Mellon Financial Corp. agreed to acquire Unifi Network, the human resources outsourcing and consulting subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers, for $275 million in an all-cash deal. Unifi’s human resources outsourcing business will become part of Mellon Employee Benefit Solutions, and its human resources consulting business will become part of Buck Consultants.
The acquisition, to be completed in the first quarter of 2002, will make Mellon the fourth-largest global provider of human resources consulting and administration services. Unifi was created last year after the 1998 merger of Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse, and it includes the former consulting firm Kwasha Lipton, which was purchased by Coopers in 1997.