Corporate Finance Strategy Study

I personally find corporate finance strategy studies to be interesting. They tend to have a lot at stake and the consulting teams have to be more careful in showing value on the strategy side. That is, they are interesting not because of the supposedly scary analyses, but the thinking that is required to simplify the analyses. The reason for this is easy to explain. A corporate finance study that is awarded to McKinsey or BCG could just as easily have been awarded to a bank. So why is a firm like BCG doing it? There are different answers to this question. Sometimes the board wants an independent opinion, sometimes the relationship with the consulting partner leads to a study and at other times the client feels the consulting firm is better equipped for the work. However, irrespective of the reason, the consulting firm cannot simply replicate the work a bank could do. Some consulting firms do this, especially the audit firms, but it is path to limited differentiation in the market. McKinsey and BCG do not have the technical modeling and market understanding expertise that a bank would have. None of the elite consulting firms compete with banks for these…