Guidehouse closes Navigant acquisition

Guidehouse said Friday it has closed the company’s acquisition of Navigant Consulting in a transaction that significantly moves the needle on scale among commercial customers and particularly those in highly-regulated markets.

The deal first announced in August increases Guidehouse’s headcount to around 7,000 employees in 50 offices around the world that support both government and commercial clients in fields like health care, financial services, energy, national security, and aerospace-and-defense.

Analysts at credit ratings agency Moody’s Investor Service noted in September that Guidehouse’s revenue including Navigant will be around $1.3 billion with expectations of compound annual growth at 3-to-5 percent in the near term, even with the loss of a large prime contract in its last fiscal year.

When I spoke with Guidehouse CEO Scott McIntyre after the initial announcement, he pointed to how clients in government and commercial markets often keep up with what is happening on the other side.

“Banking and capital markets clients on the commercial side want to know what’s going on, on the regulatory side,” McIntyre said then. “Our clients in government are keenly interested in what are emerging practices, trends (and) tools that are serving the commercial industry and they want to make sure they have the best.”

McLean, Virginia-based Guidehouse announced it would make the acquisition on the heels of the consulting firm's one-year anniversary as a standalone company held by private equity firm Veritas Capital, which acquired the business when it was the U.S. public sector arm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.