The nine sectors served by our corporate practice all face different market challenges. A priority for us is to strengthen our deep sector expertise so that we understand these clients’ challenges even better and propose solutions tailored directly to their needs. We did this with growing success in 2011, seeing our net sales rise by 4%.
But there are common themes too. Most businesses are in better shape to weather the current economic crisis than they did in 2008. During three tough years, many clients have strengthened their balance sheets and improved efficiencies. Today, their outlook is driven by economic and trading uncertainty rather than by internal problems.
They are also much better — through force of circumstance — at managing their way through a downturn. So rather than dusting off propositions we developed when the financial crisis first struck, we are developing new ways to help our corporate clients to remain safe and attractive, from exercising rigorous cash control through to managing debt and looking for short- and long-term growth opportunities.
M&A looks unlikely to play a major role in boosting growth for the foreseeable future. So our solutions are much more based around product innovation, business model adaptation, capturing untapped revenues to boost profitability and helping clients enter markets with high growth potential, such as India and China.
Developing relevant solutions for clients of all sizes depends on us sharing insights and knowledge effectively across our teams and across borders.
Our sector model across ELLP firms enables us to do this, as a forum to bring together industry experts who understand the sector issues, represent the perspectives of their client, and develop bespoke propositions in response.
*Growth rate figures in the 'Markets' sections are for ELLP firms at 30 September 2011, ignoring the impact of mergers and exchange rate fluctuations (see note 3)