Pwc To Expand Transaction Services Business

Consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is expanding its transaction services business in the country by adding new features such as market due diligence, post deal services and mergers & amalgamations risk services (Mars).

"These are value added services and will account for a large share of the projected growth in India," PWC Asia-Pacific leader (transaction services) Richard Irvine told Business Standard.

With the new features, PWC's transaction services in the country will straddle all the three phases of any M&A deal - strategic deal planning phase, deal execution and harvesting deals. "Our research shows that almost 70 per cent of the M&A deals fail to completely meet their objective. That is why harvesting deals, of which post deal services and Mars are parts, is important," Irvine said.

While post deal services relate to ironing out the cultural and other HRD-related issues, Mars aims at integrating systems following a merger or an amalgamation. "India, with its diverse corporate cultures, offers all the more scope for post deal services," PWC India head (transaction services) Deepak Kapoor said.

The Indian transaction services practice is targeted to grow at 40 per cent over the next one year. This is higher compared with the 20 per cent growth in transaction services projected for the 13 countries in the Asia Pacific region, Irvine said. At the moment, Irvine said, India accounts for about eight per cent of the transaction services carried out in the region and is on the fourth spot amongst the 13 countries. "But the 40 per cent growth will take it above Hong Kong to the third spot after Japan and Australia," he added.

To meet the additional business, Kapoor's team has been strengthened from 37 to 70 in the last 13 to 14 months.

According to Irvine, the focus will now be on training the team on the new features that are being added to the transaction services portfolio. "This would include training Indian professionals abroad as well as getting experts from overseas," Irvine said.

According to Irvine, the deal levels in the Asia Pacific region have gone soft in the last 5-6 months. Among the reasons cited by Irvine are, the meltdown in the US and the continuing economic slowdown in Japan. However, Irvine said he expects M&A activity to pick up in the region by early next year.