Global management consulting firm Bain & Company has bolstered its procurement capabilities with Proxima, a specialist consultancy with around 300 practitioners in the UK and US.
The deal has been in the makes for months, with Bain & Company and Proxima first entering negotiations last year in the midst of pandemic disruptions to supply chains.
With the world of procurement at a critical moment, as companies strive to navigate supply chain disruption and an upsurge in global inflation, Bain & Company and Proxima have now successfully closed the deal, with Proxima to operate as an independent part of Bain’s procurement business.
Founded in 1994, Proxima provides procurement advisory services and procurement transformation solutions to a client list ranging from some of the world’s largest businesses to fast-growing, high-potential small and medium-sized enterprises across a wide range of supply categories, and in sectors from aviation to government, from manufacturing to banking.
“Procurement is more vital than ever to enabling companies to achieve resilient and sustained business growth while also meeting their net zero agendas,” said Hernan Saenz, Head of Bain & Company’s Global Performance Improvement practice. “The addition of Proxima will further strengthen our ability to meet the needs of clients around the globe for end-to-end procurement transformation across strategy, design, technology, capability development, and execution.”
In February this year Bain & Company closed a similar deal in Australia, with the bolt-on of ArcBlue welcoming around 100 staff to its procurement business.
“With the acquisitions of Proxima and ArcBlue, we have established a global capability dedicated to providing clients with fully-scaled support across all areas of procurement and supply chain,” Saenz added.
Michael Garstka, a London-based Senior Partner at Bain & Company, will following closing of the deal serve as Executive Chairman. “I am looking forward to working with the team at Proxima and my colleagues at Bain to bring our combined solutions to our clients.”
Gareth Evans, Chief Executive of Proxima, said, “We are enormously excited to be joining forces with Bain & Company, a world-leading, top-tier global consulting group, to build on and reinforce the extraordinary success our teams have achieved at Proxima. This deal allows us to take that to even greater heights for our clients, partners, and people.”
In other recent deals in the procurement consulting space, Kearney acquired Nordic procurement consulting firm Prokura (60 staff) in December last year, while the UK procurement consulting team of Ayming joined Argon & Co in August last year.
