Bain & Company grows UK revenues by 7% to £149 million
Global strategy consultancy Bain & Company has recorded revenue growth of around 7% in the year leading up to December 2017. The firm boosted revenues by roughly £10 million in the UK, and will now look to kick on with a series of expansions in 2018.
Opened in 1979, Bain & Company’s European office in London was the firm’s first office established beyond US borders. The move saw the firm founded by William Bain Junior, a former partner at The Boston Consulting Group, arrive in the UK in the same decade that BCG made the same step across the Atlantic, with the two firms following suit after their 'MBB' rival McKinsey & Company was the first of the strategy firms to cross over in 1966.
Almost 40 years later, Bain’s multicultural London office – led by Managing Partner Michael Garstka – hosts around 700 individuals, with over 45 nationalities, as well as speakers of 36 different languages, serving a vast assortment of clients across the United Kingdom and globally. These include international, multinational, FTSE 100, Fortune 500, private equity funds and non-profit organisations, as well as government institutions.
According to accounts recently filed by Bain in the UK, the office is going from strength to strength, with results for the year ending December 2017 showing that Bain's British entity earned £149 million ($195 million) in revenues last year, an increase from £139 million in 2016. The £10 million improvement represented 7% growth, and interestingly, the firm will likely put the majority of the profits this creates toward compensating its employees.
In 2016, 77% of Bain's UK revenues went to paying its UK staff, while in 2017, 80% did. The high compensation ratio reflects the fact that Bain is a privately owned company without any public shareholders to keep happy, as well as reflecting the low capital intensity of consulting businesses. This is reflected by MBB rival, BCG, which saw 60% of turnover put toward staff costs last year and a further 32% (the profits) redistributed between partners, with the result that BCG employees and partners combined received 92% of the takings.
This year, Bain looks set to follow its competitive results with 12 months of expansion. Earlier in 2018, this saw oil giant Petrofac hire Bain to explore the sale of its North Sea business, as well as the acquisition of digital agency FRWD, which bolstered Bain's digital marketing capabilities.
