Perhaps Mark Foster ought to be worried. As global head of consulting at Accenture, the 50-year-old is one of Britain’s top management consultants — and things, at first glance, look a little grim.

The consulting market shrank by 2 per cent in the first six months of 2009, for example. The Conservatives have vowed to slash government spending on consultants — historically a lucrative source of fees for firms such as Accenture — if they win the general election. And big accounting firms, the likes of Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers, less than a decade after they sold off their consulting divisions in the wake of the Enron scandal, are back in the game and aiming to steal a chunk of Accenture’s business.

Then there is the recession. Companies worldwide are cutting back on big projects, reducing the number of outside advisers they use and putting intense downward pressure on fees. According to Mr Foster, who is responsible for more than 14,000 consultants globally: “The downturn has pretty much affected every single company in every geography around the world.”

In October, Accenture reported an 8 per cent drop in full-year revenue to $21.6 billion (£12.9 billion), although consulting makes up only part of its business (since splitting from Arthur Andersen, the defunct accounting firm, in the late 1980s, it has moved away from pure advisory work in favour of implementing big technology-related and outsourcing projects).

But worried? No. Mr Foster argues that Accenture’s size and reach — it employs 177,000 people in 52 countries and advises 96 of the world’s 100 biggest companies — makes it better equipped to weather the downturn than its rivals: “Mostly, when people are looking to rationalise, they still want the big global players in the mix because we can provide the breadth and range of services.”

Mr Foster expects the consulting market — a highly fragmented sector at present, with the “strategy houses”, such as McKinsey, at one end and technology-focused players, such as Accenture and IBM at the other — to consolidate in the next few years. Mid-sized firms will be squeezed out as competition intensifies, with the accounting firms grabbing a larger slice of the market. PricewaterhouseCoopers, for example, plans to treble consulting revenues in the UK to more than £1.3 billion in the next three years.

Yet Mr Foster argues that the Big Four’s audit relationships will lead to the same conflicts that prompted them to get out of the market at the start of the decade. Another threat will come from big Indian outsourcing companies as they move into management consulting.

The recession has changed the sort of advice that clients are demanding. Immediately after the crisis began, Mr Foster said, companies sought help cutting costs, shoring up supply chains, getting the basics right. Out went expensive technology-oriented projects and, at the same time, demand for pure strategic advice. Looking ahead, he believes that there will be an emphasis on “execution”, the industry shorthand for “getting things done”. “Clients don’t just want a report, they want someone to get them from A to B,” he said.

Despite the contraction in the market, Mr Foster expects that there will be opportunities for consultants arising from increased regulation, the break-up of big banks and — threats from the Conservatives to slash spending notwithstanding — from government work. Fees are also likely to flow from increased attention to reducing companies’ environmental impact.

Among the executives he talks to, there has been more optimism in recent months. Clients are starting to look ahead and to plan for growth. If the signs of recovery are fragile — “It won’t take much to knock it off course” — those clients are going to want the best advice possible.

C.V.

Born: 1959

Educated: Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe; University College Oxford (Classics)

Career: joined Arthur Andersen (later Accenture) 1983, rose through division to become global head of consulting in 2006

Personal: married with two children, lives in Surrey Hills

Outside interests: runs a village school charity; keen photographer; sits on the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company

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