Affluent Big Four partners lack ‘fire in the belly’ to disrupt consulting market
The trend of Big Four partners leaving to launch boutique consultancies has accelerated in recent years. But the co-founder of consultancy Q5 Partners has told Morning Wire that many will struggle to build true challenger brands without an “all or nothing” approach.
Five founders, including managing partner Olly Purnell, launched boutique consultancy firm Q5 Partners at the height of the global financial crisis to create a “successful, effective organisation” without the traditional “armies” of juniors.
Fast forward a decade, and the professional services landscape is undergoing a major structural shift after advisory arms’ fees have dropped, resulting in swarms of former partners from the consultancy giants seeking to challenge the market with boutique firms.
Purnell said some clever people are trying to build a brand, but they are highly affluent, raising the question of whether they have enough “fire in the belly” to create a new global brand that will generate new revenue.
He explained that in 2009, the Q5 partners, all in their mid‑30s at the time, “couldn’t afford to fail” because they all had young families to support.
“You have to have that hunger and desire at a stage of life where it’s all or nothing, and I knew, as did Sharon Rice-Oxley and Chris Parsons, who co-founded the business with me, we were at a stage where we couldn’t afford to fail,” he said.
“I don’t want to be ageist about it, but when you’re a multi-millionaire former Big Four partner with adult children, you’ve got to have some serious fixation on wanting to do something special and having a purpose and having that desire to go out and really make something happen,” he added.
Generalist consultancies face ‘turmoil’
Q5’s first office was in a basement in a building owned by the former chair of HBOS, Lord Stevenson, who let the five partners use it rent‑free for a year. But 15 years on, the self-funded firm has grown to around 400 staff across several global offices.
While the Big Four cut junior staff and fret about fees dropping in consultancy departments, Q5 said last year was its best and the latest quarter beat the previous one. Purnell said that since 2020, the firm has grown at just under 20 per cent a year, hitting record revenues last year and again in the latest quarter.
“If you are a generalist firm, that is where the issue is,” Purnell said.
For Purnell, AI hasn’t killed consulting, rather it killed bloated enterprise resource planning (ERP) mega‑projects.
“Traditionally, a Big Four partner is looking for a multi-year, multi-geography ERP implementation, which would cost £50m-£60m for the client, and this has been going well for many years, with 100 consultants working on it for two to three years.”
He highlighted that this is the type of work that will disappear in the post-AI world. But added, “If you’re a specialist advisory firm, and famous for that, then the market is enormous.”
“Q5 was always focused on what we call organisational performance, creating really successful, effective organisations that have clear strategies, clear workflows, and a clear structure… we work in threes and fours for very specialist 12‑week assignments,” he explained.
Over the next five years, Purnell said he wants Q5 to stay fast‑growing and staff‑owned, expanding quietly into new geographies and private‑equity work, riding decades of AI‑fuelled restructuring, but without cashing out to a Big Four or sacrificing the culture he sees as its secret sauce.