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这起诉讼案件听起来像一部侦探小说。一家富有声望的跨国组织里的两个高管，和一个想要挖走他们的竞争对手举行秘密会议。在跳槽之前，他们发送了许多机密文件，比如战略计划和合同汇总表，到他们自己或亲人的邮箱里，他们像是“疯了一样偷窃所有能偷到的文件”。在5月9日，一位法官发布命令，要求被告返还文件并不许他们的新雇主利用该信息。 在上个月艾睿铂公司的埃里克·汤普森和伊沃·罗曼被告上法庭的事情，也许不会成为好莱坞电影。但事实是，艾睿铂公司是个专业性服务公司，主营公司重组业务，而汤普森先生和罗曼先生这两位被告，现在在为麦肯锡咨询公司工作。诉讼并没有就给予麦肯锡公司的文件提起索赔，而麦肯锡公司说，不管怎样，所谓的商业机密已经没有什么用处了。尽管如此，这个案件表明企业重组顾问和战略咨询公司之间的竞争开始升温。它也是至今双方的竞争风险最突出的例子。 THE lawsuit makes the case sound like a spy novel. Two executives at a prestigious multinational organisation hold secret meetings with a competitor who hopes to poach them. Before jumping ship, they send a lot of confidential files, such as strategic plans and contact lists, to their personal and relatives’ e-mail accounts, in a “frantic effort to steal whatever documents [they] could”. On May 9th a judge issued an order requiring the defendants to return them and barring their new employer from using the information. AlixPartners v Eric Thompson and Ivo Naumann, which was filed last month, will probably not become a Hollywood film. The mundane truth is that AlixPartners is a professional-services firm specialising in corporate restructuring and that Mr Thompson and Mr Naumann, the defendants, now work for McKinsey, a firm of consultants. The suit does not claim that the documents were given to McKinsey, and McKinsey has said the alleged trade secrets would have been of little use anyway. Nonetheless, the case illustrates the heating-up of competition between corporate-turnaround advisers and strategy consultants. It is the most striking example so far of the risks for both. In the early 1980s there was still some truth to the caricature of management consultants making abstruse recommendations and taking little interest in their execution. Companies in or near insolvency could not afford this luxury, and both AlixPartners and its bigger peer, Alvarez & Marsal, were founded in those years to cater to them. The new turnaround firms mastered the intricacies of bankruptcy courts and tight cash-management, and recruited experienced hands from a wide range of industries whom they could deploy as interim executives. The firms’ appetite for growth exceeded the supply of troubled clients, and in the late 1990s they diversified their practices. Alvarez & Marsal set up a division to serve private-equity investors. AlixPartners founded a strategy-consulting arm of its own. Today, a minority of their revenue comes from turnaround work. Nonetheless, it remains their forte and a lucrative niche: Alvarez & Marsal earned $627m from the Lehman Brothers case alone in the four years after the bank went under. For similar reasons, management consultants have also expanded beyond their roots in strategy. When the financial crisis took hold in 2008, dragging hundreds of companies into distress, the strategy firms found themselves poorly placed to help. “If a client was going into bankruptcy, we couldn’t walk through that valley of darkness with them,” says McKinsey’s Jon Garcia. So in 2010 the company set up a Recovery and Transformation Services (RTS) practice, which Mr Garcia heads. For McKinsey, the turnaround business is unfamiliar turf. For 80 years the firm merely sold advice, which clients were free to ignore—shielding the consultants from blame whenever things went awry. In contrast, RTS offers direct interim management: for example, in 2011 a McKinsey partner became temporary chief financial officer at CHC Helicopter, a Canadian aviation company. Moreover, whereas McKinsey has always sought to keep a low profile, RTS operates in the public eye, since payments by insolvent companies require a judge’s approval. So far, RTS has already scored one big bankrupt client in American Airlines, and worked on the restructurings of AMF, which owns bowling alleys, and Harry & David, a seller of gift baskets. The incumbents say their competitive position is safe. “This is not the kind of work you can do with newly minted MBAs,” says Jay Marshall of AlixPartners. “The stakes are much higher in restructuring, and having someone who’s been through that before is critical.” Mr Garcia agrees. But that, of course, is why he has been hiring their staff: McKinsey’s RTS division had already lured six experts from AlixPartners before Mr Thompson and Mr Naumann. Especially if AlixPartners loses its lawsuit, it risks losing more of its staff to its big, new rival. |
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