The acquisition was completed at a fixed consideration of USD 23.428 Million subject to certain adjustments as per definitive agreements. In addition, the definitive agreements provide for payment of annual performance based earnouts over the next four years.
Founded in 2002, by two former Arthur Andersen Partners, St. Charles Consulting Group has a network of over 500 premier management consultants in the fields of learning, organization development, knowledge services, and workforce planning. The company offers solutions in four key areas – strategic consulting, custom learning experiences, learning curation, and managed services.
With their genesis as leading Arthur Andersen learning professionals at Andersen’s Worldwide Center for Training and Development, the company’s founders and key team members have served over 12 out of the top 15 global professional services firms.
The acquisition helps NIIT add significant presence in the professional services and management consulting sectors while strengthening NIIT’s rapidly growing learning consulting practice. The transaction is in line with NIIT’s stated goal of accelerating growth through investments that add new capabilities to bring more value to its customers and strengthen presence in attractive customer segments. St. Charles’ deep experience in Strategic Learning Programs aimed towards advancing overall strategy, addressing strategic business priorities, and key initiatives at large organizations are in high demand across large, global organizations. NIIT believes there is a significant growth opportunity for StC’s business going forward and expects the transaction to be margin and EPS accretive from the first year.
“Learning and Development is at the epicenter of change in a post-pandemic world that is going through rapid business and industry transformation. As organizations strive to build and retain talent and skills for a future-ready workforce, L&D is leading the way on many key initiatives. St. Charles Consulting Group brings deep expertise and experience in building strategic learning programs which are in high demand across our customer base,” said Sapnesh Lalla, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, NIIT Limited.
“As NIIT helps our global customers build sustainable learning ecosystems for the future, the experience that the St. Charles team brings will be invaluable. Our consulting team is also on a high growth trajectory and the St. Charles team will help us fulfil the exponential demand for experienced learning consultants globally,” he added.
“The acquisition of St. Charles Consulting Group will give our customers access to an expanded capability of consulting, designing, and implementing strategic learning programs. This will enable us to engage with our customers on a deeper level to help them attain their strategic objectives,” said DJ Chadha, Chief Customer Officer, NIIT Limited.
“Given the accelerated change that businesses are experiencing as a result of advanced technologies, accelerated evolution of skills, and new service delivery models, organizations’ ability to learn and adapt must be at the core of their business strategy and imperatives. As a result of the current business climate, St. Charles has experienced incredible growth over the last few years, helping our clients in this new frontier of learning.
The time couldn’t be better to join forces with NIIT to bring a broader array of capabilities to our clients. The two firms bring complementary learning capabilities and offerings which will allow us to more fully serve our clients and be even more competitive in the marketplace,” said Larry Durham, President of St. Charles Consulting Group.
VectorSpan and AGG acted as the financial and legal advisor respectively in this transaction.
