HR Consulting news: Towers Watson: Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt to merge

June 29, 2009

Ok, this is an interesting development, and I guess makes sense in this season of economic recession.Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt will merge to form Towers Watson.

Watson Wyatt has an Indian presence, while Towers Perrin does not. However it does stuff related to salary surveys with Cerebrus Consultants in India.

So I don’t think Watson Wyatt India will be impacted by this merger, but am guessing that globally there would be redundancies specially in overlapping service lines.

As the WSJ reports:

The combined company, to be called Towers Watson & Co., will have annual sales of about $3.2 billion with 14,000 employees. It will be publicly listed, as is Watson Wyatt. Towers Perrin is closely held.

The merger will create the world’s biggest employee-benefits consultancy, displacing the Mercer unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos., according to Shlomo Rosenbaum, an analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Before Sunday’s announcement, Watson Wyatt held second place, while Towers Perrin ranked fifth among global providers of employee benefits advice, he said.

Watson Wyatt is a strong player in pension consulting, while Towers Perrin is stronger in health-care consulting than Watson Wyatt, Mr. Rosenbaum said. He said it is unclear whether the firms will “be able to cross-sell products that the other one does not sell”.