Legacy EY Strategy vs EY-Parthenon in Europe

Question

How does EY-P differ from the former EY Strategy, especically in Europe? In the UK, for example, did EY Strategy simply migrate their entire team into EY-P? What does that mean for the former stand-alone Parthenon? How does does the merger affect EY Strategy's legacy functions and industries? EY Strategy UK catered to largely energy, consumer goods and automobile clients in a growth and performane improvement capacity. Parthenon was (from what I've heard), largely catered to PE clients and did a lot of post-merger value creation for M&A clients. Does the newly created entity basically now carry out every single one of these functions, or did they decided to prioritize and consolidate functions? How about industies? Any clarification will be very helpful.... Thank you!

Answer 1

Hello!

As an engagement manager in the legacy London EY-P practice, happy to try decipher this for you - it can be a bit confusing indeed!

As a starting point, it's probably best to travel back in time a few years to understand how this team has been built up. Back in 2015, there were actually 3 separate teams that are all now housed under the same brand 'EY-Parthenon Strategy':
- Parthenon - heavily focused on Education sector and mid-market PE clients
- EY Commercial Advisory Services (part of TAS) - very similar to the Parthenon team, focusing on PE clients and growth strategy, but covering different sectors (e.g. Industrials, TMT, Consumer)
- EY Advisory Strategy - serving larger clients on longer term projects (e.g. operating model design, sourcing / supply chain, performance improvement, etc). Sector strenghts are as you outlined above, e.g. in Consumer & retail, Energy, Automotive

So, as you say, the most recent change has been to join the 40-50 consultants from EY Advisory Strategy into EY-P Strategy, which is part of the newly formed SaT (Strategy & Transactions) EY service line - forming a group of c.150 consultants in London. All the services and focus industries remain the same, and now there's just a larger pool of consultants that can have a more varied strategy consulting experience (ability to choose between 'transactions' or 'corporate' projects).

Hope that is helpful, but please shout if you have any other questions.

Answer 2

Daniil has given a fantastic answers (thanks for the history...a lot of which I didn't know!)

The other big effect, just to note, is prestige. EY Parthenon has been steadily building its reputation over the years.

Answer 3

Hello!

+1 Deniil, bunch of the things he mentioned I did not even know!

Sounds like the right person to coach you for this!

Answer 4

++ to Deniil's answer! Very detailed and on point

Answer 5

Hi there,

Until recently I worked for EY-P and I second Daniil's excelent answer.

Let me add though that more recently, in several countries, significant part of the former EY Strategy team was carved out again from EY-P and returned to the consulting service line, where they focus on transformation projects related to operations and technology.