True Partners Looks Overseas for Alliances
True Partners looks overseas for alliances
By: Steven R. Strahler Sept. 09, 2008
(Crain’s) — True Partners Consulting LLC is adding new affiliates in China, Spain and Italy to an international network that could grow to account for 20% to 30% of the Chicago-based tax consulting firm’s business.
Founded three years ago by Cary McMillan and other Arthur Andersen alums, True Partners expects to report as much as $38 million in revenue this year, up from $22 million last year and about five times the $7.8 million it posted in 2006, Mr. McMillan said.
The overseas deals are aimed at better serving the consulting firm’s clients as they expand abroad.
“This is the first wave,” Mr. McMillan said. “We’ll have another wave, probably after the calendar new year.”
True Partners will share work and staff with a firm being rechristened True Partners Consulting International-China and with Toda & Nel-lo Abogados in Spain and Studio Manzoni Pagliero Vanz e Associati in Italy. The firm already has an office in London and an affiliate in Paris.
“The big buzz today among all the 100 top accounting firms is all about providing global services,” said Allan D. Koltin, CEO of Chicago-based industry consultant PDI Global Inc.
True Partners is among the startups that have benefited from federal regulatory efforts to separate auditing and consulting practices at accounting firms, which send referrals to True Partners, Mr. McMillan said. Among its biggest clients are NBC Universal, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, CDW Corp. and Verizon Wireless, it said.
“It’s the right concept at the right time,” Mr. Koltin said. Like Chicago’s Huron Consulting Group Inc. and other companies spawned by Andersen’s demise, he added, True Partners “picked out a very narrow niche in the marketplace and was able to go out and service it.”
Mr. McMillan, 50, started True Partners after leaving Andersen in 1999 and heading to Sara Lee Corp., where he began as CFO and left in 2004 as CEO of branded apparel. True Partners has about 175 consultants and figures to increase that number to between 400 and 500 by 2011, when revenues are projected to reach $70 million to $100 million, he said.