Sectors
We work in six sectors and turn down the rest.
A firm that claims every sector is claiming none of them. These are the six where a partner has run something, not merely advised on it, and where we can be useful in the first week rather than the fourth.
A plant visit in the second week. Half of what a manufacturing client believes about its own constraints is a habit that has outlived the equipment, and it never shows up in the data room.
Industrial manufacturing
Multi-plant groups, engineered products and the supply chains under them. Our largest practice, and the one that most often starts with a factory visit.
- 31% of fee income
Financial services
Mid-sized insurers, asset managers and specialist lenders. Cost, operating model and the regulatory change that has to be absorbed without stopping the business.
- 22% of fee income
Consumer and retail
Branded goods and multi-channel retail. Pricing, range and the commercial arithmetic of selling the same thing through four routes at four margins.
- 17% of fee income
Energy and utilities
Networks, generation and the transition programmes attached to them. Long asset lives, regulated returns, and capital plans that outlast their sponsors.
- 14% of fee income
Health and life sciences
Providers, diagnostics and mid-cap pharma services. Market access, operating model, and the difference between a clinical constraint and a habit.
- 9% of fee income
Infrastructure and public
Transport, water and public bodies. Delivery capability and cost, in settings where the answer has to survive being published.
- 7% of fee income
Shares of fee income are for the twelve months to March 2026 and are rounded to whole points.
Where we stop
The honest version of a capability list is the part that is missing.
We have no defence practice, no real estate practice and nothing in sport or media. If that is the work, we are the wrong firm and we will say so on the first call.
What we declineWe also decline work where the answer is already decided and what is wanted is a document supporting it. It is the one category we turn down most often, and the only one we turn down on principle rather than on capability.
Conflicts are checked before a scope is written, not after. Where we are already engaged with a direct competitor on the same question, we say so and decline, and we do not use the enquiry as a reason to go back to the existing client.