EY’s member firm based in France Ernst & Young Advisory has acquired Bluestone Consulting, a leading French analytics and big data consultancy.
This is the third acquisition that this member firm has made in France in the last two years and increases its number of data scientists in France to 130, more than any other firm in the country. The move also is part of EY’s continued investment in global analytics and big data capabilities.
Established in 1996, Bluestone Consulting provides data visualisation and statistical engineering techniques and expertise to businesses’ operations in the marketing, finance and risk domains. With this acquisition, EY firms will bring cutting-edge analytics tools to clients across Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) to transform complex business data into actionable insights and drive competitive advantage.
With the addition of Bluestone Consulting’s people and assets, EY can offer clients data analytics applications to uncover opportunities, address challenges, improve financial and business performance, optimize production facilities and anticipate and manage risks. EY will also be able to support public sector clients with health care system transformations, smart city advancement and public policy development. The new resources will also be used across wider EY Assurance, Advisory, Tax and law services practices, providing best-in-class analytics.
Andrew Embury, EY Advisory Leader: EMEIA, says: “The acquisition of Bluestone Consulting comes at a crucial time as today’s organizations are becoming increasingly data driven and are looking to harness data and analytics to make better decisions and accelerate their business performance. By combining our strengths, EY will be in a stronger position to help our clients address their big, complex business issues.”
The acquisition follows others by EY firms in related areas, including the acquisitions of C3 Business Solutions (an advanced analytics firm in Australia), Entegreat Inc (a manufacturing intelligence consultancy with proven expertise in data analytics in North America and Europe) and Seren (a leading digital transformation consultancy in the UK).
Former Bluestone Consulting leaders Arnaud Laroche, Xavier de Boissieu and Pierre Capelle, have joined EY in France and will lead the new combined team along with EY’s Karim Ben Djemiaa.
Laroche comments: “”This deal is the result of a joint ambition to accelerate growth and improve business performance through world-class analytics, combining the effective application of data science with the international and multidisciplinary network of EY. We’ve spent the last 15 years developing unique tools tailored to our clients’ needs and by joining EY we have the opportunity to do this on a much bigger stage.”
