Deloitte Consulting acquired Casey Quirk & Associates in a deal that closed June 17.
Terms of the deal are not being disclosed.
CQA will operate as Casey Quirk by Deloitte, and for the time being, will remain in its own offices in Darien, Conn., New York and Hong Kong, said Kevin P. Quirk, formerly CQA's chairman and now a Deloitte principal. All 50 of Casey Quirk's employees agreed to join Deloitte; all the partners have become principals with Casey Quirk by Deloitte.
Three former CQA leaders also have taken additional leadership roles in the new unit: Benjamin F. Phillips has the additional role of investment management lead strategist, consulting; Yariv Itah is Casey Quirk global practice leader, part of the Deloitte's financial services industry leadership forum; and Daniel Celeghin is head of wealth management strategy Asia-Pacific.
CQA's focus on in-depth consulting to investment managers will be a “game changer for us. I've wanted to do something like this for five years,” said Joseph Guastella, principal and global and U.S. managing director of the financial services practice at Deloitte Consulting.
“We don't do the same things, but we have many of the same clients,” Mr. Guastella said, adding that the two firms' “complementary skill sets” will help both better serve an investment management industry in transition.
The former CQA team will “continue to do what we've always done in terms of advising money management clients,” Mr. Quirk said, with the addition of Deloitte's non-investment consulting expertise in areas such as operations, technology, compliance, regulations, human resources and recruitment.
“Client demands broadened as our assignments got larger, and we were getting a lot of questions about these other areas that Casey Quirk didn't have expertise in. In fact, that's how we began to work with Deloitte,” Mr. Quirk said, adding that clients brought the two firms together to work on different parts of consulting projects.
Mr. Guastella stressed that the synergies between the former CQA business and Deloitte Consulting mean that rather than contemplate layoffs, the financial services practice will be hiring more operations and technology specialists to implement expanded consulting assignments.
Some things won't change, Mr. Guastella said: Deloitte will continue to talk to corporations' operations head, chief financial officer and chief information officer, while CQA by Deloitte still will be working with chief investment officers, investment product specialists and money management CEOs.
