News round-up: January 31

I've said it once and I'll say it again—there is no better way to kick-start a week than with the daily news round-up at Consult THIS. Nay, you say? Prove it.

Our first piece of news comes from Aon Corporation, which has combined its merger and acquisition practices into one unit, to be known as Aon M&A Solutions. The result, the firm announced, is "the largest provider of M&A risk and human capital solutions in the world." Despite that claim, Aon M&A Solutions will consist of just 100 employees spread across the world. The unit will remain separate from Aon Hewitt, Aon's bona fide consulting arm, though human resources consulting will be a major piece of the M&A group's service line. Aon CEO Greg Case was optimistic about the new unit. "To meet the pent-up demand for merger and acquisition activity, Aon is uniting its global M&A businesses in risk and human capital consulting," he said. "Clients demand and deserve the best deal execution team to address a full range of issues, from due diligence to executive compensation review. Aon's clients will be best-positioned and competitively advantaged with our cutting-edge solutions and global support." No word on whether or not the M&A Solutions unit was an advisor to its own merger.

Next up we hear from Accenture, which is becoming something of a regular feature on the news round-up. Today, the global consulting giant published the results of a survey of chief financial officers around the world, revealing some interesting conclusions. Chief among them: CFOs' jobs are increasing in scope and depth of responsibility. Translation: it's a hard knock life. Paul Boulanger, Accenture's top finance/performance management guy, said "The economic crisis left the corporate finance function stretched by additional responsibilities and rapidly changing market dynamics that require nimble operations to quickly adapt to new business realities." Yeah, it's true; they probably got a raw deal. Further, the results also reveal that half of CFOs plan to "develop a new strategy for their finance organization" which, for 43 percent of CFOs, also includes "increasing their recruitment of finance professionals."

FTI Consulting, the chairman of which was featured earlier today on Consult THIS, announced today the launch of Ringtail 8, the latest in a series of popular ("40,000 legal professionals" popular) e-discovery ("fully integrated processing, review, analysis and production platform") software from the firm. The folks at Huron Consulting Group hit back immediately with a similar release of their own: Sp3ctrum. The software "is a comprehensive managed services offering designed to help corporate law department and law firm clients solve their unique discovery needs." Clearly, there's a likeness between the pair of software launches/press releases here—I think we may be looking at the first tit-for-tat consulting grudge match since Deloitte and KPMG both announced their grand (and identical) hiring plans simultaneously! Yes!

For more information:
Aon Merges M&A Advisory Teams in Global Risk and Human Resource Consulting
Accenture Survey Finds Scope of Responsibilities Expanding for CFOs
FTI Consulting to Launch Ringtail 8 E-Discovery Software
Huron Consulting Group Launches Sp3ctrum