Another year of expansion is well under way for one of the area?s pre-eminent business advisory firms.
FTI Consulting Inc. was founded in Annapolis in 1982 but has undergone a radical transformation this decade, turning itself into one of the world?s premiere consultants for highly sensitive, executive-level legal and financial troubleshooting.
That process has continued this year through turbulent economic times in the United States with FTI?s acquisition of eight firms around the world since Jan. 1, including businesses in London and Latin America. Each has added depth to the company, said David Bannister, executive vice president and chief development officer.
“The theme of the company is really built around increasingly ? on a global base ? dealing with Fortune 500 or Global 500 issues that the [chief executive officers] would care about getting it right,” Bannister said. “A simple way to think about this is we put together a very strong and robust global skeleton and now we?re adding muscle to that skeleton.”
FTI posted revenues in 2004 of $427 million, but saw earnings skyrocket in following years to reach $1 billion in 2007, up 41 percent from the year before, according to the company?s annual reports from those years.
Since 2000, the firm has expanded its core advisory areas, corporate restructuring and forensic litigation, and added complimentary lines of business in anti-trust claims and electronic management of critical documents.
While the U.S. economy slows and major firms tumble, FTI?s business has boomed, not in spite of the trends but because of them, according to Morningstar analyst Brett Horn.
“[It?s] driven demand for its corporate restructuring and economic consulting segments,” Hornwrote in a Morningstar analysis of FTI. “While the company has some solid tail winds, we are skeptical that it can maintain this level of performance over time, given the event-driven nature of its business.”
Horn noted that the company is dependent on the expertise of its senior employees and would be hard-pressed to replace them.
Bannister, however, saw the people-centric nature of FTI as the core of its value, rather than a liability.
“We are a very senior-level, person-driven business,” he said. “This is a business built on having true experts who can walk into the boardroom as a peer to the board members or the C-suite and offer deep consulting on critical issues.”
