commented, “We continue to grow strongly in pursuit of our ambition to be the pre-eminent, independent financial services consultancy in Europe, providing specialism at scale in business, technology and regulatory change. Our aim is to continue to grow the scope and scale of our resources and deliver effective change and lasting benefits across the full footprint of our multi-national clients.”

Further commenting on the development, Catalyst Managing Director Stephen Loosley added, “The opening of our new nearshore hub is an important component of our goal to serve all European financial centres in larger, specialist teams and to continue to broaden the skills available to our clients on competitive terms. This is a strong model we intend to roll out further and we look further to announcing further extensions to our reach and capability in the near future.”

Earlier in 2018, Catalyst was named as among 100 of the Best Workplaces in the UK, by the Great Place to Work Institute. The annual benchmark on the UK and world’s Best Workplaces aims to help organisations leverage the best practices of top employers, to improve their own performance and efforts to transforming their workplaces, with Catalyst marked out as an example in this regard.