The consulting business is now the growth driver for all auditors.
(Photo: Mazars)
Dusseldorf The international accounting and consulting firm Mazars ends the year with a coup. She is taking over the Stakeholder Reporting consultancy from Hamburg, which specializes in sustainability issues, in order to “link the core business of financial reporting even more closely with sustainability reporting,” explained Mazars Germany boss Christoph Regierer.
With around 70 consultants from Stakeholder Reporting, founded in 2002, the company intends to expand its own consulting business in this strategically important segment. So far, only around 30 consultants have worked in this area at Mazars.
Stakeholder reporting has made a name for itself in recent years with the creation of sustainability reports for Deutsche Telekom, for example. The company is one of the leading companies in Germany in this area with a first-class customer portfolio, says Manuel Wildhaber, Managing Director of the M&A consultancy Stockalper Partners from Lausanne.
The transformation of the German economy is the main topic
The partnership was founded by Michael Winter, who still manages the company with four other managing directors. Right from the start, he relied on sustainability reporting as a transformation project for companies.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
At the same time, he advised customers on setting up and restructuring their organization in terms of corporate responsibility and thus developed the consulting business together with his employees. With Mazars, they have found “a partner of choice”, said Winter, in order to be able to continue growing internationally.
Neither side provided any information about the takeover price. Mazars takes over all shares of the Hamburg company and becomes the sole shareholder. Sustainability consulting is initially to be integrated into the international group while continuing the Stakeholder Reporting brand.
>> Read about this: The consultants’ new billion dollar business: the decarbonization of the German economy
Mazars follows the industry trend with the takeover. The sustainable transformation of the economy is currently a top issue for management consultants. Not only has it become more relevant in society, the legislators are also putting pressure on it.
The European Union has set itself the goal of being climate-neutral by 2050. In 2021, the federal government passed an even more ambitious sustainability strategy. The German economy is to achieve climate neutrality by 2045.
International society is number eight in Germany.
In addition, the Supply Chain Act will apply from January, obliging German companies with more than 3,000 employees to extend their responsibility in terms of environmental, social and good corporate governance to their entire supply chain. The sustainability report has been mandatory for listed companies with more than 500 employees since 2017, and this obligation is to be extended in 2023.
For the industry expert Jörg Hossenfelder from the market analyst Lünendonk it is clear that the takeover confirms a trend. “Due to their small size and scope, sustainability consulting often quickly reaches its limits when it comes to investments and internationalization,” says Hossenfelder. The auditors or management consultancies taking over, in turn, strengthened themselves in a strategically important segment.
Consulting is more lucrative than auditing
Mazars is the number eight chartered accountant in Germany. With 129 partners and a total of around 1800 employees at twelve locations, the company recently generated annual sales of around 204 million euros in Germany. Only the four internationally leading companies PwC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte as well as the German providers BDO from Hamburg, Ebner Stolz from Stuttgart and Rödl & Partner from Nuremberg are larger.
Mazars – founded in France in 1945 – achieved international sales of 2.1 billion euros in the 2020/21 financial year. The consulting business is now the growth driver for all auditors. In Germany, for example, Mazars recently grew by a total of twelve percent, and by 23 percent in the consulting segment.
With takeovers such as the current one from Stakeholder Reporting, auditors are now competing with traditional management and strategy consultancies such as top international providers McKinsey, Boston Consulting (BCG) and Bain or German industry giants such as Roland Berger and Horvath in their core business. But they too have become active. In September, for example, BCG took over the Swiss sustainability consultancy Quantis. McKinsey incorporated two British providers from the segment over the course of a year.
“Consultants and auditors are actively looking for investments in the field of sustainability,” says Manuel Wildhaber, whose company Stockalper last advised BCG on the Quantis takeover. “They want to buy this expertise because they cannot build it up as quickly as the market requires.”
More: Cost reduction and job cuts alone are not enough – consultants also have to shape the future