Value Partners

Infobox_Company
company_name = Value Partners Management Consulting
company_type = Partnership
company_
company_slogan = "Making the difference through results"
foundation = 1993
location = Milan, Italy
key_people = Giorgio Rossi Cairo, Vittorio Giaroli, Riccardo Monti
num_employees = around 3,000
industry = Management consulting
products = Management and IT consulting services
homepage = [http://www.valuepartners.com/ www.valuepartners.com]

Value Partners Management Consulting is a management consulting firm, headquartered in Milan, Italy. It is recognized as one of the major European consulting firms, having engagements in 40 countries and offices in 14 cities: Milan, Rome, London, Helsinki, Istanbul, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.

It is part of the Value Partners Group, with [http://www.valueteam.com Value Team IT Consulting & Solutions] , its sister company. By January 2008, the group draws on around 50 partners and 3,000 professionals from 25 countries.

Value Partners is also advisor to [http://www.valuepartnersgroup.com/vpmc/en/index.asp?page=golden The Golden Mouse] , the venture capital fund investing in high-tech European start-ups.

History

Value Partners Management Consulting was founded in January 1993 by Giorgio Rossi Cairo and Vittorio Giaroli, former partners of the Italian office of McKinsey & Co.

In 1994, it opened its first offices overseas, in São Paulo and Buenos Aires, to assist both Italian clients active in Latin America and local companies. In 1997 an aggressive move from Bain & Company almost caused the young Brazilian operations of Value Partners to be shutdown. The "Value Partners vs. Bain" case is very well known among consulting professionals (see article below).

In the last two years Value Partners has further strengthened its international presence by building a network of offices in double-digit growth countries, which are strategic for European companies: besides the Latin America area, also Turkey, China, the Far East and India, since 2006.

Value Partners Management Consulting has handled successfully strategic, turnaround and change management projects for major companies – projects which have helped to create and consolidate its corporate reputation and its brand. It assists clients mainly in the Telco & Media, Energy, Manufacturing, Hi-Tech and Financial Institution sectors. At the beginning of 2007 Value Partners acquired Spectrum Strategy Consultants, a leading consulting firm in the New Media, Broadcasting and Entertainment sectors.

In the late 1990s Value Partners also decided to extend the offer from management consulting to the most complex, innovative and business-critical IT services, today dealt with by Value Team. Value Team’s growth has been accelerated by international acquisitions, like Etnoteam, one of Italy’s longest-established ICT companies, acquired in 2007. Today Value Team competes along the entire value chain by dealing with customer relationship management, billing, content and knowledge management, business intelligence and, through three dedicated divisions, also security and embedded systems and digital interaction with E-Tree, one of the most acknowledged European web companies. The integrated expertise of Spectrum, Value Partners and Value Team allow the Group to present itself as the world’s leading edge company in Telecom, Media and New Media consulting.

Value Partners’ growth and positioning has been determined by the decisions to focus on specific geographic areas and to leverage on the entrepreneurial expertise of its professionals. Value Partners has invested consistently also in technology, IT and the web. The integration of the offering, according to an end-to-end logic, represents one of its distinctive features and answers to clients’ specific needs.

Key competitors

* McKinsey & Co.
* The Boston Consulting Group
* Bain & Company
* Oliver Wyman
* Booz & Company
* A.T. Kearney
* Accenture

Offices

* Milan (1993)
* São Paulo (1994)
* Rome (1999)
* Istanbul (1999)
* Buenos Aires (1994/2005)
* Shanghai (2005)
* Mumbai (2006)
* Rio de Janeiro (2006)
* London (2007)
* Singapore (2007)
* Hong Kong (2007)
* Sydney (2007)
* Beijing (2007)
* Helsinki (2007)

Value Partners vs. Bain

On the morning of Friday, October 31, 1997, Value Partners had an office in São Paulo, Brazil with three local based partners, more than 20 other professionals, and another 14 employees in various support functions. Late in the afternoon, the head of the firm received a devastating telephone call from his three partners in São Paulo: they announced that they were leaving to join the rival company, Bain & Company, together with the entire office. A team of Value Partners’ Milan-based partners rushed to São Paulo that weekend to assess the damage. On Monday, they arrived at an office in utter disarray: no partners, no senior consultants, no secretaries, no office manager. Confidential files — including proprietary work product, client presentations and pitches, internal financial information, strategic and operational planning documents, and personnel records — were gone.

For nearly five months prior to their departure, the Brazil-based partners had planned, and negotiated in secret with Bain, to defect to the rival firm and to take the entire office with them. Value Partners sought to redress its grievances in two ways: a criminal inquiry in Brazil into the activities of the three former partners, and litigation in the U.S. (asserting claims under both Brazilian and Massachusetts law) against Bain for its role in planning, and aiding and abetting, the theft of the office.

After lengthy discovery complicated by (a) the international dimensions of the litigation; (b) extensive motion practice, including Bain’s unsuccessful motions to dismiss the case on forum non conveniens grounds and for summary judgment; and (c) a “trial within a trial” involving expert proof as to the claims and relief available under Brazilian law, the case went to trial in federal court in Boston.

After a five-week trial, the jury found Bain liable for unfair competition and tortious interference, and awarded Value Partners $10 million in compensatory damages (the full award requested). The trial court, after awarding another $2.5 million of interest, denied all of Bain’s post-trial motions.

Community involvement

Africa

Value Partners sponsors 266 children in Eritrea through Caritas, and helps the community around the school of Barentu, Eritrea with particular initiatives such as buying seeds and drilling wells.

Brazil

Through the [http://www.agatasmeralda.org/ Agata Smeralda Association] , Value Partners sponsors 80 children in Bahia, in the Northeast of Brazil.

Since 2004, Value Partners Brazil has teamed up with the Associação Beneficente de Amparo e Solidariedade (ABAS), a São Paulo NGO that works with children from low-income families, to improve feasibility plans for its projects and strengthen its funding applications.

Europe

The group also supports the [http://www.speaktruth.org/ Kennedy Foundation of Europe] , an international NGO lead by Kerry Kennedy which battles for the defence of human rights.

External links

* [http://www.valuepartnersgroup.com/vpmc/en/ Value Partners Management Consulting]
* [http://www.valueteam.com/english/index.asp Value Team]
* [http://www.spectrumstrategy.com Spectrum Value Partners]