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Oliver Wyman is an American management consulting firm. Founded in New York City in 1984 by former Booz Allen Hamilton partners Alex Oliver and Bill Wyman, the firm has more than 60 offices in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific employing over 5,000 professionals. The firm is part of the Oliver Wyman Group, a business unit of Marsh McLennan. History Oliver Wyman's predecessor, Oliver, Wyman & Company, was founded in 1984 when six consultants left Booz Allen Hamilton to start their own consulting firm. Two of the founders, Alexander Oliver and William (Bill) Wyman, both partners at Booz wanted to create a company that would specialize and excel at consulting a certain industry at a time when most other firms were trying to become generalists. Oliver, Wyman & Company initially focused on working with large financial institutions. Wyman would ultimately leave the firm in 1995. He felt that the human side of consulting was taking a backseat to the analytical work which clients increasingly demanded.The firm is notable for a complex history of mergers & acquisitions. Management Consulted magazine wrote that "[t]he history entails so many reorganizations and changing of org charts that the archives would confuse even the most intelligent consultants themselves." In 2008, Harvard Business School published a case documenting how the acquisitions were restructured and rebranded to create a preeminent firm based on specialization and industry expertise. Although the oldest organization now incorporated into the company can be traced back to 1969, the modern firm was created in 2003 through a merger of Oliver, Wyman & Company with Mercer's financial services strategy & risk units. The acquisition came towards the end of a wave of purchases by Mercer in the United States, including consultancies Temple, Barker & Sloane bought in 1987, Strategic Planning Associates in 1989, and David Nadler's Delta Consulting Group which became "Mercer Delta" in 2000. In Europe, they acquired the Swiss-German firm Unternehmensberatung Munchen in 1993, French firm Marketing Innovation Design pour l'industrie in 1995 and Corporate Decisions, Inc., a firm founded by ex-Bain & Company partners that operated in the US, UK, and France in 1997.This pattern of growth by acquisition has continued to the present day, with Oliver Wyman or its predecessors acquiring more than 20 firms in the 21st century. Temple, Barker & Sloane (1969–1987) Founded in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1969 by James R. Barker, Carl Sloane, and Herbert Temple, Temple, Barker & Sloane found quick success in the management consulting industry. In a candid interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Carl Sloane said "In the 1960s, if you had a Harvard MBA, a blue serge suit, and an air travel card, you were a consultant." But as the recession of the 1980s began, he noted that "Now the clients have their own bright MBAs, and you have to offer a range of specialized services.''Temple, Barker & Sloane found themselves specializing in supply chain management, transportation, and financial services. They conducted studies for the United States Coast Guard to determine if the nation should sign onto international oil protocols in the 70s; restructured American Presidential Lines, which became the largest American shipping company in the Pacific in the 80s; and found alternate uses for state-owned railcars when freight trains declined in popularity in the 90s. The firm also employed Burunda Prince, who would go on to become the first female consultant of color at Bain & Company.In 1971, the chairman of the firm's board gave an expert testimony analyzing the impacts of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act based on Temple, Barker & Sloane's experience in the marine transportation industry. U.S. Congressman Edward Garmatz proclaimed it the best presentation he had "ever seen or heard in [his] many years here in the Congress."At the time of acquisition, the firm was worth an estimated $45 million in 1987 US dollars, or over $100 million today. Strategic Planning Associates (1981–1990) Founded by former Boston Consulting Group associate Walker Lewis in 1981, Strategic Planning Associates applied concepts of computing to strategy consulting. Unlike many of his peers, Lewis had never gone to business school, opting instead to start his own firm building computerized models for clients such as Ameritech Corporation (which would later become AT&T), Chase Bank, General Electric, and Royal Dutch Shell.By 1986, the consultancy was worth $25 million in 1990 US dollars, but just two clients accounted for more than 40% of their revenue. When one of these clients dropped the firm in 1987, Lewis became increasingly convinced that the firm was too small to succeed, admitting to The Washington Post that "a meaningful-sized consulting company has to be 2,000 professionals or larger... it's simple math."The firm agreed to be acquired by Marsh McLennan in 1989. Mercer Delta Consulting (1980–2003) Founded by organizational theorist David A. Nadler in 1980, Delta Consulting Group worked to structure effective executive teams. The firm had an influential client list, including corporations such as 3M, Citicorp, Procter & Gamble, The New York Times, and Xerox. It was acquired by Marsh McLennan in 2000 and renamed "Mercer Delta".Mercer Delta Consulting maintained its speciality in leadership and organizational change, growing through further acquisitions of Canadian Johnston Smith International, French Change Management Consultants, Spanish c.r.m. Concord, and American CDR International. They surveyed directors of the Fortune 1000 annually and monitored developments in business governance. In contrast to the traditional organizational structure, where business units within an organization are clearly defined, Mercer Delta was a proponent of strategically aligned business units that were linked to a larger organization with which they could share capabilities when needed, and operate separately from when they were not. Mercer Management Consulting (1990–2003) Temple, Barker & Sloane (TBS) was merged with Strategic Planning Associates (SPA) to form "Mercer Management Consulting" in 1990, a business unit specializing in risk and financial services. The two firms had markedly different cultures, with TBS focusing on industry-specific expertise-based consulting, while SPA applied data-based models to a broad range of industries. Their integration was slow and painful, and a number of senior SPA employees departed shortly after the acquisition, including Jim Manzi and Scott Setrakian, who went on to found Applied Predictive Technologies; as well as Richard Fairbank and Nigel Morris who would found Capital One. Despite these growing pains, the newly formed Mercer Management Consulting continued to expand, developing increasingly specialized industry knowledge and a global reach as the con.... Discover the Alex R Oliver popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Alex R Oliver books.